By Kofi
Akosah-Sarpong
The Ghanaian enlightenment campaign is evolving.
Ghanaian elites, for some time asleep, are fast
getting involved in the enlightenment movement from
their diverse stations in life. As the movement
gathers steam, backed by the Ghanaian mass media,
one area of the Ghanaian traditional life that has
come under the enlightenment flashlight is the
implications of the dead and funeral on the living.
It is a tough area that borders on the complicated
traditional cosmology. The attempts aren’t to tinker
with traditional cosmology. It isn’t because it is a
frightening area; it is because the aim of the
enlightenment thinkers is to debunk the
misinterpretation of traditional cosmology,
especially in the southern parts of Ghana, where
millions of dollars are profligately spent on the
dead and funerals while majority languish in
wrenching poverty and stuck in backward social
infrastructure.
While traditional funeral is a ceremony for
celebrating, consecrating, or remembering the life
of a deceased person, in today’s Ghana the
simplicity of the celebration has been turned upside
down, it has become a big showbiz. The key sobering
essence of traditional Ghanaian funerary as customs
comprising the complex of beliefs and practices, as
Ghanaian cosmology dictates, to remember the dead,
from entombment itself to various monuments,
prayers, and rituals undertaken in the dead’s honor,
is giving way to bling, bling.
One of the criticisms against the excessive funerary
bling, bling is that it leaves some deceased
families debt-ridden and poorer, as they try to out-bling,
bling another deceased family (ies) in their
locality. Another is that all these disproportionate
funerary bling, bling are done within an atmosphere
of twisting poverty that calls for proper eating,
good sanitation, suitable schools, water
inadequacies, toilet shortages, rigorous healthcare
systems, and generally more durable socio-economic
infrastructure.
For instance, proper modern toilet facility anywhere
in Ghana could be built with GH¢ 7,500 (around
US$6,919) with some change for funeral ceremonies.
The amount is the minimum cost of funeral for an
ordinary Ghanaian (Yes, I know this amount is too
much to build a toilet but let’s put it that way as
per helping the living to live better and still have
simple funeral ceremony at the same time).
Charles Palmer-Buckle, the Archbishop of Accra
Catholic Diocese, took a long view of the Ghanaian
funeral scenery, against the backdrop of living
despair, and thundered that too much money is
lavishly spent on the dead and funerals that
“deprive descendants of the deceased the badly
needed resources they need … a funeral for an
ordinary Ghanaian now cost a minimum of GH¢ 7,500
(around US$6,919) … it is ridiculous to spend such
an amount to "celebrate" a deceased person, who left
behind a number of children who are yet to find
their feet in life.”
Parallels can be drawn between Palmer-Buckle’s deep
deliberations about Ghanaians’ excessively wasteful
expenditure on the dead and Pericles’ “Funeral
Oration.” As Thucydides, the Greek thinker, recorded
in book two of his History of the Peloponnesian War,
it was established Athenian practice in the late 5th
century to hold a public funeral in honour of the
dead in war. With the remains of the dead left out
for three days in a tent and offerings made for the
dead, a funeral procession was held and burial
undertaken. The last part of the funeral ceremony
was a speech delivered by a prominent Athenian
citizen. Pericles was picked to give the oration. In
the “Funeral Oration,” as inscribed by Thucydides,
Pericles did praise the dead but intentionally gave
much more praise to Athens’ achievements which are
“designed to stir the spirits of a state still at
war.”
Alright, there is no war in Ghana, but there is war
to be fought on the socio-economic front against
poverty and certain erroneous cultural believes that
inhibit progress. And that needs rousing Ghanaians
to refine the cultural inhibitions that hinder their
progress so as to free them to live a better life.
The import of Pericles’ oration as it relates to
Palmer-Buckle is that, yes the dead should be
praised, as African tradition dictates, but
Palmer-Buckle purposefully moves beyond that, and
proclaim that though the dead should be honoured,
the living, too, should be fully taken care of
before they die.
