Sibanda family’s grief ‘speaks to the human in all of us’

The funeral is due to take place later of the second teenager who died after getting into difficulty in the water in Buncrana earlier this month.

Parish priest Father Francis Bradley said 18-year-old Matt Sibanda was much loved and admired, especially by his seven-year-old sister who he doted on.

He said the outpouring of grief after his death had happened because this kind of tragedy “speaks to the human in every one of us”.

“People know the pain of loss,” he said.

Matt’s family will make a poignant visit to the scene of the tragedy on Saturday before the funeral.

His grandmother travelled from Zimbabwe with his two older siblings, a brother and sister in their twenties, to be there alongside Matt’s mother and younger sister.

The 18-year-old died along with his friend Emmanuel Familola, a native of Nigeria.

They were playing football on the beach at Ned’s Point and had gone into the water to retrieve a ball when they got into difficulty.

A third boy made it back to the shore.

Later that evening, the body of Matt Sibanda was recovered from Lough Swilly.

Emmanuel Familola was rescued and taken to Letterkenny University Hospital but passed away the following morning with his mother at his bedside.

Fr Bradley says Matt Sibanda’s family are quietly trying to come to terms with the tragedy.

“Matt’s mum is a woman of few words but deep deep emotion and she talked to me so powerfully about what Matt meant to her,” he told BBC News NI.

“His little sister is so full of life, she’s a gift from above really, telling me she speaks four languages. She’s better in Irish than I am sharing her lovely phrases with me in Irish that she has learnt in school and they are all just telling me about what Matt meant to them.

“The way he would watch over his little sister teaching her to ride a bicycle. How he was so devoted to his mother. She said she could put her hand on the Bible and say that he never once disobeyed her.

“Can you imagine what it means to her then to lose somebody as special as this.”

Fr Bradley said the family members had made a special journey to the scene of the tragedy.

“It has been so important for them to see where he died.

“A little ritual took place there by the pier with his grandmother as the head of the family. It was so important that she come for a little gesture so they could, in their terms, release his soul allowing him to go to heaven.”

Fr Bradley said he was a “gifted boy in so many ways,” of whom classmates and peers speak glowingly.

“And not just in the way that people might speak of people after they die but just a real sense of his giftedness.

“Someone who looked not to their own needs but who looked to the needs of others.”

Fr Bradley said Matt was hugely important to his family as he was the one in which they placed their hopes.

The support from the Buncrana community for both families had been overwhelming, according to Fr Bradley.

“It’s not a flash in the sky coming together. It’s a real sense of loss. So many families here unfortunately, as throughout the country, have suffered losses similar to this.

“Even since Matt and Emmanuel passed away another child just down the road in Sligo died in similar circumstances. So people know the pain of loss.

“These are the sorts of tragedies that cross all cultural, political, jurisdictional boundaries because they speak to the human in every one of us.

“And it’s at that human level that there has been an outpouring of grief. It is something natural and wholesome and it something that will endure.”