DEATH rituals in Africa are deeply rooted in the cultural beliefs, traditions, and indigenous religions of the continent.
They are guided by Africans’ view of life after death and the power and role of the deceased ancestor.
According to Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, death rituals in Africa are there to ensure the deceased is properly put to rest so his or her spirit is at peace and can take its place among the protective ancestors. Rituals are as much a celebration of the dead as it is mourning their passing.
Hiring a stranger to weep at a funeral may seem strange, but it is happening in Zimbabwe as the country experiences cultural shifts.
Culturally, funerals in Zimbabwe are a dignified affair where relatives, friends, neighbours or communities gather to pay their last respects to the deceased, they may or may not know the deceased but still congregate and help in the burial.
They are not paid to shed tears or asked whether they knew the deceased. It is taboo to ask someone what they are doing at a funeral.
I attended three separate funerals of high profile people — two in an urban setup and one at a rural home — two of these people had died in the country and were buried at a local cemetery in Bulawayo while one body was repatriated from London.
These three people were not in any way related, but there was a striking resemblance in the way their funerals were held from burial throughout the mourning period.
The mourners were very familiar at all the three funerals; they wailed, and cried while men in their early 20s and 30s danced and sang mourning dirges to the amusement of other mourners, the women would dance beat drums and mimicked the departed person.
These were rented professional mourners hired to entertain mourners and wail at funerals or deliver eulogies in complete defiance of cultural norms.
I spoke to one of them who confessed it was their job to provide services like wailing and singing at funerals.
They attend funeral wakes to make people believe the deceased was really popular.
They first meet the family of the deceased and make arrangements as well as learn more about the dead person’s background, achievements and failures so as to converse with other mourners.
They then charge an hourly fee for their services.
These mourners are common in the UK and some Asian countries. Held in high esteem in some cultures, the practice is not yet common in Zimbabwe and other African countries.
At the funeral of a distant cousin, I witnessed this phenomenon first hand.
Repatriated from London, he was to be buried at his rural home in Maphisa, Matabeleland South Province.
Prior to his repatriation, his wife instructed her in-laws to look for professional mourners and indeed when the body arrived a few days later, the homestead was littered with strangers unknown to villagers who knew the deceased.
These had been hired to beef up the number of mourners so that the funeral would be a lavish affair.
And indeed it was!
Elders did not suspect any foul play, for it is tradition not to ask who had attended the funeral or whether they knew the deceased; they just assumed he was a well-known person, but my suspicions had the better of me when I noticed the common routine of wailing and the same faces I had seen at he last two funerals in Bulawayo weeks back.
In the UK, where the man had died, there is a programme called ‘rent a mourner’ in which families can hire people to increase the number of guests at a funeral.
People hired from websites are essentially actors who are given a role to play by the family of the deceased — for example a distant uncle or cousin. Mourners are expected to be able to communicate with, and interact with, guests without giving away that they have been hired by the family.
This practice spans across religions.
However, unsuspecting villagers and other relatives to the man thought he was so popular when they saw the large crowd, and the fact that he was in the UK did not give away the fact that most of the mourners gathered were paid to pay their last respects. Most of the mourners were women in their early 20s and 40s.
According to history, most of the people hired for professional mourning were women; men were deemed unfit for this because they were supposed to be strong leaders of the family, unwilling to show any sort of raw emotion like grief.
In Zimbabwean culture, women are also the lead mourners at funerals while men sometimes just sit and console each other by the fire side or they do heavy chores like fetching firewood, digging the grave or slaughtering animals to be eaten at the funeral wake.
According to Wikipedia professionalmourning is still practiced in China and other Asian countries and some cultures even think that the use of professional mourners brings a certain religious and historical application to funeral process.