When I decided to go to a village for Easter weekend, I thought that it would be a really nice holiday to spend in a rural setting with families and all. The plan is a great one, except that the Ewe village that we went to was largely animist. Although I didn't get to celebrate Easter this year, the weekend was absolutely amazing. There were celebrations going on throughout the time that we were there for 2 funerals that were occurring during the weekend. Since it was my friend, Junior's village, we were not only invited, but integrated into the whole thing. We got to watch the whole ceremony, doing traditional African dance with the rest of the people. The ceremony was really a big event. People came by boat from all over the region to mourn and bury the dead. On the night before the funeral, people danced all the night and there was a spiritual service to honor the deceased and his spirit. The next day was full of dancing, and animist family members would go into the shrine and "get the spirit in them." The would come out and go all over the village pouring libations and speaking in strange languages. Furthermore, when the spirit was in them, they would inflict pain on themselves which apparently they could not feel. They stabbed at themselves with knives and beat their heads on stones with no response to pain. After a period of dancing, the body was brought out and then they went to the site of burial. Mourners and family members danced all around the body and a service was performed in which a priest prayed for the spirit of the dead. We were able to suit right in the front which was absolutely amazing except when the chicken was sacrificed. Its head was cut off and it continued to flap around bleeding just in front of my feet. I tried not to show my dismay, but I'd never seen anything like it and I think that I wore my sadness on my face. After this, the coffin was carried out and the mourners dispersed. On the way out, I was a little overwhelmed and ran into a sacrificed goat bleeding in front of the burial area. The whole ceremony was extremely interesting and something that I had never thought I would see in Ghana. The dancing made the whole thing seem less sad, although some of the dancers danced while crying. A friend of mine, an elderly woman named Comfort, told me that when I die, they will bury me there with a traditional funeral...yesss. Although mine might skip the sacrifice.
After the funeral we went back and had dinner before deciding to go to the Volta River to take our baths late at night. Sarah and I went with Junior and his friends to bathe and automatically thought that bath meant naked. So we show up in just towels at the river with shampoo and soap, but no one else apparently gets naked. We ultimately decided to go for it since it was so dark out and skinny dipped in the Volta... SO nice and refreshing...I think I will become a nudist. And luckily, the tons of children that followed us throughout the day had gone to sleep in time to miss the naked obrunis.
At night, we went back to sleep under our mosquito nets outside on straw mats. We had to share nets since we had many people and so few mats. It was hard to sleep with the heat from the nets and from the other person you were sharing with, but it was better than the bed bugs of before. I woke in the night to hear my friend being sick and spent the night playing doctor for my poor malaria patient. Morning couldn't come soon enough for us when we told some people about her sickness and the village tended to her. But before we took a tro tro out, I was able to go into the animist shrine, where foreigners are not allowed, as a friend of Junior's and experience their prayer for our studies, for the deceased, and for other occurrances in the village. It was all in Ewe, so afterwards Junior explained to us what had occurred and the significance of it. So I did go to church on Easter...kind of...
Went back to Legon totally exhausted and amazed at what I had seen and done Easter weekend. It makes me so sad that my plane ticket can not be changed and that I have to go in May and not stay for some of the summer... Found out on Friday that this is the case. So I will have to try to get the most that I can out of this small amount of time that I have here. And of course come back soon.
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