Is life after being the only one to survive – or one of the few to survive – a collective tragedy subject to cultural determinations? I ask this question as somebody who has spent two decades crossing cultural borderlands between Africa and the West.
Part of the ecology of grief and mourning in the West is the difficult life of the lone survivor of tragedy. There is this phenomenon they call survivor’s guilt. Why me? Why did I survive? Why did all the othe…rs have to die?
And you cry and cry and cry. And you are depressed. And you get into mood swings. And you need therapy and a lot of help to get out of the pitch darkness occasioned by the guilt of surviving. Some never fully recover. In Europe, in North America, survivor’s guilt is inescapable. Anderson Cooper will be on hand to ask you how you are coping with the guilt of surviving.
I have travelled far and wide in Africa – a continent where tragedy and trauma are routine. I have seen sorrow, grief, and mourning come in more rainbow shades and variations than anywhere else in the world. Survivor’s guilt is one curious beast that I have never encountered anywhere in this continent. Is it there and I just haven’t noticed it? If it isn’t there, why don’t we have it?
When you are the lone survivor of the latest Boko Haram carnage or an armed robbery raid in your neighbourhood in Lagos or a road accident which claims the lives of dozens of luxurious bus passengers on the Lagos-Benin expressway, you do not do survivor’s guilt. You and your kinsmen kill a cow, take aso ebi, and declare non-stop owambe party. It is called idupe alias thanksgiving.
When there is flooding in Accra and petrol stations catch fire and hundreds die and you survive, you do not do survivor’s guilt. You declare free apeteshi for all in thanksgiving.
Whenever they massacre miners in South Africa and you are somehow a lone survivor, you do not do survivor’s guilt. You declare free umqombothi for everybody in your favorite shebeen in Soweto.
Why does survivor’s guilt not carry the passport of any country in Africa?
Credit: Pius Adesanmi