OP - Oyunga Pala

The Most Expensive Coffin: A Lesson In Value

by OP | Jul 30, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost

A man dressed in a brilliant white shirt, charcoal grey checked trousers and blue Italian loafers, sunglasses resting on his forehead, walks into a funeral home in Kisumu. It is a storeyed, sleek and modern building that could pass for a luxury furniture shop. The funeral home offers a full bereavement service, marketed as A+, catering for the VIDPs (Very Important Dead Persons).

The director, dressed in a black suit, black tie and spectacles receives the new client. There is an air about this client. He can smell the whiff of new money. Everything about him screams rich. His chubby frame, his weighted gold watch and the Porsche Cayenne parked outside, its suited driver scrolling on his phone.

The director invites him for a tour of the premises, studying the client’s face as he talks about his needs. What does he want?

“The best, the finest. A grand funeral for my mother. The whole city must witness how a great woman is buried”.

They stop at the showroom, where the coffins range from modest pine to luxurious mahogany.

The client browses quickly, running his finger over the cool teak surface as if trying to trace dust, feeling the velvet lining and rubbing his fingers together. Unimpressed he asks,

“Is this your most expensive coffin?”

“Yes”, says the director, launching into the quality details but the man interrupts him again,

“Can you make something more expensive than this?”

The director isn’t sure what the man is asking and he tries to be specific,

“This is top of the market, African teak, Iroko, termite and fungus resistant, doesn’t decay and is certified internationally as…”

The client arrogantly interrupts him,

“ Yes or No!”

The director probes further but the client lacks patience. A man unused to waiting.

“Custom for my mother. It is a simple question. Can you?”

They shake hands, a firm urgent grip. A deal has been secured. The client turns and strides out, his driver scrambling to open the Porsche’s door. As he climbs into the Porsche, he shouts back,

“My PA will call you in four days to arrange for the collection and payment”.

The director watches him leave, marveling. No one had ever agreed to pay so much for a coffin. His mind returns to the present. Haste is required. Only one craftsman can deliver quality with such short notice.

********

The coffinmaker is surprised to see the funeral director driving into his compound and straight to the workshop. He usually just calls. This must be a VIP client. The director finds the coffin maker sanding a coffin top. The room is musky with sawdust and varnish. He has known the coffin maker as a reliable, humble and gifted craftsman. Their long partnership had generated profit for both.

The funeral director hardly bothers with greetings, ignoring an invitation for tea from the coffinmaker’s wife gardening nearby, and demanded,

“Fundi, I need you to make the most expensive coffin you have ever made. Spare no costs. Four days”.

The coffinmaker said yes before truly weighing the commitment. The funeral director, disposition changed with the assurance; he waved at the coffin maker’s wife as he apologised for his rush.

“You won’t regret it. This dollar millionaire from Amsterdam is our big break” .

The coffinmaker regretted giving in so easily to the pressure from the funeral director. The director demands always made him feel like that boy again, the one who’d never wanted to be a carpenter. That was his father’s profession and he only got into so as not disappoint him. Father always said he had a talent for working with wood but the wrong attitude. Father wanted to remain a humble carpenter, making school furniture and church pews. Then tragedy struck. A big Meru oak tree was uprooted during a storm and it fell through the roof of the house. Mother escaped unharmed but father was not so lucky. A big branch landed on his back and he was never the same after that, living with constant pain.

During Father’s recuperation, the son took over the business. But father only got worse and died, four months after this.

In a rite of honour, the son carved a coffin from that fatal Meru oak. At the funeral, the mourners admired the coffin. “What a beauty, like never seen before!” And so, the coffinmaker was born.

His father believed wood was for the living and coffin making invited misfortune. Yet after this, the coffinmaking only brought prosperity. New contracts with the funeral director funded assistants and a workshop. He became “the celebrity coffinmaker”. Ironically, trees had taught him death long before he started making coffins. He had watched trees die, split logs hollowed by decay and now he mastered balancing beauty with function.

The wife tended her vegetables. That visit troubled her. The director had only come to their home once before when the workshop was opened. She disliked how her husband became so timid in the face of his endless demands. But as her husband reminded her, he paid well and on time.

This is not the right time to voice her anger at the director’s lack of manners. How could he come to their home and not even sip some water? Does he think my husband was an ATM for his coffins? Her thoughts returned to the plants. I will cook his favourite because he doesn’t eat well when working on big orders.

