Last respects for a friend

Sunday 5.30 pm

Stembile Mhonda has died. After fighting cancer for six months, the leader of Muriel Mine's Mothers' Union has died. On Friday I anointed her and gave her communion. I talked to the nurses of hospice care, knowing her death was near, but they, taught to preserve life, walked out defeated. The hospice movement is only just starting to spread to the rural areas, work with the nurses on palliative care seems to be a priority for the coming year. At the communion Mai Mhonda decided to go to her parents' home to die - over 150 miles away in a resettlement area. The chairman of the church, her husband, agrees to take her.

On Saturday the long journey was made in the bus lent by the mine. The road is long and dusty. In many places it crosses dry river beds on low bridges, a steep climb leading up the rocky slope out of the river. But Stembile doesn't complain. Her parents welcome her for her last few hours on earth.

At 2 am she dies. It takes most of the day for the news to reach Banket. The funeral is to be on Monday.

Can I supply transport for 20 people at 7 am tomorrow? The answer has to be no! Harvesting is still in full swing. All farm vehicles are committed. The mine bus will be available.

Monday 7.30 am.

The bus has broken down, only a Land Rover is available. Only eight people can go. My car, newly returned from repairs after I rolled it, wouldn't get there; another truck is off the road waiting for spare parts.

9.30 am-The Land Rover arrives and we start our journey.

10.30 am-A tyre blows outside Chinhoyi, only 30 miles out. The wheel brace has a neat circle where the hexagon ought to be. Someone walks to a farm, others flag down passing trucks, a couple of us find some shade as the temperature climbs to over 30C.

11.30 am-On the road again. A combination of spanners and braces finally loosened the wheel. At least it had happened before we were too far out into the bush.

As we move away from the commercial farming districts into communal land the scenery changes. Across the Sanyati the climate is harsher, the soil thinner, the trees more stunted. There is little or no undergrowth. One patch of green is the school vegetable patch – the pupils in a long line walk the mile or so down to the river with plastic bottles, jars and tins – whatever will hold some precious water for the garden.

Then into Gokwe resettlement area – villagers busily clear the bush. Each has 10 acres. If it's cleared in time one acre will be ploughed for them. Seed and fertiliser will be provided – the cost deducted from the harvest. Those in their second year are on their own. Donkeys and oxen provide the power.

Hornbills fly into the trees on our approach. Baobabs stand incongruously in the middle of fields – they  provide food and water in a drought so are rarely felled.

We finally join a wider road to take us into the resettlement area and then turn off onto a track to the village.

2 pm We arrive. The mourning would have been going on for 36 hours. The Mother’s Union members we brought go into the hut where the body lies, already singing hymns. Naison Mhonda, Edson Maenzanise and I sit in the shade to work out the service.

Water is brought to us from the borehole some distance away. Brought by ox-cart in steel tanks it is already hot. We are offered food but decide to start the service.

Edson starts the service, Charles Mponda reads the lesson and then I preach.

Most of the villagers are Christian. We give thanks for a life well spent, final relief from suffering, we pray for the four young children whom the Muriel Mine congregation will now take into their care. The mourners file past the coffin to pay their last respects before the procession forms to carry Stembile to

her grave in the shade of the bush. In the heat, the huts, the parched earth and the bush itself merge in a uniform dusty brown.

4.30 pm The service is over, but we stay at the graveside until the earth is replaced. Concrete slabs above the coffin protect it from jackals. Then there are speeches. I am welcomed again and thanked for coming – the first Anglican priest to visit the village. The parish centre is 60 miles away.

Sadza and nyama (thick maize meal porridge and goat's meat) wait for us at the village together with hot sweet tea.

The hymn singing continues until we leave, it has never stopped.

6.15 pm We are ready to go.

Handshakes again all around, several false starts as we remember one last thing to say. Then a goat is given and the last of the meat to take to those who couldn't come. As the sun goes down we move off for home.

The sky is lit by fires where the bush is still being cleared or where last year's cotton plants are being destroyed to prevent the pests living into the new season.

In the headlights a single buck leaps into the bush and a succession of pennant-winged nightjars fly up into the light.

At 10.30 pm 13 hours and 300 miles after we left, we arrive in Banket.

An earlier version of this was published in the USPG journal “Network” in July 1986