A day with a grave digger at Petamburan cemetery

Grave digger Junaedi, 63, is the most senior digger at the Petamburan graveyard for Christians in Central Jakarta. He was born in Bogor, West Java, and now lives in the nearby town of Parung with his wife Sumini and one of their five children. He talked to The Jakarta Post's Ida Indawati Khouw.

JAKARTA (JP): Being a grave digger is, in fact, not my job of choice, but I have to do it as it is the only way for me to earn money.

But this doesn't mean that I don't put all that I have into the work. I do the job seven days a week and even during the Idul Fitri (Islamic post-fasting month) holidays if necessary.

I live in Parung and it is very far from Petamburan graveyard so I must wake up as early as 4 a.m. and soon head to work after saying the morning prayer although I don't officially start work until 7:30 a.m.

There are always things to do right after arriving at the graveyard. It is not every day that I have to dig graves but I can do other things like cleaning up the area with my seven colleagues.

I never work alone as it takes at least two diggers to dig a grave. After it is deep enough, one digger should dig so as to make the grave longer while another one should help dig the soil from the bottom.

Usually, a grave is 1 meter wide, 2.3 meters in length and 1.8 meters deep. But there are families who require a deeper one because later on they may want to bury another relative in the same hole.

The digging process lasts for about two hours in general but if the soil is quite hard it will take me about three hours because we must first water it.

My task is not only digging new graves but also removing corpses for various reasons such as when a family wishes to move to another city and they decide to take along the remains of their dead, or when a family decides to cremate a corpse years later.

I am now used to handling skulls or other things which are considered "scary". In the beginning, of course, I felt a little bit nervous doing things related to dead bodies.

There are a lot of graves which are neglected by their families and so the graves "disappear", which is why sometimes when we reuse the spot we find corpses inside. In that case I just bury them again nearby.

I have never had any hair-raising experiences while on the job. I just pray "Bismillah" (literally meaning in the name of God) when I start digging, hoping that I will always be safe.

Sometimes, I have to follow the bereaved family's rituals when, for instance, removing the corpses. On one occasion I was forbidden to even say a word during the activity. The family members just told me what I needed to do, like providing towels, drinks and so on. I don't know why.

On another occasion, I was forbidden to start digging a grave before the clock struck 8 a.m. They just said that it was pemali (taboo) to dig before that hour.

Officially, my working day ends at 4 p.m. but I quite often have to work overtime, especially when Batak people (from North Sumatra) are burying a loved one as they sometimes do so in the afternoon.

The worst time is when I have to work during Idul Fitri as happened to me two years ago, because, of course, we can't predict death. At the time, I just joined the holiday prayer in the morning and then got ready to work again.

It is normal for me to work through holidays. In reality, I have a seven-day working week as funerals are often held on Sundays.

Digging graves is a hard job with low pay. Even though I am the oldest digger here, my salary is just Rp 700,000.

Of course, it is a difficult for me to manage my family's financial affairs although I do receive another Rp 190,000 as a monthly transportation allowance.

That's why, like my colleagues, I earn a regular side income by agreeing with the families to maintain the graves of their loved ones. This is a great help to me in making ends meet as they pay me a regular stipend monthly or bimonthly or when they visit the graves.

At present I maintain 50 graves as my side job. The amount of the individual stipends is up to the families.

I am also very grateful when I receive a tip from the family of a deceased person when they are satisfied with the way I worked during the funeral, even if the tip is not big. Usually they give Rp 10,000 or Rp 20,000 to be distributed among all of us, myself and my seven comrades.

When I started the job 32 years ago, I received a monthly salary of only Rp 3,000. I have always experienced miracles in that everything has always run smoothly even though I have never had very much money.

Thank God that all of my five children are married and live on their own after I worked hard to send them to school. All of them are senior high school graduates.

I am very grateful that there is a cooperative in the Jakarta Burial Agency, the agency which manages graveyards in Jakarta, where I can borrow money anytime I need to finance my children' studies or when I have to marry them off.

I retire next year but I will still come here every day to do whatever there is to do as the amount of my retirement pension will be very small.

I am never disappointed with my job and I go to sleep peacefully every night at 9 p.m. without worrying about the trials and tribulations of life.