It is a chilly morning at Grootfontein.
Pastor Bertie /Howeseb has been asked to conduct another funeral ceremony. Except, this is no ordinary funeral service.
He clutches his Bible in his hands - ready to read from the scripture and recite a prayer.
On this Wednesday morning, he is sending off 133 people to the 'afterlife', their wooden coffins lying side by side.
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Their identities are unknown, and nobody grieves for them.
/Howeseb is accustomed to seeing mourners at every burial ceremony he conducts, listening to friends and relatives remembering their departed loved ones.
Not at this funeral.
/Howeseb has been here before. Years ago, he conducted his first burial of unclaimed bodies.
It involved six people who were accorded paupers' burials.
This morning, the are 133 forgotten souls. And they don't have the luxury of their own coffins.
Each coffin carries five or six bodies, because the government could not afford 133 coffins.
NINE YEARS LATE
Grootfontein State Hospital, after nine years of waiting for relatives to claim the bodies, decided it was time to give them paupers' burials.
A pastor's duty is to not only to conduct burial rituals, but to also provide emotional and spiritual support and to comfort bereaved family and friends.
As he makes his way to the mass graveside, there is no single widow, orphan, father or mother whose tears /Howeseb can wipe away or whose hand he can hold.
Although this is his second paupers' burial, the pastor says nothing spares him the grief of burying so many unknown bodies.
NO ONE TO COMFORT
"This is not my first time conducting a paupers' burial. But this one is sorrowful. There is not a single soul to comfort," he says.
Despite keyboards playing funeral arrangements and songs being sung, the pastor says he and his congregation and the advisory board members could not avoid the large, gaping hole in the ground meant for the mass burial.
The majority of the unclaimed bodies are babies who never even got to open their eyes, he says.
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This is what happens when you are forgotten, he says.
The words get stuck in his throat when he says he does not even know the names of the bodies he is burying.
"But God knows and remembers," he says.
Though there is no vetkoek or a kettle steaming with freshly brewed tea, there is a sense of patriotism in stepping up for those whose relatives never claimed them.
Former Grootfontein Regional Council councillor Stanislaus Uiseb says they feel like a weight has been lifted from the town.
"We feel relieved as a community, that a cloud has been lifted and these individuals received the burial they deserve," he says.
The hospital has put measures in place to prevent unclaimed bodies being kept in the morgue for such long periods in the future.
Uiseb says people should take care of community members without relatives.
