Celebrating death

Ghana is just wrapping up a months-long "National Reconciliation Commission," a rather common occurrence in war-plagued Africa. This is like an inquiry into what happened during a military coup and the interesting thing here is that Ghana's military dictator is still alive, but not in power, and still has a lot of popular support. I got into a conversation at the office with Mike, one of the senior editors, who spent 12 years at the Ghanaian Times. He was an MP in the 1970s, when the coup happened. We were talking about the National Reconciliation Commission and I made a comment about whether it was really useful and he told me he had testified and found it very worthwhile. I hadn’t realized that he was detained for 10 months after the coup, apparently because he had 1,257 cedis in his bank account and they assumed he’d taken a bribe. He testified, he said, because he wanted someone to hear his story and he wanted some compensation for his family’s suffering. Two of his children were forced out of school because they couldn’t afford their fees and another was held back because he missed so much school.

On Saturday, Kristy and I were up at the crack of dawn to head out to a funeral in Suhum, about three hours outside of Accra on the road to Kumasi, for a soldier who was executed in 1986 after being implicated in a plot to overthrow the government. The family requested that his remains be exhumed by the NRC and given proper burial. So nearly 20 years later, they had a funeral.

Ghanaians celebrate death, especially when it’s an older person who’s managed to outwit the bugs, the beasts and the other pitfalls that fill every corner of Africa. Funerals are usually held on Saturdays, often several weeks after the death, since the families need to raise some funds before they can hold such a huge party. Special fabrics in red and black, black or white and black are ordered and new dresses and shirts are made. T-shirts are printed with a copy of the obituary. The caskets are works of art. Special sound systems are ordered. Canopies are erected, balloons are blown up, bulletins are printed up including large biographies, hymns and prayers. And the food, oh my goodness the food…

We left the house at 8 a.m. and caught a tro-tro from Circle station, which cost about c7,000, the most expensive tro I’ve ridden so far. I had been told the place was only an hour from Accra, but I should have realized that in Ghanaian terms, that’s actually several hours. The lineup was huge, and the trip was largely uneventful. We drove further and further into the countryside, which is just gorgeous, full of palm trees, lush hills and massive baobab trees, which reach far up into the heavens on massive, massive trunks. There is a legend here that says the trees were planted by giants, but they planted them upside down. It’s true that their black branches look more like roots.

Along the way we saw two car accidents and a couple people holding giant rodents, which turned out to be grasscutters. They look more like weasels than rats, frankly.

We tumbled out of the tro-tro after three hours, arriving at the main junction in the town of Suhum, our backsides aching from the thin seats and bumpy roads. Then we hired a cab and asked him to take us to the cemetery. Instead, he took us to exactly the right spot. I was amazed. We pulled up to the family home and as we got out of the cab there was a tall man standing there who shouted: “Are you German? Dutch?” I said, “No, Canadian!” “You’re welcome,” he said, slapping my palm and snapping my finger in the traditional greeting. We were promptly swarmed by family members, who were delighted to see us and didn’t seem put off by the idea that we’d simply seen the obituary in the newspaper and decided to turn up. The man’s sister is a journalist at the Ghanaian Times and she was more than happy to make sure we had seats and bulletins.

In the courtyard, mourners were seated on three sides, about 100 or more in total. The men were dressed in traditional sheaths, essentially sumptuous fabrics wrapped around the body and tossed over one shoulder. The women were turned out in fantastic mourning dresses, complete with elaborately tied headscarves. There were no children, except for the children gathering by the wall, who all wanted a glimpse of the obrunis.

Although we were three hours late, the program was still only half way finished. We walked in just as the family was beginning the biography, a touching yet honest portrayal of the brother they lost under a cloud of suspicion. One woman, who I assumed was the widow, got up and started wailing, waving her handkerchief at the casket while shaking her head. (Turns out she wasn’t the widow, but I never found who she was.) The service was in Twi, along with a couple of the hymns, so there were some aspects we just didn’t understand. The pallbearers, a couple soldiers and some other younger boys, showed up at the end, after the collection had been taken. They saluted the casket, then picked it up and put it in the back of a truck, then a dozen or more of them climbed in on top of the casket, blowing whistles and clacking little castanets. The family, meanwhile, was wiping away tears and waving the casket away. None of the brothers and sisters went to the gravesite.

We, however, hitched a ride. The cemetery was a small plot of cleared land down an alley of tire tracks carved out of the tall grass. The graves have a foundation and only reach down about six feet. They’re outfitted with a heavy stone and headstone later. After a few words, a couple hymns and a shovel full of dirt, the mourners turned away and headed back to the family home for a feast.

We sat in the VIP room, as we called it, with the MP and the executive director of the NRC and some of the family of the other soldiers who were executed. The women in the family served drinks – whatever you liked, from water to Coke to wine to beer to gin – and then came around with a Styrofoam container of appetizers, including a meatball, some spicy goat meat, a piece of fried chicken, a yummy samosa and a bag of “treats,” essentially some groundnuts and some salty, fried dough made to look like French fries.

That was just the start. The family also served up some groundnut stew with fish, yam, kenke, whatever you liked, plus waakye. We had to get back, so we made our goodbyes and, because we revealed we were going to be taking a tro-tro back to the city, Tina made sure to find us a ride, then bundled us off with a goodie bag full of food. The generosity, the willingness to open up their homes and their hearts at a time of such grief was just overwhelming. I hope Tina stays in touch.

Eric, our ride home, was a family friend and lived in Accra, where he worked for a shipping company and also owned a tro-tro that traveled from Circle to Madina, a suburb of Accra. He took an alternate route home, traveling high up in to the mountains of the Eastern region. It was just spectacular. Ghana is a gorgeous, gorgeous country. Koforidua, the capital of the Eastern region, had slightly different architecture. And the towns got progressively more wealthy the closer we got to Accra. We would wind our way up, up into the mountains and Eric would point out the window when we were eyelevel with a baobab and say, that’s a valley right over there. Literally it would drop right off outside our window. It was breathtaking. We stopped off at his mother’s place – she was in Accra selling smoked grasscutter – and we stopped off at Rita Marley’s new studio before heading home.