Using Mercedes Funeral

I'm sorry, this is a short-answer literature forum designed for text specific questions. We are unable to provide students with writing assignments. For reference, however, you might consider how the storyteller speaks of a recent election in Ilmorog when an incumbent candidate (John Joe James, or JJJ) wanted a smooth and uncontested election like the other politicians, but was instead challenged by three rivals – a student, a farmer, and a businessman. As the four candidates campaigned, the question of workers and their rights kept coming up. At one meeting, the situation of a worker named Wahinya was referenced; he had recently died, and could not afford a funeral. There were, apparently, efforts made by all four candidates to talk to the widow who, along with the body, had disappeared for a short while. There were rumors that JJJ was involved in the disappearance, and he became increasingly upset. But then the widow returned (without saying where she went) and the body ended up in the mortuary. The storyteller describes how suddenly, Wahinya had become “the most powerful factor in the elections” and adds that “Wahinya’s rather rapid progress towards the grave is really the story of our troubled times!” (131).

The storyteller also describes the development of his relationship with Wahinya over several years starting in the 1960’s, “the years when dreams like garden perfume in the wind wafted through the air of our villages” (131). He describes how, when they were going to separate schools (him a white-run missionary school; Wahinya a black-run community school), Wahinya used to give him a little money so he did not have to appear so poor in the eyes of his classmates. He also describes how Wahinya was always full of dreams and hopes, sometimes connected to the activist / rebel concept of uhuru, or freedom; at other times, connected to what a teacher had told him – that “what one man can do, another one can – what one race can do, another one can” (135).