Mortuary assistant performs thankless job from the heart

By Multa Firdaus

JAKARTA (JP): The stench of the rotten corpse was unbearable, but Sofah calmly leaned over the body and cleaned it. The dead was not a member of her family, nor her best friend. She did not even know who the dead was but she handled the body with care.

Bathing corpses and preparing them for burial is her job. Not just the corpses of those who die of illness or old age, but the bodies of people who die an unnatural death -- whether they are slashed by a machete, hit by a car, attacked by mobs, burned in a fire or commit suicide.

Sofah, 27, works in the Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital (RSCM) morgue in Central Jakarta, where she has to breath unpleasant and unhealthy odors while facing loathsome sights.

RSCM morgue receives an average of three corpses every day. Some of them have begun to decay and emit an offensive odor by the time they arrive at the morgue.

Many corpses are unidentified and no one comes to collect them. In that case, they are buried in a mass grave at Tegal Alur graveyard in Cengkareng, West Jakarta.

Before a corpse is buried -- or taken home by the dead's relatives -- there are many things which must be done by the staff at the mortuary. They have to do a variety of tasks, ranging from preparing the coffins, shrouds, flowers, fragrant oils, bathing and wrapping the corpses, as well as saying prayers for the dead.

Sofah is one of two employees who are responsible for bathing female corpses.

Sofah, a Tsanawiyah (Islamic junior high school) graduate from Kuningan, West Java said that she accepted the job offered by her uncle who also works at the morgue because she, as the eldest of eight children, wanted to lighten her parents' financial burden.

"Of course I want better job, but I don't have any other choice," she told The Jakarta Post at the morgue.

She said that she had been jobless for three years since she gave up working at several garment factories in the capital.

An impression forever imprinted in her memory was when Sofah first started the job five years ago.

The first corpse she handled was the body of a 50-year-old woman who had died of cancer of the breast.

"There were many holes in the body which had also began to rot. As I sprayed water the body with water, the flesh around the holes disintegrated, causing gaping holes," she said.

The second corpse she bathed was even worse because it had been found five days after death. She said she could not eat for several days since she felt queasy and overshadowed by the dead women's faces.

"My first and second week at the morgue was really hard for me. I felt horrible seeing the bodies, but I could not vomit despite feeling nauseated," she said.

She began to adjust after she entered the third week at the morgue.

Sofah's working hours are from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but she has to be ready to return to the morgue if there are corpses that have to be bathed after she gets home.

Despite her hard work, her monthly salary is less than half the minimum wage stipulated by the government. In addition, she receives Rp 10,000 as a daily transportation allowance.

The minimum wage for greater Jakarta is Rp 426,250 a month.

Yet, Sofah never complains, saying that she regards the job as an act of charity.

"At least, I can help the mourning family, or the dead who have no one to arrange their funeral. I am happy enough, I treat the corpse wholeheartedly like a living human being," she said.

Sofah said what disappointed her was that most people who come to pick up the corpses were reluctant to give a hand when she bathes the corpse. However, she sometimes receives tips from family members of the dead who appreciate her job. Such tips add to her income significantly, in fact. The highest tip she ever received was Rp 100,000.

Sofah is also frequently annoyed by family members of the dead who insist that things required to treat the corpses such as flowers, perfumes, soaps, shrouds and coffins should be prepared by the morgue staff, while actually those things must be provided by the families themselves.

The thin woman said there was no fixed number of corpses that she had to bathe daily. "Once I had to bathe five corpses in a day, but on another day there was no corpse at all to bathe," she said.

Sofah, who married two years ago, said her husband had no objection to her job so far.

"I keep working in order to help augment my husband's earnings because he only runs a small warung (stall) at our home in Gunung Sahari subdistrict in Central Jakarta," she added.

She has yet to make a decision on whether she will keep working if she has a baby later. After all, she has not yet been appointed as a permanent member of staff at the hospital despite her five-year term of service at the morgue.