Then she noticed something unusual. Saplings sprouting from where the old Meru oak tree had fallen. Perhaps this was a sign. The oak had never sprouted in all these years. She dug up the strongest carefully and then wrapped its delicate roots in black plastic. It would be a wonderful surprise for her husband. Maybe he would find a special spot to plant it.

When the coffin maker’s wife came to check on her husband in his workshop, he still looked troubled.

“What is wrong, father of my children”?

“I have an impossible request. The director wants something I cannot see in my mind”.

“Leave it to God, then…”.

She held out the sapling but he did not seem to notice. Later, maybe. She placed it by the door and asked what he desired for dinner.

As his wife left, the coffinmaker sighed. After all these years, she still called them boxes. He would spend the next few hours researching the Ghanaian fantasy coffins sent by the director on WhatsApp. There was no time for that kind of grandeur. His wife had returned to the garden patch, to water her veggies. The leaves looked lush even from a distance. His mind wandered there. That spot must be very fertile and then he remembered and stood up from the chair where he had remained seated for a long time, to search the workshop.

Indeed, he still had remnants of the Meru oak, planks of wood stored over years, dusty and untouched. He had never built another coffin using Meru oak since it was impossible to find and an endangered species. This is it. This was the wood.

So the work began. For the next three days, from early morning, late into the night, the coffinmaker and his crew worked on their order. The wood fought back, hard, dry and unyielding but his hands remembered. On the fourth morning, he was laying the finishing touches on the coffin.

It looked exquisite, understated luxury. He remembered his father’s coffin. This wood was the bearer of good fortune. The rest of the raw unfinished coffins, stood in contrast at the back of the workshop, stacked like sacks of maize in a warehouse.

The funeral director arrived sweating and wiping his brow. He circled once. Twice and then paused.

“It lacks presence” running a finger over the wood as if checking for cheap veneer. “This won’t impress a Luo man who flies his tailor in from Milan. Where’s the gold? The carvings? I sent you photos!”

He needed this coffin to scream wealth and to be his advertisement to international clients.

The director was now in a foul mood. The coffinmaker laid a hand on the wood,

“This is my most valuable wood. It is from the tree that killed my father”.

The director scoffed at the explanation, wagging a finger.

“Sentimentality is for the movies. That man is ready to pay for the spectacle, marble! – not endangered firewood”.

He flashed images of gem-encrusted Ghanaian coffins on his phone.

“This is expensive. Your tree is just a dead thing that would only impress a market carpenter”.

The coffinmaker stood helpless. The funeral director’s verbal barrage was interrupted by a phone call from the client’s PA who wanted to see pictures. The director wandered off towards his car, the voice slick with persuasion.

The coffinmaker trailed him and then stopped at the entrance. Regret washed over his face as he observed the restless funeral director pacing and talking loudly into his phone. Then his eyes fell on the sapling. This was unbelievable. The oak had sprouted. Bless my wife. A sign from above. The roots peeked through the plastic, the damp earth clinging to them.

The funeral director returned. He was not losing this deal. He had bought an extra day. They walked back to the coffin and the coffinmaker suddenly shut down the lid,

“I am not making another coffin. If the client is not satisfied, then give him this” he said with unusual firmness, holding out the Meru oak sapling.

The funeral director looked at him in disbelief. “Are you mocking me?”

“No, I am very serious, this is the most expensive coffin in this workshop. Tell your client to plant it over his mother’s grave. It roots will fuse with the coffin and live on after us”

The director barked.

“You are an idiot?”

He looked at the sapling still in the coffinmaker’s hand and then at his face and realised that he was not going to budge.

“You will regret this. Take this nonsense out of my face” and he burst out of the workshop and stormed towards his car.

The coffinmaker’s wife watched, her husband holding the sapling and the director’s hand flailing in anger. When the director stormed toward his car, she bent back to her plants, potting new saplings, her hands holding the roots delicately.

The coffinmaker did not turn to watch the director leave. Instead, he placed the sapling gently on the windowsill. He would find a good spot to grow it. For now, he had work to do.

Picking his chisel, he walked towards the neglected cheap pine coffins.

P.S. This short story on the most expensive coffin is drawn from my reflections on the ones we lost and meditations on grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of insights drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding healing amidst loss.

They just disappeared: A Lesson in Unresolved Loss

by OP | Jul 23, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost

He disappeared. Last sighted headed for Tanzania and then he vanished without a trace. He was my first cousin, just two classes behind me in primary school. The family had already lost three sons when Nick disappeared. By this time, we were accustomed to mourning premature death, but this was different.

