Cemeteries in Ghana
A cemetery can be described as a large burial ground. The word has a Greek origin associated with "dormitory" or "put to sleep". Cemeteries come in different shapes and forms and the total environment of the local people greatly reflect the shapes and forms.
Such total environment is made up of the physical and cultural elements of the society. The physical element includes the climate, geology, topography, rainfall patterns etc and the cultural element refers to the way of life of the local people at any particular point in time.
It is true that graveyards have been found on church premises as well as in lodges, forts and castles but such graves belong to people who were deemed to have been very important in the locality or society and were seen to be deserving of the final resting place in such locations.
The architecture of the cemetery has changed over the years. For example, in Louisiana in the United States of America, due to the swampy and waterlogged nature of the land as well as the competition for land, people are buried one on top of another and so they have "multi-storey" graves. In some parts of Germany, it is very easy to identify the children's sections of cemeteries since they are very well decorated with flowers, buntings and other playful items as well as the sizes of the graves. This is in sharp contrast to cemeteries for war veterans which appear rather simple and have crosses or pillars neatly, orderly and carefully arranged. A common denominator running through cemeteries in Europe and North America is the cleanliness, orderliness and the high level of constant maintenance. In every instance, one can safely say that those buried in European and North American cemeteries have really been put to sleep. The expression "rest in peace" then becomes very appropriate.
What do we see about cemeteries in Ghana?
In many settlements in Ghana, the cemetery is divided up among various religious groups and there are "public" ones for those who do not belong to any religious denomination. Members of the various denominations periodically weeded and maintained the cemeteries in the past but lately, for various reasons, the various churches hire people to maintain and clean their cemeteries in certain parts of the country. Over the years, all has not been well with cemeteries in Ghana. The Tafo Cemetery in Kumasi is the largest in Kumasi. A visit to the cemetery in more recent times shows neglected environment with plastic bags and other refuse littered all over the place. Some foreign students and researchers who visited the Tafo cemetery with me recently were disappointed and wondered whether Ghanaians did not respect the final resting place of their forefathers. Reports of looted graves and unkempt environments in cemeteries in Osu and Awudome in Accra have been in the news for some time.
Despite all such issues, the crave for iconic and unique tombstones continues unabated across Ghana. No effort is being spared to ensure that even in death, some people are seen to be more important than others. Forget about the latest dinners on Sunday evenings after the thanksgiving service at churches where the dearly departed may not have visited for years prior to their demise, and the subsequent payments/donations made to the churches for the "memorial and thanksgiving" service. Instead of the regular grave with sandcrete blocks covered with slabs and tiles, many tombstones are now in very expensive building materials such as marble. Not to be outdone, storey buildings are now being constructed over graves in certain parts of the country.
Juaben in the Ashanti Region is one such place and the cemetery there could be described as a "who is who" in terms of the shape, form and finishes employed in the construction of the individual graves. The Kuntanase-Bekwai scenic road also has settlements with very unique and interesting graveyards.
Designer graves
Should that surprise Ghanaians? I guess not. In a country where people spend more on funerals than on education, and where coffins are now being designed in various shapes and forms to reflect the profession or career of the dearly departed, why should the edifice sheltering the coffin in the grave also not be "designed"? We now have coffins designed like cocoa pods (cocoa farmer), canoes (fisherman) , houses (building contractor), buses or trucks (driver) etc. On a visit to the mechanical workshop recently, the apprentices were discussing death and funerals, particularly one that had taken place at the weekend. One of them narrated how if he ever became wealthy, he would put in his will that when he died, he should be buried in a brand new Range Rover which should be under a storey building with a twenty four-hour guard watch at the cemetery. This generated a heated discussion among the apprentices as a few were of the view that the "government" would not allow that but the majority agreed that if he became wealthy in future, he could do it since it was his own money.
Not long ago, a prominent traditional ruler seriously advocated what he called "funeral tourism". He was of the view that many Europeans and North Americans would love to travel to Ghana to experience how funerals are celebrated. The American television network, Cable News Network (CNN), also covered Ghana in a series dubbed, “The ??? and snippets of funeral celebrations, with men and women in black clothes shown dancing. Should funeral tourism be revisited by the Ministry of Tourism and made a cornerstone of tourism? To do so, we have to get down to the basics with clean, orderly and well-maintained cemeteries just as we need to do for our beaches along coastal and inland bodies?
It is not surprising, therefore, that private developers have put in place many funeral homes and private but expensive cemeteries such as the one at Shiashie and other private cemeteries being started across the country. Cemeteries, after all, are also part of the open spaces in many communities and in many parts of the world, people spend considerable periods of time there for various reasons, since they also are tourist attractions.
The writer is a Past Dean, Faculty of Architecture and Building Technology, KNUST,
Past Head, Department of Architecture, KNUST.
gwkintsiful@gmail.com