Behind the wheel of a hearse

The thought of handling dead bodies terrified Richard Dlamini so much that he could not sleep for a week. But what he thought would be his worst nightmare, has turned into a dream job for this young hearse driver.

Dlamini was working at a carwash ten years ago when the owner of Rambros Funeral Services asked him to come and work for him.

It took Dlamini almost two years to work up the courage to accept the offer from one of the biggest funeral companies in KwaDukuza.

“I started working as a cleaner and gardener at the mortuary and I used to see lots of bodies going in and out. It did not worry me that much, until the day one of the hearse drivers asked me to accompany him on a collection.”

“I went to the bathroom and I sat there for about 30 minutes hoping that he would leave without me. But he patiently waited!”

Being pushed into the deep end was the beginning of his training as a driver and he soon learnt how to help customers with the difficult and necessary details involved in burying their loved ones. “It is not an easy job because sometimes you need to help families dress their loved ones, irrespective of their gender.”

Today he is a senior employee who teaches the new recruits. Dlamini recalls an amusing incident involving another employee.

“On this guy’s first day he was asked to go and collect a body. So he said, ‘Can I get myself a cigarette before we go?’ He ran away and to this day I have never seen him again.” He said his worst day on the job was when he accidentally delivered a body to the wrong grave.

“Luckily the body had not been placed in the grave by the time we discovered our mistake but the funeral still had to be postponed and then we still had to find the correct grave.” Dlamini said he delivered six or seven bodies a week if it was busy.

“With the increasing number of funeral companies in KwaDukuza the number of deliveries has dropped. When I started I used to deliver up to 18 to 20 bodies a week.”

He said his job had taught him that life is short and you need to make the best out of it – any day could be your last.

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