Muso Nthunya, Rest in Peace

After watching the opulence of the coronation yesterday, I received messages from two people in Lesotho with the same terrible news. A man I knew well died in a fire late Friday night. He was only 57 but had suffered a stroke a few years ago and was no longer able to work. He was a taxi-driver, father of two grown children, divorced. He was sober, hard-working, and he loved to sing in a deep and resonant bass. He lived in a house with no running water or electricity, and although his sister-in-law tried to take care of him, she is a cancer survivor who had a leg amputated a couple of years ago, and there was only so much she could do. I don’t know how he survived financially, but he never asked me for help.

According to one of the people who wrote to me, “He took a lamp to bed, and it started to burn, so they found him on fire.” There is a cultural taboo against calling any death a suicide, and I don’t know that his death was intentional, but his life had become unbearable for him since the stroke. It must have been a hideous way to die. At last the pain has come to an end.

How does the human mind hold such disparity?