Tragedy Befalls Highlands

I came in from a trip to Cape Town yesterday to find the whole vineyard enshrouded in the proverbial dark cloud. Dismal expressions rattled every face and all eyes were trained on the ground. I was unfortunately late for our PR meeting, so it wasn't until over an hour later that I heard the source of all of this adumbration.

It came as quite a shock when Justin said, by way of explanation, that one of the workers had just died. This initial news was a jolt, and I struggled to get a handle on the situation by grasping for the facts. In response to my inquiries I received a jumble of details-- he was given sugar water, he was at the doctors, he had heart palpitations-- but everyone was in such a chaotic place of grief that no coherent story arose. As often happens in these cases, the mortal confusion of death had truncated the story and obscured the facts in a dismal shadow. It was only today, a full 24 hours later, that the events began to come together.

The man who passed away was named Luwatha. Though the tragedy obviously touches us all, (as he was a member of the Highlands Road clan,) this dolor falls particularly close to home, as he was permanent staff, both in the cellar and in the vineyards. Yesterday morning, he went into the hospital with intense pains, and by afternoon he had died. The first I heard was that he had a chest infection, then a heart attack-- both of which seemed dubious explanations-- but I just heard from Justin that it was an aneurism. Beyond this medical diagnosis, I am still pretty much in the dark. The shock and the pain seem a bit too recent, and no one is ready to talk about it; I will have to wait for the information to sift down as time passes. I don't even know if there is a memorial service or if there will be one...

What I do know, however, is that I am left with a singular feeling of desperate responsibility. Though it is absolutely no one's fault, there is still this lingering sensation that, in some way, I could have done something. I think most of this feeling of desperation stems from the death occurring in the third world. Though I know an aneurism in any country is deadly in its expediency, I still can't help but wonder if this tragedy could have been avoided in another place. If this were to happen in the first world, would death still have been the ultimate outcome?

Though South African doctors are extremely well trained, (especially for a "third-world" nation,) this strange feeling of guilt intensely echoes an experience my mom and I had in Nepal. On our way out of Mustang, we encountered a small group of hikers who had been forced to abandon their longer trek into the Dolpo Region because of an unexpected fatality in their group. When I asked

what had happened to their compatriot, we were given two completely conflicting explanations: "he died of altitude sickness" and "it happened all of the sudden, one moment he was having trouble breathing, the next he dropped dead." Much like in this occurrence, the line between the malady, the symptom, and the diagnosis was shaky. There was an extreme disjuncture between the observed physical reactions and the supposed explanation, and it made you wonder, if the cause couldn't be determined, was there ever a chance of finding the cure? These are the moments at which you are deeply and ashamedly aware of the blessing and the comfort of having, by chance, been born in the first world. While the scenario is different here, as an aneurism anywhere is likely fatal, you still wonder if he might have survived in an ambulance rich country.

In the end, I am left feeling quite helpless. I don't know what I can do, if anything, to assuage the pain of this situation not just for the family, but for the farm as a whole. To lose someone in such unexpected, rash circumstances affects the community in a peculiar way. Day to day activities take on a decidedly morbid cognizance and undertone, and there just isn't that lightness of life anymore. In time, of course, things revert back to normal, but until then, the wake of disaster is dark and wide indeed.