When Catherine Njenga, a teacher by training lost her father in 2018, she did not know that her life would take a completely different turn.
“The facility where my dad’s body was preserved when he passed on did not do a good job. However, when we transferred his body to Kenyatta University Funeral Home I liked the reception and how the morticians handled his body,” Catherine, an attendant at Nairobi Women Hospital told a local TV station.
The mother of two revealed that the reception at the Kenyatta University (KU) Funeral Home gave her the inspiration to change her profession.
“The reception at KU was awesome and it made me wonder whether a woman can also do the job of a mortuary attendant,” Catherine said in the interview whose copy was later uploaded on YouTube.
Instead of abandoning the thought of working as a mortician, Catherine said she asked one of the women who was a morgue attendant at KU funeral home if there is any training or course for morticians.
“One of the ladies told me I could go for training so I checked up online and from my search, I found out that Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital was listed as a training facility,” she said.
Catherine later visited the hospital and upon further enquiry, she was referred to Nairobi University where she enrolled for a three-month training session.
“I really wanted to change the perception that this (being a mortician) is a man’s job because, at the moment, there are around 50 women in this profession,” Catherine said.
A teacher by profession and a mortician by passion, Catherine revealed that her family members thought she had gone bonkers when she told them of her plan to leave her 15-year teaching profession to love and care for the dead.
“At first they thought I was crazy. My mom didn’t want to hear anything regarding the whole matter but I reminded her of the reception we got at KU and told her that I want to be of help to families who’ve lost their loved ones,” she said.
However, it wasn’t easy convincing her mother who later agreed with her decision on condition that Catherine’s newfound profession be treated as a confidential matter.
“My mom told me to continue being a teacher, but right now I can’t go back to the classroom. Teaching is no longer for me,” Catherine said adding that had she known there was such a course before, she wouldn’t have trained as a teacher.
At first, it wasn’t easy because death does not come easily to me, but after giving it some thought and talking to her, we had no choice other than accepting her interest in the career,” Ida Njenga, Catherine’s sister said.
While showing total love and passion for her job as a mortician Catherine further explained how she ensures a body is properly reconstructed in readiness for burial.
“We normally put them (organs) in a polythene bag and we soak them with formalin then we return them back to the stomach including the brains. After that, we fix the head because you cannot return the brains to the head,” she explained.
She went ahead to explain that some families often request to have their loved ones groomed with makeups.
“There’s a family that can say we want makeups to be applied on our loved ones. We also do that. And we have a variety of makeups here,” she said while showing the variety of makeups present at the morgue.
