Burying the dead ordinarily should be a solemn affair, but the ever-evolving world of undertakers is fast changing that. Today, the innovations, dance and fan-fair have turned it into big money business and made it really hard to differentiate between a burial and a wedding. Dorcas Egede reports.
BURYING the dead is big deal to many people in different parts of the world. Recently, the photo of a man who buried his father with a luxury car broke on the internet. While some condemned the act, others lauded it as a befitting way to pay last respect to his departed father. Across the different cultures of the globe, people strive to bury their folks, particularly old folks properly; even aged parents, who enjoyed little or no care from their children while alive, are almost certain to get luxury burial, or at least a decent one.
Just as the craze to give a befitting burial to departed loved ones, young and old alike, has reached a height, so has the business of burying the dead experienced a boom and witnessed many innovations in recent years. An undertaker is believed by many to be someone who carries the dead. But today, like the wedding planner, the funeral undertaker is someone who plans a burial ceremony from start to finish. Francis Ajayi, Managing Director of St. Francis Funeral Home, CMS, Lagos explained that undertakers are not just carriers or the dead. “We are funeral undertakers. We take care of everything about the burial.”
Not just a carrier of the dead
Anuoluwapo Ahmed, Branch Head at Omega Funeral Home threw more light into who an undertaker really is when he said, “Let me start by telling you that the word undertaker is an old concept which was used to describe anyone who is responsible for the funeral planning/arrangements for a bereaved family. It is the word that has now evolved to become “Funeral Director”. In other words, an undertaker is a funeral director.”
Said Ajayi, “The work of a funeral director or undertaker, as many like to call it, begins the moment an individual breathes his last. The work of an undertaker begins at the point when an individual dies. The family of a deceased person contacts us when a person dies, say in the house. We will take the body to the mortuary, if they hand everything over to us. We pay the mortuary for the embalment.”
Ahmed, on the other hand, believes that the work of an undertaker actually begins before a person dies, as some undertakers also engage in pre-burial planning.“In modern days and with improvement in the funeral industry, the work of a funeral director could actually start with pre-planning a funeral. This is a situation whereby the deceased person had actually paid for his/her funeral before passing away and has liaised with the funeral director about the funeral. As soon as the person passes away, authorised family member/personnel calls the funeral home to pick up the remains to the mortuary or immediate funeral, depending on the initial arrangements. The work of the funeral director literally ends when the body is laid to rest in the grave or the ashes of the cremated body delivered to the family.”
Ever evolving vocation
Ajayi, who has been in the business for over 20 years, talked about how the business has evolved over the years. When funeral business began in Lagos, it started from Odunlami Street in the Lagos Island axis of Lagos State. There were only three people involved in the business, sources say. According to Ajayi, at the beginning, “All they did was sell caskets they built themselves or had people build for them. There were no undertakers in those days.”
Unlike before, burial ceremonies are now more colourful and not all mournful, thanks to the ingenuity funeral managers or undertakers have brought into the business over the years. “There has been tremendous improvement in the funeral industry over the past decades. Initially, people in this field were not celebrated; they were seen as people who do the dirty jobs others couldn’t. The mode and manner funerals were conducted were simple and solemn, irrespective of the deceased’s age.” Said Ahmed.
A source who will not be named, noted that in the past, the glitz and glamour we now witness at burials were not there. Instead of the brass band that now accompanies the pall bearers (people who bear the casket), what funeral managers used in the past were professional mourners, people who were hired and paid by the funeral managers to mourn at a burial ceremony. “Now, we don’t use mourners again, the brass band has replaced that,” the source said.
Speaking about the use of a brass band during burials, one Mr. Ude condemned the act of dancing while bearing the casket, arguing that a burial is supposed to be a solemn ceremony, hence the singing and dancing is pointless. But reacting to this, Ajayi is of the opinion that choosing whether to dance or not depends on the family of the deceased and the age of the deceased. “There are some families who say they are not mourning but celebrating and ask us if we can dance very well. And some other people tell you they don’t want the dance. In most cases, Catholics don’t like the dancing. Immediately they come out of the church, the Reverend Father tells you they don’t want dancing. There is nothing wrong with dancing with the corpse. Once someone has spent good time on earth and dies old, leaving many children and grandchildren, it calls for celebration.”
