Renown Radio personality Maina Kageni has joined the list of individuals who prefer to be cremated after their death .

Cremation is a method of final disposition of a corpse through burning or other methods that reduce the body organs into small pieces that weigh about 2.4kgs. Once a body has been cremated, the remains, commonly referred to as ashes or cremains may be interred in a memorial site, retained by relatives of the deceased or scattered in various ways.

According to Maina, this wish is in his will and the process will be conducted at Kariokor.

“I will be cremated when I die. It’s in my will. The day  after I go, I will be in Kariokor. I don’t even want a requiem mass,” he told his co-host Mwalimu Kingang’i in a heated discussion during their morning show.

His decision to settle on the interment method is based on the fact that;

1. The world is running out of space

Recently, the ministry of heath recommended the closure of Lang’ata cemetery because it is overwhelmed with bodies thus posing  a health and safety hazard to the public.

While commenting on this, Maina noted that the cemetery was declared full two decades ago.

“Actually is was declared too full 20 years ago. What we’ve been doing is burying our loved ones in shallow graves on top of other graves,” he said.

He also advised people to stop burying others on their properties as that will hinder them from selling them.

“Who is gonna buy land with a grave there?” he posed and added that there is limited space.

“There will be no land left in Kenya, we will just bury everyone everywhere,” Maina said.

2. Burial is an outdated tradition

Maina said that burial is outdated and that people need to move on from the tradition. According to him, once a person is dead, they don’t even care what becomes of them.

“I have never understood this African thing of taking a body 500km away to put it in the ground. We need to embrace cremation like Muslims. Burial nowadays is not an option. We need to move our thinking away from that nonsense,” he said.

3.Cost and the Impersonal nature of funerals

Finally, Maina noted that funerals are costly, leaving the bereaved families with huge burdens. He added that those who attend them never even cared about the deceased.

“What those funerals do is impoverish families because you must feed all these mourners who are coming to do nonsense, they never cared about the person who is dead,” he said.