Ghana, early 1990s
A
few dense forests, a few animals, a few good roads, some tall buildings…that
was people’s image of Africa—a little of everything everywhere. However, if we
considered the essence of life, the things that really mattered—like love—then
maybe things would cease to seem so basic.
Take a Ghanaian village like
Ebinom, a small settlement just sixty kilometres north of the city of Kumasi,
their only connection a ribbon of rough road that turned what should have been
a forty-five-minute journey into three hours of misery as drivers attempted to
dodge potholes. It proved an added torture for those travelling by commercial
vehicles, which, even when available and no more than two days in a week,
lilted from side to side under the weight of their overloaded cargo, tossing
passengers like trees dancing in the evening breeze.
A typical village, littered with mud
houses and dirt roads, the natives were hardworking men and women who tilled
the soil and reared livestock for their livelihood. They held tradition in high
esteem and made it their concern to meddle in one another’s affairs in their
commitment to be each other’s keeper.
The village folk lived out their
lives, as had generations before them, celebrating victories and mourning their
dead together. At close of day, many gathered in their homes and greeted the
evening with songs and folktales. A few hours of sleep, and the next morning
began a day very much like the previous one.
Today,
Ebinom was bereaved. Unforgiving death had given up on lurking in the corners
and laid its icy hands on one of their most resourceful men. The village square
brimmed with mourners who shamelessly expressed their grief with tears and
wailing. The cool breeze ceased its whiffling as if it, too, were aware of the
elegy in the air. The desolate tune rekindled the tears of mourners,
particularly the women, who seemed especially blessed with the ability to cry
on demand.
Opanyin
Badu had been in his mid-eighties when he was called to take his place with the
forefathers. A hardworking man with three big farms a distance from the
village, he had been loved and respected for his generosity and regard for all.
His competence in work, from which many village folk benefited, earned him a
place among the elders at an early age of forty.
When
the women had finished displaying their mourning prowess, the men, majestically
clad in their funeral cloths, sombrely paid their respects to the lifeless body
of a onetime great man. The adowa dance ensued, and the old women took
over. While dancing adowa, the older generation was envied for the
elegance of their advanced age, because somehow, their delicate frames
possessed the grace required for this dance. With every step, turn, and shrug,
their smiles acquired a mystic quality as though they had soared into a higher
realm.
Despite
the mournful occasion, the crowd cheered the dancers on. A bit of alcohol and
the resulting ambience gingered some others to join in. Amidst the drumming and
dancing, they marched to the burial grounds.
While
parents mourned, children gathered in various courtyards, telling folktales
among themselves until bedtime, for children weren’t allowed to see the face of
death. At the end of what may have been construed as an unproductive day, the
people retired to their various homes, with many shamelessly drunk and hardly
in control of themselves. One couldn’t be sure whether anyone had sound sleep
when a person died, but life had to go on.
As
for the dead, they became ancestors.
