My father was diagnosed with untreatable stomach cancer and returned to our village from where he had worked. I received word that he was quickly growing weaker. I was able to hire a driver to take me the 115 km (70 miles) on a motorcycle to our village from the hospital where I worked.

I found my father still alive, and as the eldest child I discussed important matters with him during his final days. Four days after my arrival, at around 8:00 AM on 1 April 1995, he closed his eyes forever. The funeral took place on the next day, a Sunday, as the heat in the DRC requires a swift burial.

On Monday a crowd gathered in front of the family house, mainly all the relatives of my father´s wider family. They demanded that the house be emptied and everything be displayed out front to be shared among them. That was the tradition I had heard of, but now was experiencing myself.

My father´s family was determined to share everything among themselves – table, chairs, wardrobe, cooking utensils, absolutely everything – nothing toward which they had ever contributed. My father was a highway inspector and had bought all his possessions himself. He had five guns, as he loved to go hunting to bring game back home.

Shortly before his death, knowing the custom following a man's death, he chalked the names of his children on his firearms to prevent them from being grabbed by the relatives. The old custom was exacerbated by alcohol and hashish. My father had chalked one of his children´s name on the sewing machine. But an intoxicated relative rubbed the name off and took the sewing machine outside.

In the large wardrobe, my father had kept things for us children, so he chalked our names on the outside. As I worked in a city some distance from my home village, some of my things were kept in the wardrobe for safekeeping. Although my father had told people not to touch these things, one of the drunken men said that only the wardrobe itself was for the children, and that the things inside were free to be taken. Exasperated, I told them to take everything, including my plates and glassware. There was nothing I could do to stop them in their mindless greed.

Night fell, but the relatives had not been able to agree on who should get what. So they wanted to bring everything back into the house overnight. I forbade that and told them to guard everything themselves. I warned the relatives not to touch the personal belongings that I had brought with me to the village, or otherwise one of them or maybe I myself would have to be buried as well! Their yelling and demands tested my patience to the limit. They even claimed my mother and I might be hiding things that belonged to them in the clothes we were wearing.

The following day they eventually agreed on how to divide my father's possessions and took everything away, including all my father's papers and my birth certificate that I would need later in life to certify my marriage.

They left one cooking pot and one spoon for my mother, but only because I begged the family members for her survival. I had received a few days' leave from the hospital at which I worked to be with my mother. But I was so shocked by this experience that I started back by foot the following day.

A few days later, I arranged for my mother join me where I lived. Otherwise we would have had to bury her not long thereafter.

Having experienced this practice first-hand, I have ever since felt great compassion for all widows. I have since only known one family that left everything to their daughter-in-law after her husband's death, a well-known evangelist in Kinshasa who was tragically shot by men impersonating soldiers.