Daraine Luton, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Sixty-four-year-old Samuel Cunningham relaxes atop a tomb inside May Pen Cemetery, a place he has made his home for more than 20 years. - Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer

May Pen Cemetery is not the most glamorous of burial grounds. It begs for the grass to be cut and most of the graves could do with paint and repair jobs, yet it is home for Samuel Cunningham.

The senior citizen jokes that when ghosts call his name he answers, but he says he is tired of living among the dead.

Still expecting to marry and possibly have children, Mr. Cunningham has made May Pen Cemetery his home for over two decades. He sleeps in a dilapidated structure situated behind an old chapel, cooks over a fireside protected from the elements by a piece of rotting zinc, and uses a nearby tomb for a balcony.

He has dug the graves of so many Jamaican giants who have transcended this life, he hopes to get more than recognition for his work as a grave digger.

Dream

"Is a house me a beg them to give me to make me come out of May Pen. That is my dream. Me will appreciate that," Mr. Cunningham says, as he relaxes on a tomb inside the cemetery.

In his 20-odd years of grave digging, Cunningham has dug more than 100 graves, among them former prime ministers Hugh Shearer, Michael Manley and cultural icons Louise 'Miss Lou' Bennett and Bishop Malica 'Kappo' Reynolds.

Mr Cunningham left Westmore-land in the 1980s for Kingston. His aim was to find work. He tells The Sunday Gleaner that he first started doing carpentry before moving full time into grave digging. Except when he digs the graves of high officials, which is not very often, Mr. Cunningham has to hope that families of deceased persons give him a job for which he is normally paid $2,000. He says he purchases food with this money and if he were to be asked to contribute to the purchase of a house tomorrow, Mr. Cunningham says he would not be able to find the first dollar.

"If is even one (house) big like this," he says, pointing to a grave with a small building over it.

"As long as it can hold me, me all right ... and if them build it in here, me will live here".

'Is a house me a beg them to give me to make me come out of May Pen. That is my dream. Me will appreciate that.' - Cunningham