Dar es Salaam. No words were enough to explain it. “This is not normal,” were the words repeated at least three times by the priest leading the funeral mass of Dainess Raphael Sisa. Dainess, who had just turned 28 on October 20, 2025, lost her life on October 29, 2025. Multiple witnesses say she was shot in the chest around Tabata Shule area.
Unlike most funerals, there was no body present. On November 14, 2025, about 100 people gathered at Yohana 23 Parish in Kibo, Dar es Salaam. A framed picture had to be used in place of her remains.
Before the mass started, it was evident that no one knew how to behave in such an unusual situation. At first, her picture was placed on a plastic chair covered with a piece of cloth. Then a family member added another chair on top to increase visibility. When the priest entered, he consulted the church assistants again, and the photo was placed to the front of the altar, where it remained until the end of the service.
Dainess, a skilled tailor who at the time of her death was working at a water company based in Kigamboni, lived with her friend Cecilia Pius in Tabata, Dar es Salaam. On October 29, she had told her friend that she was going to visit her sister and spend the night there.
“On the morning of October 29, when she got up, she loosened her hair, got ready, and said she was leaving for Ubungo to see her sister. She said she was going to braid her hair and would spend the night there, and that she would not return,” Cecilia Pius explained, recalling her friend’s last known moments.
She added: “She was carrying clothes that she had packed in a bag. Because she didn’t have a phone, she had previously lost it, by evening, when I called the place she was heading to, they told me she had not arrived. I told them she had left in the morning, saying she was coming there, but they insisted she had not reached.”
Searching for Dainess
Because a curfew had been announced, Cecilia and Dainess’ sister decided it was best to wait and see if they would hear from her.
“The next morning, I received a call from her boss. Since she had lost her phone, she had been using mine to communicate with her colleagues at the office. Her boss asked if I had any information about Dainess. I told him I had none. He then said they had received a call from a Good Samaritan who reported that Dainess had been shot on the day of the incident [protest] at Tabata Shule area. She had been rushed to a nearby hospital in the Tabata area,” Cecilia continued.
After the curfew ended, Dainess’ father and brothers visited several morgues and hospitals in Dar es Salaam, starting with those around Tabata. The search lasted a week without any results. They then asked celebrities who had been helping families locate missing loved ones to share her information on social media.
After the post circulated, witnesses who saw her being shot contacted the family. One of the women who carried her body also called, describing her exact appearance and the clothes she was wearing.
“Among the people who carried Dainess, one of them called in response to the missing-person notice. She explained that she remembered the girl because they were the ones who carried her, that she had been shot in the chest, and that she died on the way as they were taking her to the hospital,” Dainess’ sister, Anuarite Hussein, explained.
“She said when they arrived with Dainess, she had already passed away. They tried to hand over the body at the hospital in Tabata, but it became difficult because, by that time, police officers had already arrived at the hospital. So they left the body outside.”
New kind of grieving
Born and raised in Turiani, Morogoro, before moving to Dar es Salaam for vocational training and employment, Dainess’ family decided that the mass would be the final funeral activity for their loved one.
During the service, the priest offered a special prayer for Dainess’ picture, and a candle was lit in her memory. The family was handed the blessed photograph as a keepsake. At the time of her death, Dainess had no children and was not married.
The end of the funeral mass brought an emotional outpouring. Many women broke down in grief, some crying openly and asking where her body was. Mourners took turns taking pictures with the blessed photo, underscoring the abnormality of the moment.
Dainess’ family is among several who have had to proceed with burials without bodies following the killings that occurred during the election day protests and subsequent security clampdown.
For instance, the body of David Julius, a resident of Igoma, was identified lying dead in a circulated video, but was never recovered; his family conducted burial rites on November 19, 2025. Similarly, the family of Michael Antony Mnakai, a resident of Kigogo in Dar es Salaam, was reportedly shot in the stomach and taken to a hospital, only for his body to never be found again.
In most cases, families have had to proceed with burials based on confirmation from videos, witness accounts, or personal items, such as in the case of Allen Humphrey Isanja, a teenager from Arusha who went missing on October 30. His shoes were found at the mortuary, prompting the family to continue with burial rites, after failing to find his body.
