The Muslim cemetery on Jinja Road in Kampala. PHOTO/ ELVIS BASUDDE KYEYUNE
Death is an inevitable reality that touches every life, yet few are ever truly prepared to confront its visceral finality. For Jane Nanyonga, now 22, the trauma of seeing her father's corpse at the tender age of 14 left wounds that time has failed to heal. Her father, Jim Kazibwe, my own brother had died suddenly, a devastating blow that shattered her world and left her adrift in a sea of unresolved grief. Years later, the horror of that moment still haunts her. "Every night, I find myself back in that graveyard," she whispers, her voice trembling with the weight of memory. "I try to run, but something holds me down. Then I see him, my father, his body half-rotted, clawing his way out of the grave. He speaks to me and says very horrifying and disturbing things. And when he is done, the other graves burst open. Skeletons, corpses; they all come for me."
To an outsider, Nanyonga’s account might sound like the plot of a horror film. But for her, it is a relentless waking nightmare, a psychological prison from which she cannot escape. As her uncle, I could not stand by and watch her suffer. I took her to Dr James Walugembe, a psychiatrist at Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital, who diagnosed her with severe anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). "Her mind is trapped in that moment of grief," Dr Walugembe explained. "The brain sometimes refuses to accept death, especially when it comes suddenly. It replays the trauma, over and over, as if trying to make sense of something incomprehensible." After months of therapy, Nanyonga has found some measure of relief. But her ordeal left me with a pressing question: If the mere sight of death can inflict such lasting damage, what becomes of those who work with the dead every single day?
As the years pass, the graves themselves begin to sink, the earth setting like a weary sigh. Photo/ Michael J Ssali
The unseen custodians of the dead
Society has always regarded those who handle the dead with a mixture of fear, suspicion and disdain. Gravediggers, mortuary attendants, and cemetery workers are often whispered about as if they were supernatural beings; accused of being cannibals, witches or worse. But who are these men and women, really? What compels them to take on such thankless, emotionally taxing work? To find answers, I embarked on a journey into the heart of Kampala’s burial grounds, visiting two cemeteries that represent starkly different facets of death management: Lusaze KCCA Cemetery in Kasubi, where claimed bodies are laid to rest with some semblance of dignity, and Bukasa KCCA Cemetery in Bweyogerere, the final repository for the unclaimed, the forgotten, and the abandoned.
Lusaze cemetery: Where the named find rest
Lusaze is a 10-acre expanse of hallowed ground, reserved for those whose families could not transport them back to ancestral burial sites. Here, the dead are buried with names, with mourners, with at least the bare minimum of ceremony. It is here that I met Robert Lutalo, 44, and James Kasule, 43, two men who have spent more than a decade tending to the departed. "At first, we were terrified," Kasule admits, his eyes briefly flickering with the memory of those early days. "The silence here is different; heavy, suffocating, as if the air itself is in mourning. At night, we would hear whispers, see shadows moving between the graves. Lutalo used to wake up screaming, convinced a ghost was hiding under his bed." But time, as it does for all who work in such professions, hardened them. "Now?" Lutalo says with a shrug that belies the gravity of his words. "We eat here, joke here and even nap on the graves. This is our office. The dead do not disturb us."
A day in the life of a cemetery man
The work of a gravedigger unfolds in a cycle both grim and sacred, where physical toil intersects with profound emotional labour. Each day begins with the same solemn duty; to prepare the earth to receive those who have departed. As the years pass, the graves themselves begin to sink, the earth settling like a weary sigh. This demands another melancholy task; the refilling of eroded graves. The workers haul wheelbarrows of fresh soil to mound over sunken plots, a futile battle against time and nature. It is work that feels symbolic; an attempt to shore up the memory of the dead even as they fade from the living world. But perhaps the most emotionally taxing duty comes in interacting with the bereaved.
Many mourners arrive hollow-eyed and trembling, their hands shaking too violently to grip a shovel. The gravediggers must then step in, not just as labourers but as silent comforters, steadying trembling hands and sometimes even joining in prayer. Their presence becomes part of the ritual, their strong arms bearing the weight that grief has made unbearable for others. Between burials, there is the maintenance of the grounds; the clearing of weeds, the planting of flowers. These small acts of caretaking feel almost hopeful, as if by tending to the land, they might soften death's sting. Yet the flowers wither, the weeds return, and the cycle begins anew. Officially, their shifts run from 8am to 5pm, but death respects no timetable. "Sometimes, a body arrives at sunset, we cannot leave it unburied," Kasule says, his voice carrying the resignation of long experience.