I remember asking his siblings the first few times, “Any news?” but not pressing for details. I could not even imagine how difficult it must have been for my aunt, what it meant not to have closure. To be left in a state of ambiguous loss and suspended grief. So we stopped asking, joined the collective conspiracy of silence because it seemed like the kind thing to do under the circumstances.

(more…)

Make It Useful: A Lesson in Organ Donation

by OP | Jul 17, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost

I got a letter in my mail. Would I consider becoming an organ donor? I did not pay the letter much mind and tossed it into the pile of white envelopes filled with frequent solicitations. Where I kept the important but not urgent mail for record. Organ donations belonged there.

I should have paid attention to those letters. In the Netherlands, every adult above 18 is automatically added to the Donor Register. Those letters that I ignored were a prompt for consent. By not answering, I had already consented and said yes, to let doctors use my organs after death. That is the law. My ignorance had signed the contract.

It took just three plain white envelopes to determine my body’s fate.

Almost a year later, when I checked the donor registry online, my name sat there. No objection. I had consented without my awareness. I had the option of opting out and stating an explicit No! Leave my remains alone. The choices to be made. Say yes, and donate all organs or choose what to donate, refuse entirely or let the family decide.

My finger hovered over the boxes.

No! was my ready response. I remember why I thought of this as a natural decision when the first letters arrived. I am from a cultural and religious background where you do not make those kinds of after-death decisions. That was the role of family and the community. It was custom to bury bodies whole, to return to the maker intact and we paid keen attention to appearance, ensuring that the body of the deceased was embalmed well enough to look good in the final photographs. We wanted our dead to look like they had fallen into a deep slumber. It was taboo to disturb the dead.

I remembered a visit to a morgue in Kampala, three years ago now, to retrieve the body of a loved one. We stood on a pavilion in Mulago hospital facing the entrance, a sombre group of men standing next to a hearse waiting for the body to be released for funeral, as a group of medical students in scrubs finished a tour, looking about as nonchalant as tourists walking out the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. If you had asked me at the time, whether I would consider the prospect of my body ending up as a sample for medical students, my response would be written on my face.

Yet here I was, thinking about volunteering to have my body disassembled.

I could track back where my initial resistance came from. Coloniality is like living with a phantom limb. The limb may be gone but pain returns every time you remember. The colonial ghosts came racing, as though summoned by my thoughts. Sara Baartman’s freak show exhibitions, the Khokhoi woman who was snatched from Africa and brought to Europe to be displayed. After her death, her body was dissected and displayed in a Parisian museum.

I remember a tour guide walking us through Amsterdam, revealing the darker shades of eminent names from the Dutch Golden Age that remained etched on buildings, museums, universities and streets. Petrus Camper who measured skulls of stolen Africans and engaged in scientific racism. Camper performed public dissections in the Waag, and among his recorded subjects was a 12 year old Angolan boy in 1756. The building is located in Nieuwmarkt in the center of Amsterdam and it has a restaurant that I visited many times.

Gerardus Vrolik and the Museum named after him, whose shelves were stacked with bones of colonised subjects displayed as trophies. So many of our ancestors’ bones had suffered this fate, sitting behind glass displays in foreign capitals, permanent trophies of conquest.

The limb twitched and I grimaced. Black bodies are still viewed as commodities. What some might call an ethical donation follows the same colonial logic of extraction of African resources. This is a present reality. The global organ supply demand makes Africa an active extraction site. I recalled a DW documentary investigation in April, 2025, that uncovered a transnational criminal syndicate. The Mediheal hospital in Eldoret where brokers traded kidneys for motorbikes in Oyugis and donors signed consent forms they did not understand. Wealthy foreigners arrived as medical tourists in search of good body parts from the poor who had more pressing survival needs that one less kidney could solve.

The page was still open, the cursor blinking, my eyes darted back to No, before I returned and clicked, Yes!. There was a list of organs and tissues that I could elect to donate. I thought about the heart and kidney as valued organs, but why was I saving the rest of my body parts, so I checked the whole list. I was now an organ donor. I had committed to save a life after my passing.

It is different to think of a body as holding spare parts and that I had the choice between burying a good liver or donating, to a stranger, a new lease of life. Someone would live better because I lived.

This was a long road down from my previous impressions of donations, basically, hospital blood banks and only in response to a recurring blood drive campaign or a medical emergency of someone close. Before this, ‘organ donors’ was a sarcastic term directed at the new wave of boda boda riders who paid no attention to safety protocols and ended up filling the emergency wings of public hospitals.

I knew of a friend who was on organ waitlist for months before he got a match. He was one of the lucky ones. I have lost other friends, who were not so lucky. They stayed on the waitlist a little too long and succumbed to an opportunistic infection. The reality was no longer far and removed.

