The Body Farm

By Kaleab Tamene

(A true story)

 

The body lying in the garden has started decaying. A close up view revealed tiny worms scavenging upon the flesh. The little creatures were oozing out of every little opening they could manage to get themselves through. They were ravishing their prey mercilessly. It seems as if an endless line of soldiers were roaming through the streets of a fallen city. It was not a pleasant thing to watch at all. A woman with a pen and notebook records the rate of decomposition of this body lying down in the open air in the forest. I can see a shirt and a pair of pants on it. Everything was intact. I knew right away that this was a fresh corpse. All sorts of questions were knocking on my head- are these people out of their minds? Where is the line between ethics and science?

 

It was while I was asking all sorts of questions that the lady with a pen and pencil rose up. She was a lady in her late thirties. She seemed quite composed in her stature. She has finalized the days work and was planning to pay the corpse yet another visit the next day. I said “Wait, what is going on?”

 

The lady showed up at the grisly scene again the next day and peered at the corpse. I could see that it was deteriorating quite rapidly. The belly was getting bloated. The skin was turning grey. Without any protection from the unarguably suffocating stench, she was wholly immersed into recording the changes that she observed.  She was referring to it as 3101- a puzzling reference that doesn’t lend itself to any kind of explanation. It was a stark reminder of the fact that the human body is unimaginably disgusting without the soul-the breath of life. So I decided to watch the end of all this mess which left me mesmerized in the middle of the night.

 

The Body farm was the story of a site in the U.S. where researchers let human bodies decay and disintegrate in front of their eyes. The “Body Farm” - as they call it, is found in Tennessee. The name sarcastically fitted the purpose the place was serving. Human dignity was being subservient to the shocking encroachment of the intriguing world of science. But I didn’t expect that it would go this far. What good is science if its ultimate goals don’t honour the sanctity of the life its pursuers? What was more dismaying was the fact that it was being shown on National Geographic – the only place where I quench my insatiable thirst for documentary films. I used to enjoy my usual sleepless nights save today. I was trying hard not to be prejudiced as I had already made up my mind to learn more about the tragedy that was unfolding right in front of my TV screen.

 

The lady went on with her work for subsequent days recording the changes that the body was undergoing through as the days went by. She seems content with her findings. She tore off the clothes “3101” was wearing with a pair of scissors. She explained that she was trying to see if the clothes have hampered the process of decomposition. True as it may seem, there were barely bones the next day she returned to the site. This time there was another uninvited guest-the vulture-struggling with the stiff skin plastered on the rib bones. She chased it away and began the job of severing off the head of “3101” from its body by cutting off the adjoining veins and muscles for further analysis at her lab.

 

It was only here that she started uncovering the secrets that she has kept for so long. What has “3101” has done to deserve such a severe and inhuman treatment. All these questions were shrouded in mystery until she began talking of the subject that endured weeks of agony at the “Body farm”-the human side of the body that she labelled “3101”.

 

“3101” was a person quite devoted to the pursuit of science in his life time to the point that he had let his body , in time of death, be used for research in the field of criminal investigation eventually ending up at the “Body Farm”.

 

I turned off my TV and went to sleep right away…