Indian cemetery on Jinja Road, Kampala. PHOTO/ ELVIS BASUDDE KYEYUNE
The emotional toll
Despite their hardened exteriors, they are not immune to sorrow. "When a mother wails over her child’s grave, it cuts deep," Lutalo says quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. "We do not just dig holes; we witness the rawest pain a person can feel." They earn no hardship allowance, just a modest salary that barely covers their needs. Yet, they take a quiet pride in their work. "Someone must do this," Kasule says simply. "If not us, who?" If Lusaze represents death with dignity, then Bukasa stands as its grotesque shadow - a sprawling testament to society's indifference. Here, in this vast, unmarked field on Kampala's outskirts, the city disposes of its invisible dead: the nameless victims of hit-and-run accidents, the unclaimed homeless and the destitute whose lives ended without witness or documentation.
Unlike Lusaze's neat rows of memorialised graves, Bukasa operates as a macabre assembly line of oblivion, where bodies disappear into anonymous mass pits without coffins, without markers, without even the hollow pretence of ceremony. The workers here move through their duties like men already half-dead themselves. Their eyes tell stories their lips cannot; hollow, haunted gazes that have seen too much and been seen by too few. Where Lusaze's attendants have developed professional detachment, Bukasa's caretakers show the psychological fractures of handling what no human was meant to handle day after day. One attendant, his breath thick with the smell of waragi, confesses in a voice shredded by nightmares: "He comes every night - that figure in black. Stands at the foot of my bed whispering, 'You buried me like garbage.
Now I will live with you forever.'" Another worker who identifies himself only as Sempala describes more tactile horrors. "The grabbing hands come first," he murmurs, staring at his own palms as if they might betray him. "I wake to the feeling of rotting fingers clutching my arms. When I switch on the light..." He makes a sweeping gesture at the empty room. "Nothing. But the stench stays. That cemetery smell fills the room." Most chilling is the attendant who refuses to walk the paths alone after dusk. "It is not the darkness I fear," he explains, his pupils dilating at some unseen horror. "It is the breathing. That wet, ragged breathing I always feel just behind me and I am too terrified to even turn to look."
These are not ghost stories told for entertainment; they are the psychological scars of men forced to perform society's most grotesque labour. Where other workers might develop calluses on their hands, Bukasa's attendants grow them on their souls, layer after layer of trauma packed down like the anonymous bodies they inter. The cemetery does not just bury the forgotten dead; it slowly buries the living who tend them, one piece of their humanity at a time. In this place where dignity goes to die, the real horror is not what lies beneath the earth, it is what the work does to those still walking above it. A KCCA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, offers an explanation: "At Lusaze, they bury intact bodies in coffins.
At Bukasa, they handle rotting, mutilated, sometimes dismembered corpses. The trauma accumulates. It wears them down." Dr Richard Balimwezo, a psychiatrist at Butabika, clarifies that these experiences are not madness; but PTSD. "Constant exposure to death rewires the brain," he explains. "The mind creates hallucinations to cope. These workers need therapy, not ridicule." Psychotherapy has helped some, but many suffer in silence, fearing the stigma that comes with admitting their struggles. Cemetery attendants are the invisible heroes of our cities. Without them, corpses would pile up, diseases would spread, and the dead would never find rest.
Yet, they are:
Poorly paid, with no hazard bonuses despite handling biohazards daily.
Socially ostracised, forced to hide their professions to avoid judgment.
Psychologically scarred, with little to no support for their trauma.
Indian cemetery on Jinja Road, Kampala. PHOTO/ ELVIS BASUDDE KYEYUNE
Confessions
One attendant, his breath thick with the smell of waragi, confesses in a voice shredded by nightmares: ‘‘He comes every night - that figure in black. Stands at the foot of my bed whispering, ‘You buried me like garbage. Now I will live with you forever.’’ Another worker who identifies himself only as Sempala describes more tactile horrors. ‘‘The grabbing hands come first,’’ he murmurs, staring at his own palms as if they might betray him. ‘‘I wake to the feeling of rotting fingers clutching my arms. When I switch on the light...’’ He makes a sweeping gesture at the empty room. ‘‘Nothing. But the stench stays. That cemetery smell fills the room.’’
What can be done?
As I left Bukasa, the setting sun cast long, skeletal shadows across the unmarked graves. Somewhere beneath that indifferent earth lay bodies no one had claimed, mourned only by the broken men who buried them. I realised they need help. Mental health support – Regular counselling and psychological evaluations for workers. Better pay – Hazard allowances for those handling decomposed and mutilated remains. Public awareness – Campaigns to end the stigma surrounding their vital work.