Part of the innovations that have been injected into the funeral business are decoration for the lying-in-state. In earlier times, the coffin would just be placed on a bare table, but now, the place to be used for lying-in-state, be it at home or in church, is often beautifully decorated. Also, a lowering device is now used to lower the casket into the ground, instead of the use of rope, which was the practice. Moreover, there has been an evolving from the use of coffin to the use of caskets. “The caskets used in the past were called coffins, mostly wooden, and usually have six sided shapes. Metal caskets were not very much in use. Today, we have varieties; from metal to wooden, crepe and handmade interior designs, colour dynamism, customised to clients’ tastes, etc. Today we have a variety of casket shapes and models, ranging from wood to metal etc, unlike what was generally regarded as coffins that looked like the Egyptian mummies.” Ahmed said .
Another way the funeral business has evolved is in some funeral homes now owning morgues and cemeteries of their own. “Some of us have their morgue, and cemetery. Homes like Omega and Ebony funeral homes have their morgues and cemeteries. This is a large business that it is only when God says you’ll be there, you’ll be there, because it requires a lot of money to acquire lands for cemetery and another space for the mortuary. We have it in plan but if there is no money, we just have to continue doing the business the way we are doing it.” Ajayi said.
Cremation as a burial option
For many folks in these parts, cremation as an option of burying the dead is an idea we only read about in literary or at best, watched in movies. But, Ahmed revealed that cremation is now being embraced by many Nigerians as a way of burying their dead. “Yes we have a crematorium (a machine used for cremation), where we carry out cremations. Most of our clients are the Asians and Indians, but Nigerians are now beginning to see cremation as an alternative for burial, just like other developed countries.”
A source, who spoke to Sunday Nation, on condition of anonymity revealed that many Nigerians now want to do cremation. “There is a church here in Lagos that doesn’t bury its dead. The members cremate. They gather in a funeral home that has a cremating machine. When the priest says, ‘…dust to dust, ashes to ashes…’ the family of the deceased now wheels the corpse into the machine. Three hours after, the remains (ashes) will be put in an urn and handed to the family.” It is unknown what the families do with the urn or ashes therein.
People actually preorder their caskets
A funeral home is not where people leisurely walk into. Most times, people only walk in there when they have a dead to bury. Ajayi revealed however that “there are some people that are focused. When they have old people, they just come to have an idea of what it costs to buy a casket, so that they won’t be under pressure when the time comes. On Sunday, someone gave me his card in the church and said, Francis, I want to see you. Have my card and call me either on Monday or Tuesday. When I called him, he said he has some old people in his family and wanted me to tell him what it will cost to arrange a burial for them. He just wanted to know, so that he would have an idea when the time comes.”
According to a source, “Every now and then, we have people walk in to make enquiries about the price of caskets. Some of these people just lost their loved ones; others come for themselves. I was told of a man who walked into one of the funeral homes to buy a coffin for himself. He made part payment and was issued a receipt. After the man died, his children brought the receipt and used it to trace the shop where their father had bought his coffin. The man at the funeral home on seeing the receipt acknowledged that it was indeed so, and gave them a coffin on payment of the balance.”
Business on the down side
Like almost every other business, over the years, the funeral industry has experienced an influx of undertakers. Asked how business is, Ajayi said, “The patronage is reducing because there are lots of people coming into the business. You know in Nigeria, anything people think is lucrative, they start rushing into it. In those days, caskets were made in Odunlami here alone, nowhere else. Casket making started here, but it’s everywhere now. Patronage has reduced because of the influx into the business. On Odunlami alone now, we have about nine funeral homes.
According to our unnamed source, “Even laptop funeral home owners are more than those of us in the office. And most times, when people are looking for services of undertakers, before they will contact those of us in the office, the laptop people would already have arrived there.”