Palmer-Buckle takes a concerned giant look at the
abysmal poverty of most Ghanaians and pronounces
that the original traditions of funeral ceremonies
have been digressed and have now become a competing
theatre of ostentation to the detriment of the
living, that is constantly gapping for
bread-and-butter and other socio-economic
conveniences such as toilets and water.
Palmer-Buckle, therefore, punches the “lavish
spending on funerals” as “an invention of the
present generation and never a part of the cherished
Ghanaian traditions.”
At issue isn’t the dead itself, or any trouble with
Ghanaians’ traditional cosmology, but how the
escalating expenditure on the dead today, against
say 100 years ago, negatively impacts on the growing
population. Most Ghanaians live below the poverty
line (most live around US$1.00 a day, according to
the United Nations). There is no dilemma between the
physical and the metaphysical – no mess up in any
way whatsoever. The battle of the enlightenment
thinkers, as Palmer-Buckle echoes, is to re-wire
Ghanaians to go back to their traditional roots
where funeral ceremonies were simple,
non-ostentatious, and very traditional.
Ghanaians appear entrapped in the brazenness of
funerals, making the funeral business glitzy. One of
the leading funeral services proprietors in Ghana,
if not the number one, is my junior brother. He is
called Kweku Akosah and his funeral business is
called Owners Funeral Services. Though based in
Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, over the years
Owners Funeral Services, driven by Ghanaians sheer
obsession with the dead and funerals, has grown so
much that it has branches in most parts of Ghana.
Akosah employs over 100 people with varied
professionals – wailers and criers, dancers,
praise-singers, decorators of the dead, coffin
makers, musicians, tailors and seamstresses,
promoters, food makers, servers, etc. As Akosah’s
funeral business becomes increasingly sophisticated,
he finances certain funerals against the backdrops
of agreements of sharing profits with the deceased
families. Akosah is on the verge of building a
state-of-the-art mortuary in Kumasi.
Such highlights are cast against the unrelenting
poverty of Ghanaians by Palmer-Buckle, who recounts
the daily struggles of living Ghanaians against the
extravagance over dead Ghanaians. Palmer-Buckle’s
funeral oration is “designed to stir the spirits” of
the living Ghanaian by making the case that part of
the huge sums of money spent on the dead could be
appropriated for the living so as to make life
comfortable.
Palmer-Buckle’s discourse is deliberately elaborate
as a way of taking on the funeral-mad
traditionalists who are driven more by doctored
traditions and flashiness than better living for the
average Ghanaian. Still, Palmer-Buckle and his
associated enlightenment folks’ stance is a
difficult position because it is misunderstood by
many a Ghanaian traditionalists as impinging on the
sacred area of Ghanaians’ cosmology, no matter how
this impinge adversely on the life of the living
Ghanaian. But at issue isn’t the cosmology but the
living, that’s how better is the living in terms of
food, shelter, education, water, sanitation and
health, roads, and other comforts of life.
By the sense of Thucydides’ Pericles’ “Funeral
Oration,” Palmer-Buckle bravely looks more at the
living than the dead, and how the living should live
better before he/she dies. Hear him: “Instead of
spending hugely on the dead, Ghanaians must rather
establish an endowment fund in memory of the
deceased, which would be used to sponsor education
of their relatives to realize their full potential …
children would largely remember their great
grandfather in whose memory a fund was established
to sponsor their education as against their
relatives who much money was spent to bury them and
left behind debts.”
In Archbishop Palmer-Buckle’s “Funeral Oration”
Ghanaians are thinking about how they will live a
better live before they die, part of which
discomfort emanates from certain erroneous tenets
within their culture. In Archbishop Palmer-Buckle’s
“Funeral Oration” Ghanaian enlightenment thinkers
are wrestling with certain inhibitions within the
Ghanaian/African culture that is hampering their
progress. And that will need more fearless thinking
than they have thought of. And that may need some
remarkable tinkering with certain aspects of
Ghanaians’ traditional cosmology.
