The Joys of the Funeral

Ghana is said to have one of the most vibrant funeral cultures in the world. So what exactly is a “funeral culture”? At each stage of life- birth, puberty, marriage, and death- Ghanaians believe it essential that the entire community comes together to celebrate the transition of the individual into that new stage. This communal show of solidarity, affection, and recognition is thought to be an essential part of what shapes a person into a fully developed human being. The more elaborate the ceremony, the more the individual is said to be loved. To ensure that a befitting ceremony will be held, it is common for the burial to take place after a period of forty days when the family of the deceased would have had time to draw upon their financial resources and contact all acquaintances of the deceased about his passing.

The funeral itself is quite festive in nature and can often take up an entire day. For this reason it is often held on the weekend. Guests often dress themselves in matching funeral cloth and there is much food and music available for merrymaking. The grief of those in attendance, especially the family, is always tangible but the tone of the event is great joy. It is not uncommon for a funeral attendee to reply, “The funeral was very nice. Losts of fun”. Again, the funeral is a reflection of the Ghanaian perception of death as another stage in life to be celebrated.

It was in the spirit of this celebratory mood that the idea of the fantasy coffin emerged. These are elaborate coffins constructed to reflect a passion or skill that best characterizes the deceased. For instance, many teachers are buried in a coffin shaped like a pen, a farmer could be buried in a chicken shaped coffin, and a pilot could be buried in a plane. The coffins originated from a carver named Kane Quaye whose first fantasy coffin was created almost forty years ago at the request of a family member.

However, the funeral culture in Ghana is not without its critics. Some individuals criticize the practice for fostering an insincere show of mourning. For instance, it is not unusual for some of those in attendance to never have met the deceased or be closely connected to the family in any way. In addition, the practice of sometimes hiring professional criers to attend the event is also seen as detracting from the genuine grief of the family.

The heaviest criticism, however, is targeted at the enormous excess, which what is perceived as an enormous waste of resources. A frequently whispered sentiment at many funerals is, “the man was very poor and would have never been able to get these people to give him this amount of money if he were living. Perhaps if he had his medical condition could have been treated”. There are a number of individuals who believe that it is wrong to focus more on the individual in their death than in their life. Many people, especially politicians struggling to strategize policies to bring Ghanaians out of poverty, are dismayed by what they perceive as this needless show of wealth that often financially cripples the surviving family members. The government has often spoken of bans on excessive spending on funerals but such regulation of private activities is quite difficult to enact. This is especially true because families are always motivated by the fear that their loved one will be perceived as a nothing in the community without such a funeral.

For more information on the funeral culture in Ghana or to see some of the elaborately made fantasy coffins please check out a short video on the subject by National Geographics. Afterwards share your thoughts on the fantasy coffins, the “funeral culture” in Ghana, and its criticisms in the comments section below.

Perspective from an Outside Insider

Sometimes the moments of greatest clarity of one’s personal identity hide in the most seemingly mundane of circumstances. I take pride in the knowledge that once I have completed my studies at Columbia I will return ‘home’ and use my quarter of a million dollar education on improving the development of the nation in some capacity. A goal that a Kenyan friend cynically retorted “is everyone’s plan”.

Last semester I found myself spending weeks piecing together the fragmented bits of information available to me on the history of medicine in West Africa. Afterwards I walked with the self-confident strut of someone who had “figured it out”. To give the spark notes version of my findings, I had discovered that the British and many other imperialists introduced allopathic medicine merely as a tool of colonialisation. By challenging our traditional ways of medicine they sought to convince us of our encompassing inferiority and convince us of our need for imperialist governance. They succeeded in creating dual, competing systems of medical care that not only represent secular versus religious interpretation of illness but for some represented a political act of cultural affirmation.

The controversies upon which our two healthcare systems were introduced to one another shed much light upon the current failures of both the traditional and allopathic medicinal fields to adequately serve the needs of the Ghanaian population. It unveiled why so many Ghanaian babies die so soon after birth. Before the sacred eight day where, like their ancestors before them, they would have tasted the nsa (spirits) and nsu (water) that would have initiated them into our community. However, it only took five minutes of being an interviewee for a friend’s senior thesis project to make me ask myself what it was that I had really discovered.

The interview was simple. Just a few routine questions on how I prevented illness and treated myself when I was sick. It was in that moment that it struck me that in my course of historicizing the problem with healthcare in Ghana I never bothered to question how I was affected by the historical legacy. How was it that I could so completely and obliviously remove myself from the issue? In my countless hours pent preening over my computer screen while injecting key words into CLIO and praying for a ‘hit’ not once did I look inward. Not once did I ask ‘Where do I fit in and how does the historical legacy of the issue influence me?’

Perhaps my friend was right to voice her cynicism at my plans of return. Perhaps there is something about living here that allows us to unconsciously ‘other’ our own people in a way we may not realize. That allows us to differentiate between ‘them’ and ‘us’ and hinders our actual understanding of our culture. At least when an ostensible outsider is looking in to make policy reforms we are conscious of the limitations on his perspective. What are the implications of our ‘intended’ return if we do unconsciously inhabit these biases? Leave your perspectives on this issue below.