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In Kisumu, Kenya, funerals can look like full-scale community performances even when the people carrying them out were never part of the deceased’s everyday life. At the funeral for 64-year-old Tom Ochieng Mima, mourners hired for the occasion dressed formally, sat under white tents along a roadside, and sang and cried while a group waved leafy branches and beat them against the ground in rhythm.
The professional mourners, according to the account, do not know the family or the deceased. Their purpose is to give public grief in keeping with local Luo cultural norms, helping relatives and friends stage a ceremony that is loud, structured, and meant to be emotionally sustaining.
Francis Oyoo, who has worked as a professional mourner for the past two years, said the work is “a job anyone can do” as long as the person can “show empathy.” He said he typically receives one or two jobs each month, and that the pay is close to $80—described as modest, but enough to keep him “afloat.”
Other paid mourners described similar sources of motivation. James Ajowi, who has been in the profession for more than 20 years, connected his commitment to his family’s own experience of loss, saying his daughter died a few years earlier from a lung disease and that his grief made him more determined to help others.
Those hiring professional mourners for ceremonies said they bring more than volume to the gathering. Lawrence Ouma Angira, who was raised by Mima as his uncle, said the mourners “support us,” and that they “show us love,” adding that they help “fill the emptiness” and comfort relatives even when they do not know the deceased personally.
The tradition also has religious and cultural layers that scholars say are not always separable. Charles Owour Olunga, an anthropologist, said that among the Luo people near Lake Victoria, mourning is not only about grief but also about protection, describing death as a transition in which crying, singing, and the movement of mourners helps drive away evil spirits.
Olunga also described how additional mourners may show up in traditional funerals across Africa and Asia, usually women, though he said it is “relatively unusual for men” to take part. He said the work can include helping maintain order at large gatherings, while the professional role adds a newer and more deliberate labor market dimension.
Scholars, including Olunga, described the shift toward hired performances as relatively recent. He said professionalization is “linked to urbanization and commercialization,” and he characterized it as a move “away from the authentic,” while still “holding on to tradition,” because professional mourners “add color to an existing process.”
In western Kenya, the blend of Indigenous rites and Christianity is also shaped by the growth of African-initiated churches, which University of Nairobi research links to local pushback against strict Christianity’s prohibition of Indigenous rituals. For the mourners and the families, however, the account said the most immediate focus is the comfort that grief brings and the community that mourning can assemble.
At the same funeral, Oyoo said, “Death is painful,” while also describing the strength he gets from imagining the future when he, too, would have people gather for him.