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From Our Own Correspondent: Mourning the dead - for money

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Mourning the dead - for money

20/04/2019 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Mourning the dead - for money

Insight, wit and stories from the DRC, Canada, Mongolia and China, with Pascale Harter.

A woman wails, cries, tears flow down her cheeks - during a job interview. It's for the role of professional mourner in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as Olivia Acland reports.

A woman wails, cries, tears flowing down her cheeks - during a job interview. It is for the role of professional mourner, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These are a status symbol at funerals in the capital Kinshasa, but, as Olivia Acland reports, a businessman now wants to introduce them in the east of the country, too.   

In Vancouver, Joe Shute meets the indigenous Haida hereditary chief and master carver Jim Hart who is putting the finishing touches on a 20-metre high totem pole. The government commissioned it as part of a reconciliation effort with the First Nations, as Canada's indigenous people are called, after it admitted "cultural genocide" against them.

In Mongolia Stephanie Hegarty meets a family of herders on the steppes, where they lost all their horses to a particularly harsh winter last year. This year, the winter is unusually dry. Mongolia's already harsh climate is warming up but also becoming even more extreme- so when the family's five-year-old finishes his first term at school, they may decide they cannot return to the nomad life. 

And in China's capital Beijing, Stephen McDonell takes us on a tour of a little-known side to the city - its thriving independent music scene. He has been going to gigs there for 15 years, and loves the distinctive sound and the bands' enthusiasm. But with tougher rules and higher rents, will they be able to survive much longer?

Photo: A woman weeps during an audition for a job as a paid mourner - eastern DRC, 2019. Credit: Olivia Acland)

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