Interacting daily with the dead

In a society that literally fears death, looking at a dead person alone unnerves many people. Spending an hour or two next to a body is hard for most of us and it is common to spend a night inside the same room with a dead person. However, all the jitters about the dead are not part of Julius Kiprotich Kirui’s worries. He is the man who encounters dead people every working day. The badge that hangs around his neck indicates that Julius is the morgue attendant at Longisa Level 4 Hospital in Bomet County.

Julius is quick to point out the importance of his job that he considers a crucial part of the medical profession. “My work is at the terminal stage when the inevitable hand of death strikes and I come in to help them ‘sleep’ well,” Julius says while preferring to refer to death euphemistically as sleep. Julius says that while most people get worried whenever death strikes, he is among the few people who move in to take care of the dead person. He insists that there is no big physically difference between a living and a dead person except for the lack of breath in the latter.