By Buziwe Nocuze
- A 40-year-old Eastern Cape man builds more than four graves a month and uses the money to feed his family.
- Each family buys him a chicken cooked with only salt after the funeral so bad luck does not follow him.
A 40-year-old man from the Eastern Cape builds graves for a living and uses the money to feed his family.
He charges R3,500 for a grave without a tombstone and R4,000 for one with a tombstone.
“There are people who ask me to do their tombstone with R1,500 saying that they didn’t think it cost more than R2,000. I don’t have the guts to say no when they ask me for that amount,” he said.
He started building graves after struggling to find work.
“People used to say a security job is not easy to get but not anymore. I struggled finding it until I got tired and started this business. Now I can feed my family with the money I make because people die almost every day and their families want beautiful graves for them,” he said.
In a month, he builds more than four graves.
After each funeral, the family of the person who died buys him a chicken as part of a cleansing ritual, so that bad luck does not follow him.
“After the funeral, the family buys a chicken, cooks it with salt only and they give all that meat to me. I then share it with people who assisted me when I was building the grave,” he said.
He also washes his equipment on the day of the funeral. At home, he uses African herbs to cleanse his body.
“Building a grave is not the same as building a house and I cannot just wash with soap. I need an African herb so that I don’t get followed by bad things,” he said.
Pictured above: A graveyard.
Image source: Pexels
