Doing things differently makes us unique

My son was watching a movie and he asked me about Police protocol when a police member has died. I told him what happened while I was working in PE. An African Chaplain received a call that a White member stationed here in Cape Town had died and he had to break the news to his family that was staying in Summerstrand, PE.

As usual with us Blacks, whoever have to break the sad news must gather other family members, if they are far he must call close neighbours to accompany him to the bereaved family to inform them of the death.So my beloved Chaplain went to the neighbours of the member's parents and requested them to accompany us.

Neighours on both sides blankly refused and were unfriendly though we told them why we need them. So there we were knocking at the deceased's parents house and the mother answered. She wanted to know what we wanted before she invited us in. As we came in the husband joined us. The Chaplain started with his quotes from the Bible and the husband interrupted him, irritated asked what is it that we wanted.

He was told that his son, a policemen working in Cape Town had passed away. Yho the guy was so angry,he first asked why we went to his neighbours, did we tell them about their son's death, why couldn't the Chaplain go directly to them, they are offended, their family sorrow is now a neighbouhood affair, why are we treating them like that?

We had to apologise for our ignorance, we explained our aim was to get neighbours to give them support and pray with us as we break the sad news. We explained that in our custom the first person to receive news about death of a family member must gather people to break the news so they can give support. They later understood but were not convinced and asked us to never do that again and we had to promise.

As for me I would still need as many people as possible to give me support at such unfortunate time. Our Chaplain learnt a lesson and as for us accompanying him we also learnt something about the White people's culture when it comes to death.

I thought I should share this story with you guys.