a week of funerals
despite the depressing name of this blog entry this week has been very cool. on wednesday, Nana took us to one of her distant aunts' funeral. funerals in ghana are a really really really big deal. they are usually open to the public and take place over a course of three days. i dont know exactly what theprocedure is but there seems to be a day of church service, the burial day and then a massive party with an open bar and tons of food where everybody gets just wasted. i couldve gotten the order of these days wrong or i might be leaving outa day but thats the jist of it.
so we got to the funeral a few hours late and missed the walk past the casket which nana said was the only reason she came. we followed nana into the back of the church hall which was quite large and quite full and i expected that she was going to lead us to an empty pew. instead she kept right on walking down the middle aisle right to the front of the church as the entire church was singing a hymn. everyone turned around and looked at Nana with a "what is this crazy lady with the troupe of obrunis doing walking up the middle aisle in the middle of this hymn" look on their faces. we had to walk past a few hundred people and up to the front of the church where her aunt was lying in an open casket. i havent seen an open casket for a looong time and so it was a bit disturbing especially as hundreds of people were watching me. i think i might have grimaced a little bit. just terrible.
then i guess nana didnt get her funeral fix because thursday we went to another funeral. this one however was quite different. it was a state funeral for a prominent ghanaian historian and politician. it was held on the lawn of the parliament and there were at least a few thousand people attending, including the president of Ghana. this funeral was so big that it was actually sponsored by Pepsi. crazy! it was so big that the guy had died in early may but they only had the funeral yesterday because the arrangements took three months! everyone who went got this little book on the guys life with tributes from dozens of different people. funeral organisers in Ghana must be rich.
this time we made it for the walk past the casket so we didnt have to awkwardly do it in front of the whole crowd. to make things equally awkward however there were five TV cameras trained on the faces of everyone who walked by the open casket. as we were approaching i could feel a bubble of very innapropriate laughter in my chest and was worried that i would be standing in front of the dead guy and just burst out in nervous laughter. i managed to contain my self however and filed past the casket with a poker face. it turns out we were actaully on live tv (one of nana's friends saw us) and so if i had laughed the whole country wouldve seen it. anyway, disaster avoided.
im heading out of town for a little while so i wont be posting for a week and a bit.
just over a month left in africa. crazy
so we got to the funeral a few hours late and missed the walk past the casket which nana said was the only reason she came. we followed nana into the back of the church hall which was quite large and quite full and i expected that she was going to lead us to an empty pew. instead she kept right on walking down the middle aisle right to the front of the church as the entire church was singing a hymn. everyone turned around and looked at Nana with a "what is this crazy lady with the troupe of obrunis doing walking up the middle aisle in the middle of this hymn" look on their faces. we had to walk past a few hundred people and up to the front of the church where her aunt was lying in an open casket. i havent seen an open casket for a looong time and so it was a bit disturbing especially as hundreds of people were watching me. i think i might have grimaced a little bit. just terrible.
then i guess nana didnt get her funeral fix because thursday we went to another funeral. this one however was quite different. it was a state funeral for a prominent ghanaian historian and politician. it was held on the lawn of the parliament and there were at least a few thousand people attending, including the president of Ghana. this funeral was so big that it was actually sponsored by Pepsi. crazy! it was so big that the guy had died in early may but they only had the funeral yesterday because the arrangements took three months! everyone who went got this little book on the guys life with tributes from dozens of different people. funeral organisers in Ghana must be rich.
this time we made it for the walk past the casket so we didnt have to awkwardly do it in front of the whole crowd. to make things equally awkward however there were five TV cameras trained on the faces of everyone who walked by the open casket. as we were approaching i could feel a bubble of very innapropriate laughter in my chest and was worried that i would be standing in front of the dead guy and just burst out in nervous laughter. i managed to contain my self however and filed past the casket with a poker face. it turns out we were actaully on live tv (one of nana's friends saw us) and so if i had laughed the whole country wouldve seen it. anyway, disaster avoided.
im heading out of town for a little while so i wont be posting for a week and a bit.
just over a month left in africa. crazy
posted by Z at 3:43 AM
2 Comments:
Oh Zach! I totally know how you feel. Whenever I get even a little nervous I start laughing. The first open casket I saw was disaster. It was my step sisters grandpa and I just couldnt help it. I burst out laughing, but not becuase anything was funny but becuase I was so nervous. I felt so bad. I was just a kid though so I think most people understood I was just really nervous. Still you are lucky you didnt laugh. It makes you feel super guilty.
Zach where have you been? The blog hasn't been updated in a week, so either you're really lazy, or you fell in a manhole somewhere.
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