I first encountered the idea of organ donation in Colors magazine’s “Death” issue. One of the spreads about donating the cadaver to science, mapped human bodies to industries, tires, shampoo, skates, shoes. They urged us to think of an alternative disposal method for our bodies such as turning into a processed commodity. Recycle yourself. This was so Western and twenty years later, I was saying Yes.

Dutch pragmatism curved its logic into law and it is not difficult to see the moral imperative of a donation as a shared societal responsibility that can save lives. In the end, trauma can become compassion through conscious choice.

My ancestors would say,

The body is not yours to keep, it was only a loan,

So take my eyes but see my humanity.

Take my heart but let it beat compassion into your bones.

So tend this vessel, anoint it with struggle.

P.S. This reflection on organ donation is drawn from my meditations on death, grief, and healing. It forms part of a series of Reflections on the ones we lost, drawn from my upcoming book, Strength and Sorrow, where I delve deeper into these universal experiences and the pathways to finding healing amidst loss.

The Unseen Grief: A Lesson in Normalcy

by OP | Jul 10, 2025 | Articles, Reflections On The Ones We Lost

My father’s death, when I was a teenager, brought a gradual awakening to the constant presence of death around us. Before this, death was only for the old, those whose time had arrived. My grandfathers were my only reference; I had buried both when I was young, recalling their funerals merely as family gatherings. Within the Luo cultural context, my early association with funerals was a family reunion; I met several relatives for the first time at such events. As a child, I thought death happened only to others; my most significant people were still alive and thriving. My father’s death split that curtain open. I saw what it was to sit on the family row during a funeral service, staring at the coffin as the gathering stared back in pity. His death revealed how much of life’s harshness and death’s indignity we had come to accept as ‘normal’.

I could now fully grasp empathy, no longer seeing the funeral as a single moment of a family dressed in black gathered around a freshly dug grave for final rites. I was exposed to the full spectrum: receiving the news, the panic, frantic planning, the spectacle of mourning, and the silence that follows as one navigates grief’s dark corridors alone. This experience changed my attitude, prompting me to pay attention to who else was mourning around me.

My curiosity led me to attend funerals beyond my familial circle, of people I had no blood relationship with. Mostly, this was motivated by solidarity. My father, a farmer, had cultivated friendships with the men who helped him grow crops. So, when Sore told me his cousin had died across the valley, I eagerly volunteered to help.

Initially, I didn’t understand why my presence at these humble gatherings seemed unusual. The village, like the rest of the country, recognized class; I was seen as belonging to the modern group that had lost touch with custom and tradition. Despite my urban upbringing, I wanted to belong, to be seen as part of this wider community. As a student with no income, I found novel ways to participate, contribute, and share in sorrow, as I had seen so many do for us. My solution was labor. Help was always welcome, and extra hands, especially those who came with no demands, were greatly appreciated.

Thus, I became a regular grave digger, part of a reliable cast of young men entrusted with the responsibility. Usually an overnight activity, digging a six-foot deep grave in our rocky region required skill and stamina; organized teamwork made a great difference. In the hierarchy of funeral caterers, grave diggers were typically at the pyramid’s bottom, often appeased with alcohol and food to ensure the grave was ready before the ceremony. In those days, no professional grave diggers existed; only relatives, neighbours, and friends—the men—came together as a last act of honour and duty.

(more…)

Grief’s Inheritance: A Lesson in Hindsight for Gen Z

by OP | Jul 2, 2025 | Reflections On The Ones We Lost

My son, I look at you now, with that same hopeful glint in your eyes, and a part of me aches, knowing what shadows might yet fall across your path. I suspect I know your despair, for I too was once there. In 1982, I first discovered Kenya was not special. The illusion of an island of peace shattered, and the country spiraled. I remember the silence that fell over our streets, the distant burst of gunfire and the frantic whispers of my parents. It was then, seeing the raw terror in their once-assured eyes, the whisper of civil war, a phantom thought, rooted itself in my young mind. The idea that even neighbours could turn in a moment of rapture. The 1982 coup attempt burst my bubble of assumption; I saw real terror and helplessness in my parents.

After ’82, a heavy, unspoken blanket descended upon our home, and indeed, the whole country. It wasn’t just that no one spoke of it; it was the way conversations would abruptly cease when a certain date was mentioned, the way our elders’ eyes would glaze over with a pained look while watching a political rally on TV. The most potent memory: a history of hangings, the death penalty, and broken men returning as ghosts.

(more…)