Prince Daniel Menkiti Okosi, a funeral undertaker, has a lot of experience in the business of taking the dead from the morgue to their final resting places. The funeral undertaker, who is also the chairman of Nnewi Ambulance Owners and Drivers Union, has plied his trade for almost three decades now, having started it in 1986. Okosi in this chat with Daily Sun narrated his experience with corpses, saying that funeral undertaking could be taxing as some dead persons could be stubborn. Excerpts:
My experience as funeral undertaker
For the past 24 years I have been a funeral undertaker. I acquired my experience with Toa Group, a funeral undertaker in Onitsha. I was there for 11 years before I opened my own business in Nnewi, Anambra State at Uru junction.
Our boom period
Nnewi is a town where funeral ceremonies stop in November to commence again from January till the next November. So, all the corpses that are due for burial after November are deposited at the mortuary till after December and that leads to congestion in January when we are kept very busy and we make good business at that time.
Demand for strong drink
The corpse is a spirit. Some women that have come into the business demand for soft drinks, some of us demand for fowl.
But in my own case, like some other ones, I ask for strong drink. Some of us even collect tubers of yam.
Well, the hot drink is not used for anything secret. I simply share it with anybody around at the end of the job. Nothing secret is attached to it. It is just to glorify God for a successful business.
Being an undertaker the job is all about dealing with spirits. And for your information I don’t do anything like incantation or any other preparation whatsoever as some people may believe before I set out for business. I only commit myself to the hands of God. What I have in mind is that the person is dead whom I might not have known when he or she was alive. So, I simply go there to render my service and nothing more than that.
Experience in carrying corpses
I was once scared by a corpse. It happened here in Nnewi. That day I had worked for two families, conveyed corpses for them. So, this woman went to buy ice block and was hit by a commercial motorcycle (Okada) and she died. When the woman died there was disagreement amongst the family members over where to bury her. The woman was from Nnewi, but married to a man from a neighborhood. Some family members said she should be buried at her maiden home while others disagreed, arguing that since she was married she had to be buried at her husband’s family, although she lived at her maiden home until she died having had little problem with her husband.
So, from the mortuary I drove the corpse to Nnewi where her father performed last traditional rites to his daughter. The corpse was later put back into my ambulance and when I went into the vehicle to convey the corpse again to her husband’s home where she would be buried, the vehicle could not start. I tried all I could, but the engine refused to turn.
Then some young men from the family had to push the ambulance which eventually started steaming. But the sound of the engine changed as I drove off. It was sounding as if it was going to knock or get grounded. The vehicle could not pick up fully. It was moving slowly and when I went to a filling station to fuel the ambulance, it could not start again after buying the fuel and it was clear to me that my vehicle had no engine problem.
The men pushed it again and the engine started. That was when two women (Umuokpu) began to talk to the corpse, telling it that it was the decision of the family to bury her at her husband’s home and that it should, therefore, obey the decision. After that comment the vehicle became free and the sound, including the speed became normal.
When we arrived at the husband’s home one man from the village asked who drove the ambulance. I identified myself and he gave me N500 for my drink and said he would like to know more about me. They knew that the woman was very strong when she was alive. But like I rightly said before, I trust in God.
How to deal with troublesome corpses
Some corpses are troublesome. There are some occasions when troublesome corpses are encountered. Usually, the head of a corpse rests directly towards the driver’s seat. But when it becomes troublesome you should simply turn the legs to the direction of your seat and that makes it remains silent and the vehicle becomes free.
The reasons some corpses become troublesome are that there are people who are wicked and when they die their spirits remain wicked and violent. Some are those who patronized native doctors a lot when they were alive or occultic people. Corpses can be troublesome and it depends on the person who died.
There was a case in Osumenyi community in Nnewi south Local Government Area, sometime ago. A couple fought and in the process the woman died. Then her corpse was deposited at the mortuary.
After some few days, the man who fought with his wife also died and his corpse was also deposited at the same mortuary.
After sometimes the mortuary attendants began to complain that the corpses never allowed them to rest, that the couple continued to fight in the mortuary and asked the family to come and remove them. Some spirits do not die like that and that depends on what one did while alive. Some of them are people who died untimely maybe by accident or any other means. But as for me, I’m not afraid of any job. I not afraid of corpse because it is the business that sustains my family and I do it with experience.
Putting palm fronds on vehicle carrying a corpse
In ancient time, there was no ambulance. People used ordinary vehicles to convey corpses. And you know such vehicles are not made for the purposes of conveying bodies. So, even now people who use ordinary vehicles to convey corpses attach palm fronds (omu) which they believe can scare away evil spirits. But this is not so with ambulance because it is made for corpse conveying. There is no need for the palm fronds. If there is anything the manufacturers of ambulance vehicles fix in there in place of palm fronds, I don’t know. Secondly, people who use ordinary vehicles to convey corpse attach palm fronds to the vehicle so that anybody who sees them will know that they have a coffin in the vehicle.
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