‘Undertakers are an integralpart of the community’

Police officers, teachers, nurses, pastors and undertakers are among the service providers a progressive community cannot function without.

This was said by Myles Kharuxab the owner and founder of Vereeniging Funerals and Tombstones, a Katutura-based company that provides funeral services to the community and beyond. He believes these professionals are there to solve the challenges facing communities.

Kharuxab says his spirit of caring for others with empathy is the driving force behind his business, which he started in 2017.

“I love serving my community and my business is my way through which I can do so. I do not judge other people and I focus on what I want to do with my life,” says Kharuxab, who at age 30 believes he could be among the youngest undertakers in the country.

As a man with strong principles, Kharuxab says he is a devout Christian who interacts with many people and makes many friends but believes he must work for himself and not depend on others.

“What people say about me doesn’t affect me. Someone has to do the job anyway,” he says about the stigma some people might attach to his business.

“I love my business and I have the support of my wife, and that pushes me forward,” says the young undertaker.

He says his business, based at the Menoruvandu municipality complex at Katutura, was born out of a need to survive and support his younger siblings after their single-parent mother lost her job as a domestic worker in 2012.

Kharuxab, then a pupil at A Shipena Secondary School, searched for holiday work as a handyman at a number of funeral homes, including Avbob Katutura.

“These jobs helped me eke out a living to support my siblings and mother, and I also learnt a lot about the industry,” he says, adding that he continued going there after leaving school.

“When my uncle died and he did not get a dignified funeral, I decided to open my own parlour with the conviction that the Lord would give me power to give bereaved families hope,” he says.

With his savings, he bought some equipment and hired others, and his first funeral was for a pensioner from the Herero location at Katutura.

Kharuxab on Friday said his company, which also has a branch at Usakos in the Erongo region, provides a full funeral service, chairs, a tent for mourners and music.

“We try our best to give the bereaved comfort as they face their loss,” he said.

Kharuxab said, besides the stigma, other challenges are hiring cooling facilities, the need for modern hearses, difficulty in accessing affordable loans and competition from established funeral homes.

He said he caters mainly to the lower-income bracket, including pensioners, because they do not have fancy requirements.

With the lowest service costing about N$10 000, Kharuxab asks vulnerable families to pay half that amount, and the balance over three months. The most expensive service can cost up to N$25 000.

“The government pays N$4 500 for pensioners so we sometimes just ask the family to pay the grave fee – the lowest being N$1 700 in Windhoek – and we provide the service,” he said.

The entrepreneur advised other business people to be consistent in service provision and always use money for its intended purpose.

“When you start a business, you do not own the money. Deliver the service first and what remains becomes your profit,” he said.

Kharuxab received training at SMEs Compete in Windhoek on how to manage his company’s finances.

He advised young people to create their own opportunities and appealed to vocational training centres to send carpentry and joinery trainees for attachments, so they can learn how to make coffins and caskets and create work for themselves.

Kharuxab said in the next five years he will add a counselling department and is already attending lessons on counselling.

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