Dying in Ghana

                The word among the senior missionaries is that more people die in Ghana than in the U.S. and that everyone here has a close friend or relative who has died an untimely death. Whether this is apocryphal or actual I don’t know but I am not inclined to investigate personally. I do know that Ghanians go about dealing with death differently than we do. In Utah we can “preinvest” in a plot just like hundreds of others in the same cemetery and get the opportunity to do so by negotiating with someone who last month may have been selling pots and pans or suits to 18 year old missionaries. In Ghana you would be just as likely to be buried in that grove of trees next to the road between villages. 

These plots are next to the road to umbrella rock.

                In Utah the casket is likely to be part of the preinvestment. In Ghana you can get your own individualized coffin based upon you vocation or your hobby. Whatever your preference in caskets you can buy it from a small shop along the side of the road and get it delivered to your home or wherever you need it dropped off. 

These wooden sculptures are actually caskets.

It looks strange but it works.

                In Utah we all drive to the stake center and spend half an hour commenting on “how natural he looks.” Never mind that the time before that that we saw him he looked truly natural. In Ghana you can have a full blown funeral procession complete with friends, relatives, brass instruments and the ambulance with the siren blowing. 

This is a funeral cortege in the town of ADA. Notice the prevalence of red and black, the colors of mourning in Ghana.

In Utah when you die you get your photograph in the Deseret News with a very brief history of what someone else thought was important in your life along with a picture of you taken 45 years ago. In Ghana you get your obituary notices posted on the bulletin board in the church and on the fence outside with a true to life picture of what you looked like when someone thought you were starting to get ready for your funeral. You also get the hopeful statement that you have “called home” or “called to glory.”

Notice where this man was when he died. 

Obituaries like this are common.

 Occasionally you will see family members wearing funeral tee shirts with a picture of the deceased on the front and his stats on the back.

Can't you see my grand kids in Grandpa Bob shirts.

In Utah the funeral is always within a week of your passing. In Ghana the funeral may well be months later after various items of family business have been resolved. It is then followed by a rollicking wake including your family, friends, who come for the food and drink and music.