Funeral Experience

On Thursday my boss invited me to attend a funeral in a small town about an hour away called Busunu. I wanted to experience more of the culture so I figured why not go?

The funeral we were attending was a Christian funeral. In the north, their funerals are three days; this is to represent Jesus rising on the third day. We went to the funeral on the third day and went to greet the mother of the deceased. My boss started to sing a song and started to weep as she entered the room where the mother was sitting on the ground.

Sidenote: There is something very strange about crying in Ghana (or at least the West Gonja District)- it doesn't happen. Nobody cries and if you do, nobody knows how to deal with it. Apparently at the funeral you have to cry.

Because this was my boss's first time attending the funeral she had to cry, but if she attended it on the second day too she would cry on the second day only, and not on the third day. Who can control their tears like that? Especially at a funeral. So she wept and then calmed herself down enough to talk to the mom for a bit. After this we went to the father's house. The father is dead so it was just more family sitting in a room. Once again, my boss sang the song and wept.

After this, we learnt that there was another funeral going on- a traditionalist funeral. There are a lot of traditionalists in Busunu- when I say traditionalists I mean they highly believe in witchcraft and spells. I have been told incidents of times when people were killed as a result of people saying spells and wishing bad things on others. They believe that homeless people or "mad" people on the street have been cursed by traditionalists for some particular reason. We went to the traditionalist funeral just to hear the music and drumming that they do. It was similar music to that of the Damba festival in January and was nice and upbeat!

Traditionalist Dancing!

After that we went to the ceremony of the funeral, which happened outside sitting on plastic chairs. The mother of the deceased does not attend the funeral because it will be too difficult for her. So other family members and community members attended. The priest spoke and we sang songs. Then it came time for donations/collection and individuals would say a prayer for every coin they wanted to donate. Some of them said the sweetest things. Thursday happened to be the first rainfall of the season, which was wonderful to see. One of the family member's said that God planned the rain so that the deceased didn't have to lie in the hot sound. All of the prayers were thoughtful and beautiful. We were then given food to take home- this is where it got strange.

I arrived back in Damongo and I told my friend about the food I got and he told me not to eat it. He said he would never take or eat food from Busunu because it could be cursed. They truly believe that strange things happen in Busunu and choose not to associate with the town if they don't have to. My friend was actually invited but said no because he really didn't feel comfortable going to the town due to the traditionalists. So in the end we threw the food away... It was one of the strangest things I have experienced so far!

Next week I am going to the big city of Kumasi for work. It is the end of the year for WUSC’s Uniterra Program so they are hosting a 2 day workshop to discuss the year’s achievements. I created a PowerPoint (which I will try to share with you somehow) and we will present it at the workshop! So I will definitely blog about that as we learn what other districts are doing and also learn some challenges that we are facing! Stay tuned! 

Lots of love,

Bianca