One of the most serious attitudinal problems to have crept into the Ghanaian society is the insatiable desire to invest in the dead rather than the living. We go to bizarre extents to try to outdo each other in the grandeur of the funerals we organise. We take to task our compatriots who for better sanity or lack of resources try to organise relatively modest funerals, describing their efforts as “burying their loved ones like fowls”! Funeral Parties The amount of money and other resources we mobilise for funerals is outrageous. When one of us gets ill and needs financial support to get medical attention that could extend his lifespan, this help is usually not forthcoming even from close family members. Let this poor fellow pass on and all of a sudden huge sums of money are mobilised for a grand funeral. Radio and TV announcements are made, expensive coffins, invitation cards and other funeral paraphernalia are procured. In some cases, three different funeral dresses are made; one to take to the mortuary, one for the actual funeral day and the other for the thanksgiving church service! Hotel accommodation is sometimes procured for sympathisers from out of town. Of late, huge billboards with pictures of the deceased are posted at strategic locations around town. While all these preparations are being made the body could be in the mortuary for weeks, months or even years attracting charges. What a waste! The bulk of the expenses though are reserved for the after party where food and drinks are liberally passed out accompanied by good music and dance. At some funerals banquets rivaling wedding parties are organised where sympathisers and parasites alike dine lavishly and carry some home in take-away containers. In many cases, the dress code is changed from black/red to white! It makes me wonder whether this behaviour is out of love or out of spite for the deceased. Partying over the loss of a loved one? Are we truly mourning or rejoicing for good riddance? Celebration of Life Ironically we attempt to justify this bogus behaviour by terming it “Celebration of Life”! I would think that it makes more sense to show love to someone you care about while he is alive so that he would have the opportunity to at least show appreciation. Once he is dead, worldly things and events are no longer of interest to him. Matter of fact he could care less what you did with his corpse. At that point the body belongs to the soil where the only beneficiaries are the surrounding vegetation and may be some adventurous rats. How can a people that hope to develop their impoverished nation become so obsessed with investment in the dead rather than the living? I am not aware of any part of this country where expensive funerals are part of the tradition or culture. Matter of fact when I was young, it was considered taboo to eat or drink at a funeral in my community as it was considered disrespectful to the dead, so where did this negative habit come from? Wherever it came from it needs to go back there. We have better use for our scare resources than to invest in the dead and many rational Ghanaians agree. Misplaced Priorities The organisational and fundraising skills we apply to funerals are, in my opinion, world class. Unfortunately the priority is misplaced. If we applied the same resourcefulness, zeal and efficiency to national development and the eradication of poverty for those alive in our communities, we would have been way ahead in our quest for a better Ghana. Instead, we prefer to have our children go to school under trees than to organise a modest funeral for our dead grandmother. I do not understand the logic. Instead of relying on our impoverished central government to provide all our development needs I wish to challenge all of us to divert our funeral organisation skills to providing our communities with schools, clinics, roads and potable water. Relying on government for these services has not worked for more than 50 years and is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. It is time to re-examine our priorities and organising expensive funerals is certainly not one of them. Time to Act I have heard this expensive funeral habit condemned by many prominent people in our society including the Asantehene and members of the clergy but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. I believe it is time to start acting. I wish to share my experience with you on how we could kick the habit. I started my own crusade against expensive funerals many years ago. When my sister died about 10 years ago I used the opportunity to demonstrate how funerals ought to be organised. Fortunately with both our parents deceased I was left in charge of the family as the eldest child, consequently I had the responsibility of organising the funeral. At the planning meeting, I got my siblings to agree with me that the main objective was to bury our sister and not to entertain the community. Consequently we decided to eliminate food, drinks and music. It thus became unnecessary to hire any canopies or chairs. We chose a no frills grave at the cemetery and the coffin we selected was the modest we could find. We also chose a working day for the funeral so as to minimise the crowd. On the day of the funeral we got our sister’s body washed, dressed up and placed in the coffin at the mortuary. From there we drove straight to church for the funeral service and to the cemetery for the burial. After the burial I caused an announcement to be made right there at the cemetery thanking sympathisers and informing them that the funeral was officially over. There would be no sitting down and no donations would be collected. Yes, the cost of the funeral was low enough that it was unnecessary to collect donations. Besides anyone who was expecting to eat and drink at the funeral could use his donation to do so on his way home. The other practice I have personally adopted for a very long time now is not to eat or drink anything at any funeral except water. I have also decided not to have the bereaved family arrange accommodation for me when I have to attend a funeral out of town. What ever I give as donation does not have to be a lot. If I cannot arrange my own accommodation or make a return trip I would skip the trip but I would still offer my donation. The bereaved family has enough headaches burying their dead without the additional trappings of housing, feeding and entertaining sympathisers. I wish to appeal to all like-thinking Ghanaians to join me to kick out the expensive funeral habit. Thankfully, wake-keepings have been all but eliminated; this though is only a drop in the ocean. If we start adopting the series of actions I have enumerated above, I believe we can deal a quick and decisive blow to this unacceptable habit. We need to follow the example of our Muslim brothers and sisters