Dying for Halloween and other hijacked beliefs

The week ushering us into November 2022 has been one of horrifying mass deaths.

Apart from the seemingly endless Mediterranean “migrant” drownings and the ever-suppurating al Shabaab terror, this time striking at the Education Ministry in Mogadishu, two other mass death incidents particularly caught my attention.

One was the Halloween stampede in South Korea, in which over 150 mostly young people perished, and the other was the suspension bridge collapse in India that claimed some 135 lives.

I need not narrate the details of the two tragedies, since they have dominated the international news headlines for the better part of the week. I will instead centre our conversation on what I think are the bizarre and pathetic factors that sent these people to their deaths, and the lessons we might learn from the tragedies.

We may start by noting that, although the incidents happened in two different countries thousands of miles apart, they share a few significant characteristics that make them relevant to all humanity in our times.

The first characteristic is the sheer size of the tragedies in both countries, 135 deaths in India’s bridge collapse and 156 in Korea’s alleyway stampede. Each has been labelled as one of the worst in recent memory.

The age profile in the Gujarat Indian case is more varied, though it manifests many young people and children. But the Korean death list is dominated by young adults and teenagers. 

The second characteristic of the tragedies is the apparent failure or breach of trust by those who should have been responsible for the safety of the people involved in the events. In Korea’s capital, Seoul, the deadly stampede, or rather “crush”, happened in the Itaewon neighbourhood, well-known for its bars and restaurants, and its narrow and sharply sloping alleyways.

Reports indicate that the deaths occurred when people at the top of one such alley fell back, down onto those below.

Several groups of people, including events promoters and police and other public officials, have admitted some responsibility for what happened in Seoul.

Parental guidance

What touched me most was the confession by some of the parents of the victims that maybe they had failed to provide parental guidance to their youthful charges as they headed out to the fatal party.

Any parent, guardian or teacher who has had to deal with our young people will know what a tall order that is.

In India, the killer suspension bridge over the River Machu is at a place called Morbi, just one letter (and sound), “d”, short of “morbid”. Here the finger of blame points unwaveringly to at least two groups of people.

One is the tourist promotion group that kept selling tickets to the bridge even when it was obvious, according to survivors, that it was seriously overcrowded.

The other group is the gang of so-called “engineers and contractors” who claimed, ten days earlier, that they had repaired and fully rehabilitated the century-old bridge and that it was safe and fit for human use.

It reminded me of my friend David Mulwa’s play Daraja (the bridge), in which, in the original screen production, I played the role of Masharti, a rapacious, ruthless and corrupt road construction tycoon.

After “completing” a major bridge project, cutting all sorts of imaginable corners, and despite warnings that his bridge work is shoddy and dangerous, Masharti bribes all the corruptible officials around to certify and approve it for public use. The bridge collapses on the day it is commissioned, killing the boyfriend of Masharti’s daughter.

Back to the common characteristics of our two tragedies, I noted that they both occur during celebrations of “religious” festivals. The Morbi Bridge involved holiday makers marking Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, while the Seoul one affected revellers celebrating Halloween. I will not say much, since I do not much, about Diwali.

True meaning

I am, however, fairly familiar with Halloween, which some of you might have marked in your different ways. My questions here are, what exactly is Halloween, and what does it mean to you and to those who celebrate it?

My general knowledge is that Halloween is supposed to usher in the two solemn memorials marked by traditional Christianity on the first two days of November, All Saints on November 1st and All Souls on November 2nd.

“Hallows” is an old English word for holy ones, or saints, as in “hallowed be thy name”. The “-een” part of “Halloween” means “evening” or “eve”, as in Christmas Eve. So, Halloween literally means the evening before the memorial of the saints, the believers who are known to have lived decent lives, died in firm faith and gained heavenly citizenship.

The day before their honourable memorial is supposed to be a day of serious reflection, and even marked with fasting, according to ancient tradition.

The popular and pagan mind, however, especially in the European mediaeval times, corrupted these practices, bundling them with thoughts of all the dead, whom the primitive revisionists believed to come out of their graves and take a night walk around the towns and villages.

Human psychology suggests that there is a streak in all of us that is attracted to the macabre and the scary, as in horror movies! Hence, we have Halloween hijacked into a celebration, complete with night parties, grotesque masks and skeletal costumes, of our fascination with the horrors of death and its aftermath.

That diversion, or perversion, of a spiritual concept, would be bad enough as it is. But to make matters worse, our hedonistic (endlessly pleasure hunting) and profit-seeking generation has further turned Halloween, and other spiritual occasions, like Christmas, into commercial and money-making opportunities.

I wonder how many of those young people in the Seoul tragedy had any idea that their revelry had anything to do with spirituality or reflection upon the meaning of life.

The bitter irony is when the macabre and horrific phantasmagoria we are playing at turns into a horrendous and tragic reality, as it did in Seoul.

Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]