I read somewhere that, our deputy minister of tourism is tossing the idea of funeral tourism. I don’t exactly know how he mean it.
But this’s what I think, Ghanaians generally invest a lot of cultural energy in organizing funerals. Activities such as, “lying-in-state”, pouring of libations, funeral costumes depending on the tribe and traditions, the the traditional activities that are carried out, before, during and after the funeral.
Exceptionally, in almost every Ghanaian culture, the burial services of chiefs are conducted differently, the Akans for example invest a great deal of time, undergoing several traditional activities, the glamour, the traditional outfits, among others can be packaged into a tourist attraction.
For example, the burial of any paramount chief of many traditional areas in Ghana, take years to plan, with the main event, taking days and weeks to execute, the activities are carried out in colourful parades, that sometimes becomes a scene for even Ghanaian’s who partake in them. These days, such culturally important funerals trend on social media and become hashtags and are posted on our timelines.
It won’t be a bad idea, to deliberately package these events into documentaries, and exhibited same at designated tourist centers for foreigners to travel and experience some of these rich cultures that tells the Ghanaian story in quite a unique way that is so different from other countries and continents.
The reason I find this idea a bit fascinating and sort of interesting is that, I attended a funeral in Agbozume, it was the burial of my friend Kwawu M Kwawu mom, may her soul Rest In Peace. She was a traditionalist in the true sense of the word, a priestess. I was amused at the activities that accompanied the burial, the traditional rudiments and so many things that came to me as a surprise, in fact, if that event was documented and handed over to the ministry of tourism to upload on it YouTube channel, I can bet a lot of people will watch for many reasons. It was really educative and an eye opener, particularly to me because I haven’t scene anything of it sort.
While, I think the minister must come forward with some details on his plan and what exactly his proposal is, everything, including our rich cultural funerals can be sold, depending on how we package it, if we can have festival based-tourism, then we can do same for funerals. After all, funerals these days are more or less becoming the events where traditionalism is put on display like what I experienced at my friend’s mom’s .
Everything is possible, no matter how strange and funny it can sound sometimes.
By Benjamin Madugu