Better the house of mourning than mirth

Stanely Mushava :  Features  Correspondent

The waiting area is stuffed up with deathly baggage at Nyaradzo Funeral parlour in Willowvale. Mourners skirt around the blow that floored the deceased, a likely case of suicide, with customary euphemisms. But the negotiated peace is occasionally trouble-swept as new arrivals or insistent questions draw desperate cries from the young widow.Mourners file into the chapel for the funeral service concurrently with a grave-looking, middle-aged chaplain who introduces himself as Evangelist Elison Kamupira.

Line by line, scripture by scripture, even occasional punches of humour, the atmosphere lights up, the preacher steadying shaken foundations.

Death associated jobs often involve freezing emotion, becoming routine, scripted and mechanical but the preacher sounds awake to the human condition.

The loss is irreparable but hope makes all the difference, mourners seem to reflect as they give the face in the casket one last look and file out for the rites ahead.

Maybe something life-like can still be salvaged beyond flowers and dust; it will be a briefer look but a longer impression as the last mourner takes his turn at the casket.

The occasion is death but the preacher has inverted it to life: the future gathering at the pearly gate, the life that can be salvaged by sharing and loving among those who remain.

Evangelist Kamupira will attend to 10 more deaths today alone. Now in his 13th year as a Nyaradzo Funeral Services chaplain, he attends an average of 15 funerals in Harare every day.

“We attend to an average of 15 deaths daily here at the Willowvale parlour. The parlour along Herbert Chitepo Avenue attends to around 21 bodies, making it 36 in Harare alone,” Kamupira opens up to The Herald Review.

“In recent years, the mortality rate has been rising. Some of the people just fall dead and it is established in post-mortem that they were suffering from a non-communicable disease of some kind. Stress has lately become a major killer and most cases only come to light when someone has already died,” he said.

If the mind of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure, as Solomon taught, Kamupira may well have taken up the wisest vocation.

But he reached it in a roundabout way.

As an itinerant evangelist for the United Methodist Church (UMC) in Bulawayo and Midlands, he would occasionally be called upon to minister at Nyaradzo Funeral Services in the early 2000s.

After being transferred to Harare by UMC, Kamupira got to minister at more funerals, became a regular chaplain for Nyaradzo and, in time, the head chaplain.

“This is not a skill one masters by schooling. It is a calling. People fear working among the dead even if they show courage in other areas. It takes those separated for the vocation,” Kamupira “boasts”.

A scripture about the burial of Jesus of Nazareth impinged on Kamupira’s heart when he was a young evangelist. Nothing was quite the same thereafter.

“I look to Joseph of Arimathea as my role model. When Jesus’ followers had deserted the scene of His crucifixion out of fear, Joseph came to prepare the body of the Lord for burial,” Kamupira said.

“We do not hear of the fellow before that scene. When you read the gospel, it is about the disciples starring alongside the master. But when death comes, they are nowhere to be found.

“A previously unknown follower shows up, bathes and dresses the Lord’s body and lays it to rest in a specially prepared tomb.

“In times of loss, loved ones can draw themselves apart out of fear because people fear the dead. If the corpse is in the sitting room, they go to the bedroom because death is neither easily understood nor taken lightly.

“That is where we come in, removing the body, comforting those who remain and inspiring hope,” Kamupira said.

While humour seems to recur far too often in Kamupira’s deliveries, it is trim, mature and tasteful, quite unlike the once viral video titled “Pastor Vepanhamo”.

It is another therapy from Solomon who says a cheerful heart brings good healing, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

“Humour is part to the responsibility to relieve. I should stress that as one of the gifts God gave me when He called me,” Kamupira says.

Some have taken to recording his funeral sermons and selling them. “I have not kept track of such things because what I do is primarily the work of God and an obligation to the bereaved families,” he says.

Kamupira says compassion is at the heart of his work. For all his experience, he says, no lesson has been nearly as important.

“There are different circumstances surrounding the deaths we witness. It could be an accident, disease or even suicide. The ways family react are different. So you never get accustomed enough for the job.

“Much prayer and meditation of the scriptures keep me going. Before I speak, God ministers to me what is necessary. Sometimes family members will be in disagreement and we are called upon to bring them together.

“This has shown me that love is the principal thing in this job. You cannot promote love if you do not have it yourself. Difficult situations bring me together with different families and pastors from other denominations. It would be impossible to last in this kind of job without love,” Kamupira says.

Interaction with death has deepened Kamupira’s conviction in what he preaches as a Methodist evangelist. Nothing, he says, can jolt one’s conscience louder than the inevitability of death.

“It is a subject that fascinated me from an early age. When I was a young evangelist, before I became a chaplain, I would go to hospitals and attend funerals to understand the meaning of death,” Kamupira says.

Ultimately, preparing for death is more than being signed to a funeral cover.

“Knowing that death is not a textbook idea but something real and awaiting each of us helps us to prepare for it.”

It is the policy artist Bugle emphasises: “You can take a plane go almost anywhere you want but you can’t catch a flight to Zion. You pay for whatever you want, even your heart you can transplant, but you can’t pay your way to Zion.”

“There is no better way to prepare for the eventuality than to be born again. It is also important to be at peace and on good terms with relatives. People in your life should bask in your light and celebrate your life,” Kamupira says.

An Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) in Zimbabwe minister’s son, Kamupira strayed out of the fold when he lost his father as a teenager but seeds for his future vocation had already been sown.

He traced his way back at 25, this time not to his native AFM but to UMC, the church which schooled him at Mutambara High.

Kamupira is also active in planting churches abroad, especially among the Zimbabwean diaspora. He commends his family for being his pillar of strength and understanding the challenges that come with his job.

Thinking about death is neither inviting nor easy. A poet asks: How can one imagine a time when he ceases to imagine. But, as the preacher reminds the reporter, thinking about death helps one to value life more and live it better.

 

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