A Ghanaian Funeral

Our (well live within the area we live, so claiming a part of them!) kittens, well some of them anyway, growing bigger now but still very cute!

On Saturday I went to a funeral, we were representing the company as the person who died was one of our outsourced staff.

Was a very interesting experience, the drive to the village took about 4 hours, and it was held over a length of three days, of which we were there for one part, just the service part I think, still not completely sure....

It was held in his home village, and I think run by his church, which was just an enclosed area with chairs, thankfully with shelter from the sun, and people crowding in and sitting wherever, his body was also out so people could walk past. But he died in late March, and the funeral is only just now.

The main part we were there for was a lot of singing and talking in Twi (one of the local languages), also a big round of money donating, and talking about who donated what money and how much. Then they bought the body into the coffin ans took off on procession to the grave. This is where we went elsewhere and went to a room with a lot of elder men type people where they had like a formal greeting process with us, introductions, hand shaking, offering of drinks etc, before they discussed the man's pension or similar, as we were there from work, so I think they needed to sort this out with them, I'm not actually sure still if they were from his family, or just people in the village.

The main difference in the service itself, would have to the hysterical crying of the woman, not just sadness but hysterical hysterical, and for long amounts of time, all while the talking and singing was going on.

I don't have any photos of the funeral of course, cos well not the place where I'm going to get my camera out, but on the way driving back, we stopped off at the signpost which showed us the way to apparently what is the biggest tree in West Africa.........I can't say it was a tourist hotspot.......and the tree, not so big, but nice to know they're trying I suppose!

http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090509TripToFuneralBigTree#