The Ghanaian Funeral Starterpack

Ghanaian Funeral Starterpack

Some months ago I attended a funeral of a guy I don’t know from a bar of soap! Anyone who knows me knows I absolutely do not like attending funerals. Funerals in Ghana can be incredibly exhausting even if you’re just a guest. People do the most, coupled with the black we have to wear in the heat, I burn out quickly and so I avoid them unless they’re absolutely necessary for me to attend. My aunt whom I took to the funeral was visiting from Germany and didn’t know Dansoman, the suburb the funeral was being held and needed someone to take her and I was her victim.

Ghanaian funerals are spectacular to say the least. There are three deaths in my life so far that hit close to home. The first was that of my friend Angela whom I attended Secondary School with. She suffered from Sickle Cell Anaemia and struggled with it until she lost the fight with the disease. I had only seen Angela a few days before and so I was deeply shocked when I heard she had passed on. The second was my grandmother, I was very close to her and she just died of old age. She was 96. The third was Whiskey, my dog, whose death I may write about at another time.

Nobody understands death but what I have come to understand and accept is that it is a natural process of life and once your time is up, you must go.

Attending this funeral gave me a lot of perspective…which is that Ghanaians absolutely LOVE funerals. In my language we call it “Eku tohtoh” literally meaning ‘thick funeral’. The deceased was a 35 year old man who worked at MTN. It turns out he belonged to more associations and groups than I could count and so each association had to come and pay a last respect by staging some kind of performance. What was supposed to be a sombre event for a young man who died at such a young age was more than a broadway show.

And so while at this funeral, I realized there was a formula to these things. So below is my starter pack to pulling off the perfect Ghanaian funeral.

• Funeral Posters: Ghanaian funeral posters are written with three main headlines; Obituary/Home call/Transition/Celebration of life/Homecall is written for those who died a ‘natural death’ or were 60 years and above. Gone too soon is for those who were middle aged, were probably unwell for a while, however there was hope for their recovery but they died. And then there’s my favorite; What a shock! which is written for those who were so young, possibly in their teen years or early to late 20s. The posters must have a list of names, such as the Chief Mourners, the relatives of the deceased and where they live. It will be wonderful if the deceased had relatives living abroad because this adds some prestige to the dead person. On the topic of posters, the deceased must also have a billboard possibly scattered in his neighborhood or town. This adds to the much needed publicity for the deceased.
• Funeral Brochure: The brochure tells you all you need to know about the deceased; their life in general, when they were born, where they were born, where they schooled, where they lived accompanied with photographs. The photographs must also include the deceased’s children, widow/widower, in-laws, etc. In the brochure, you’ll find tributes written by the spouse, children, friends, association members, etc. it goes without saying that these tributes are so glowing that you’d think the deceased was more pious than a Saint.
• The arrival of the body from the mortuary must be an elaborate display. A bunch of motorbike riders must ride in front of the hearse or ambulance. It must be followed with a minimum of 5 cars and a brass band playing a number of popular songs. Woe betide you during a funeral procession and you don’t give way on the road. How dare you? Put some respect on the dead!
• Clothing: There must be a funeral cloth, especially when the deceased in question died of old age. That will be the official uniform or dress code for all those who will attend the funeral. This is very important. If you can afford it, add some souvenirs like a handkerchief with the deceased’s name and photograph branded on it, key holders, mugs, pens, bottled water…any kind of souvenir you can think of, because we want to drink our coffees and teas from a mug with a picture of a dead person and remember them every morning during breakfast, or perhaps we want to open our beer bottles with an opener that has their picture on it and remember them while on a bender.
• One week funeral Celebration-Think of this like a wedding rehearsal dinner. This is originally an event done by the Asantes, but in the last few years it has seeped into other ethnic groups and has become a part and parcel of most ethnic groups. Originally, the one week celebration is intended to bring the family together to make a plan on how to move further with the funeral but it has now become a full fledged funeral without the deceased. I call it the Preliminary Funeral. Food must be served, there must be drinks and then a DJ must be around to play music. The size of the one week celebration will determine how the funeral itself will be.

• Tributes: I’m inclined to believe there’s a format for tributes now. The tributes must be glowing and paint the deceased in a saintly light because of course, you do not speak evil of the dead. Even if the deceased was an epic douchebag or asshole his entire life, his widow must speak about how he was a faithful husband and could never go wrong. The widower must speak about how she was a staunch Christian and was part of every church activity and never missed a day in church.

• Service: The funeral service shouldn’t be anything less than 3 hours. But this also depends on the deceased. If he belonged to 1001 associations, each group must read a tribute, do some sort of display, represent…essentially.
• Donations- There must be a table set aside for funeral donations. Among the Asantes you’re given a receipt for your donation and your donation will be read aloud to all.
• Mourning- Now this one boggles me to no end. In fact the more I think about it, the more it affects the consistency of my bowel movements. I was watching a BBC documentary sometime ago where I found out that some people hire women to cry for them. The assumption is that when you do not cry at the funeral of a relative or friend then you probably have something to do with their death and so you must cry. And since you’re unable to cry, you must then hire people to come and cry at the funeral. The cryers are usually women or should I say excellent Method actors who will cry on cue. Daniel Day Lewis and Christian Bale can never compete with these women. How do you qualify grief? I never cried at Angela’s funeral, not because I didn’t feel any pain, I didn’t cry because I was still in disbelief. I was still processing it, coupled with the fact that I had only seen her not long ago. Does that mean I didn’t care? You be the judge of that. But please, if you’re going to pull off a perfect Ghanaian funeral, hire someone to come cry for you. Now that I think about it I should set up an agency to outsource cryers for funerals.
• Food: Hey!! Don’t joke with this part! People don’t come to funerals to necessarily mourn. They need to be fed. There must be a buffet with an assortment of foods and the drinks must flow. If you can afford it, kill a minimum of 2 or 3 cows. It reminds me of a funeral that happened in my hometown sometime ago. It was the talk of the town. Energy Minister John Peter Amewu lost his sister. The funeral was massive, the President of Ghana was representing with his 3-foot self, the Speaker of Parliament with his bald head looking like a toad, former president Rawlings was there too looking like a burnt steak and all the people you can think of who were in government were there. Heck the sister even had a tomb built in her ‘honor’. She rests in an air-conditioned tomb. This begs the question, why would Hohoe suddenly achieve overnight fame? Because of a funeral!
• Music- Need I say more? After the food and drinks, people must dance and shake off the booze.
• Pall bearers- I saw a video on What’s app sometime ago when a group of pall bearers dropped the coffin during a performance. I laughed until I nearly peed on myself. Pall bearers dancing with a coffin is a really entertaining aspect of a funeral. The deceased must have his last dance before being lowered into the grave. The pall bearers carry the coffin on their shoulders and gyrate like a gigantic testicle that has grown limbs and perform for the entertainment of everyone. I remember that shit being done to one of my uncles. He was professor of Mathematics at the University of Ghana. He was so introverted and stayed away from the public eye. I just knew that would be something he would’t like. Alas, you can’t give orders when you’re dead.

Very rarely would you come across a sombre funeral in Ghana. Funerals are performances in their own right as they should because Africans enjoy levity. But they’re becoming another capitalistic venture and an over the top showy event. I have known people who couldn’t rub 10 Cedis together while they were alive. They spent the later part of their lives sick, unable to even pay for their hospital bills but the cost of their funerals could buy me a car or a first class ticket to Anguilla.