Brief
- Professional mourners are becoming more common in western Kenya for funerals.
- An expert says it's a result of urbanisation and family sizes shrinking.
In the lakeside town of Rabuor in the Kisumu region of Kenya, Victor Ouma has an unusual profession: a mourner for hire.
Ouma had been experiencing difficulties with securing a job. But he found an opportunity to work at funerals, crying for strangers who lack family but want to give their loved ones a proper farewell.
"We thought it would be a great venture that would enable us to earn an income away from crime and idleness," he said.
Crying is not the only responsibility of the job. Francis Oyoo, another professional mourner, said their service included catering and setting up tents for the family as well.
The service begins once the body leaves the mortuary. The professionals wail and sing dirges until the body is buried.
Oyoo said his business was important for those with limited family.
"At times a person has no family, but has money, and at least they need somebody or people to come and be with them, stand with them, so that they can give their loved one a better send-off," he said.
"It comes to a point where they need professional mourners and that is where we come in."
'We believe that his spirit is happy'
Georgina Achieng hired professional mourners to cry for her deceased uncle.
She's a member of the Luo community, which views a crowded funeral procession as a status symbol.
"In our culture as Luo, we believe that if somebody is dead, if you don't give him a good send-off, his spirit might hover around and maybe haunt some people, like the children or maybe even the family members," said Achieng, whose late uncle had no immediate family of his own.
"So if you give him a good send-off, we believe that his spirit is happy."
For the workers, emotions come easily even if the deceased is a stranger, according to Willis Omondi, who manages a group of professional mourners.
"We don't have to be related to the person. We only have to get the feeling that a human being is dead and then start to cry," Omondi said.
"Now we will be thinking if it were my relative. That is how it comes, that we can mourn someone who we are not related to."
Owuor Olunga, a professor of anthropology at the University of Nairobi, said there has been a rise in the use of professional mourners, which reflects broader societal changes in Kenya.
"Urbanisation has sort of replaced our traditional roles," she said, explaining that family sizes have shrunk as a result.
"So you find that when an individual passes on, the degree to which you have people related to you by blood in the urban centres may not be there," Olunga said.
"So in such cases, depending on your standing in life, standing in position, in society, you may find that there are all manners of mourners, most of the time not hired by the family, but brought in by your friends or your social network to be able to show your worth."
— Produced with reporting by the Associated Press
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