“We are investing in the dead rather than the living through expensive funerals and that is bad,” said Allan Bagbin a minority leader in Ghana during a debate on the parliament floor. Another MP adds that he had bought 13 pieces of mourning clothes in one year. He even requests for one piece of cloth for all funerals.
Ghana, popularly known as the Gold Coast, is a developing country. The nation faces many economic challenges and achieving millennium development goals is still a dream to many. Having extravagant funerals is considered a misplacement of priorities by pundits to commit so much of their time and money to the dead.
I believe that a funeral rite has its place in the society and every departed loved ones need a decent funeral. A decent funeral is relative but it doesn’t need special training or skills in arithmetic to know whether a funeral is over the top or not. In this land people adore the dead and will commit so much to performing flamboyant funeral rites. While in other parts of the world people are working very hard every minute of the clock it’s on the contrary here. They spend 7 days a week performing final funeral rites and 40 days celebrating the dead. In fact the efficiency of a Member of Parliament or a politician is measured by the number of funerals they attend every weekend, this is evident as they every weekend from the president in the castle to the committee chairman in a village attend a funeral every weekend.
Kumasi is considered the funeral capital of Ghana, not only have funerals rites become occasions but ‘funeral contractors’ have sprung up. They are accompanied by big feasting and buffet dinners. What sounds funny is that even people who were neglected while they were still alive are; bought expensive caskets when dead, construction of a new family house or rehabilitating of the old one, expensive air tickets to family members abroad and it may be demanded that their bodies should stay in expensive morgues for extended periods.
If you thought the funerals are exorbitant, you haven’t heard it all yet. The caskets are either customized or imported. The shapes of the caskets represent an aspect of the someone’s life either the character of the person, profession or activity that the dead liked to do.
For instance a cigarette shaped coffin if the dead liked smoking;
A shoe shaped coffin if the dead love shoes
A fish shaped coffin if the dead was a fisherman
And to show style, elegance and pride, a Mercedes Benz shaped coffin
Why won’t anyone transfer these resources into the economy? After spending so much on expensive clothes, coffins and keeping the corpse in expensive morgues the widows and children are left with nothing and expected to fend for themselves. It appears that most people in this nation are spending countless hours each and every day at their places of work just to save so us others can celebrate their toil when they die.
