My uncle's coffin

My uncles at Yokornya consider me to be their most favourite nephew because according to legend, at birth I looked exactly like their late father when he was alive and so together with my father they gave me the nom de guerre of Baba Tunde, a Yoruba expression which means “our father has returned” and so they had hoped that their father who had returned would pay them frequent visits.

However, Baba Tunde grew up to be a renegade. Being particularly a Yokornya and generally an Osuwem (you won’t be wrong if you refer to the official name of Osudoku) renegade in the sense that I hardly visited home as I was required by “tradition” to have done, going over to meet the elders only because I was going to get married was not the wisest thing that a son would do.

When some among the elders tried to play my “sins” up Godee came to my defence and explained to his younger siblings and other family members that life in the big city was very hard to live and the reason, perhaps, I was not able to visit the village as frequently as I needed to. That was my escape route right there! 

Suffice it to say that the day my family and friends accompanied me from Madina to Haatso to conduct the marriage rites, Uncle Godee was the only family from Yokornya who was part of the delegation. He said he wasn’t going to let the opportunity of seeing the marriage of Baba Tunde pass him by while he was still alive.

Sorry to have bored you so far with some details of my marriage, an event that took place seven years ago. But just so you know its significance to this conversation, exactly one week after the seventh anniversary of attending my marriage ceremony, Uncle Godee was laid to rest at the Osuwem-Lanor cemetery. The same cemetery his younger brother, my father, was buried almost eighteen years earlier.

You probably have figured out already that this article is and was not meant to be about my marriage or even about Uncle Godee or even about his death, but rather about the coffin in which my good old uncle was buried. The coffin which was molded like a tractor is the subject of my conversation.

Like most other ethnic groups in Ghana, the Osudokus are very particular about the number of days they hold a funeral. The eve of burial wake is a must and an integral part of the funeral ceremony, which is followed by the pre-burial ceremony the following morning, the burial and then the post-burial ceremony. It is after this that the family would sit to count costs and apportion them accordingly.

The same routine was followed when Emmanuel Kofi Atseku Klemeh, as Uncle Godee was officially known, died. Indeed the man who had done many things in his life until he finally retired to manage the affairs of the family and then eventually died towards the end of the year 2012 at the age of 80 had once been a tractor operator.

Being a tractor operator and since Caterpillar was the default name for tractors in Ghana back then, people close to him nicknamed my uncle “Kofi Caterpillar”, a name his contemporaries called him with till he kicked the bucket.

I am not the one who refuses to look at the dead when they lie in state before they are put in the coffin for burial. However, for reasons I cannot ready recollect I declined to see my uncle when I got to the funeral grounds with my mother, sister and wife that Saturday morning.

Consequently, I was not prepared for the surprise I would encounter when Uncle Godee’s coffin was carried by members of the cadet corps of Osudoku Senior High School out to the centre of the funeral grounds from the room where he was laid to receive his last respect.

Kofi Caterpillar (or his mortal remains) was in a coffin designed as a tractor or rather as a bulldozer (maybe the carpenter confused the two or the person who gave him the brief did described bulldozer when he meant tractor, but all “Caterpillar be Caterpillar”) and it was in that vehicle in which he earned most of his income from in his youth that he would be buried in his old age and death.

It was a surprise because driving through Teshie where I had seen coffins designed with different images from fish, through canoes to cocoa pods and having read that they were created for people based on their profession, I never thought it would come so close to home one day. It could also be because I wasn’t too involved in the planning of my uncle’s funeral (again because of the busy life in Accra) that I was not privy to the vehicle in which he would be going to see his ancestors and my father.

As the coffin was brought out and laid on the two benches that served as a bier and placed at the middle of the funeral grounds for the purpose, many people brought out their cameras and/or mobile phones and rushed to take a shot or two at the Caterpillar in front of them.

I also whipped out my mobile as I decided to also take a shot of the coffin, but because there were too many people, I had to wait for the right opportunity to get a good shot which I did at the point of offertory (yes, we had two of those with one going to the family and another going to the Presbyterian Church).

I should say at this point that people have divided view on the nature by which funerals are conducted in Ghana. While some think the dead should be given a befitting burial through the organization of elaborate funeral ceremonies and proper coffins to carry them “home”, others think such profligate manner by which funerals are held is anachronistic and therefore should be done away with.

This divided views were partly expressed on my Facebook page when I shared the photo I took of my uncle’s coffin just as on the pages of others who also shared my photo. Not the least the reigning Ghana Journalist of the Year thought making such a coffin was unnecessary when he commented under the photo on Akawasi Sarpong of the BBC’s Facebook page.

Manasseh Azure Awuni commented that it was “so annoying” to bury someone in such a coffin. Adding that “is this what we know what to do best?” But unlike him there were others who saw and appreciated the creativity by which the coffin was designed and produced.

To bring the argument home, the question arose from some about the type of coffins by which other people are likely to be buried. What type of coffin would you recommend for the journalist, for example? What about the politician and or the lawyer? Then one enthusiastic young man broached the subject everyone was avoiding when he asked me deviously: “Do you have gynecologists in your family?”

Every society, decides how they wish to bury their dead and to a large extent the religion most dominant in that society determines that decision. Some bury their dead in coffins, others bury them without coffins and yet others cremate their dead and either keep the ashes in an urn or spread it in a specified water body in a particular manner. Those who bury in coffins have the privilege of choosing what type of coffin to use in burying their dead.

The Osudokus say their “royals” would always have to be brought back home and buried regardless of where they may die. As far as my uncle Kofi Caterpillar is concerned he died peacefully at home and his family decided that he travels further afield in his much adored Caterpillar that cost them about $600 to build.

That may be too expensive for some, but to his family the cost of my uncle’s coffin may be an expense well spent. After all Kofi Caterpillar has a right to continue plowing the land with his Caterpillar even in the world beyond.

By Francis Doku/Graphic Showbiz