By Napoleon ATO KITTOE
Ghanaian folklore, which mystifies the dead, has come under the full weight of modernity. The dead are now buried in the middle of towns, thus both the living and the dead live together. The changed times find graveyards in short distance from houses, unlike the situation in the past when the dead were confined to desolate places, far removed from town.
Certainly, this is a new way of depicting the unfailing or everlasting bonds between the living and the living. Previously, the link had existed in the spiritual realm, grounded in traditional beliefs. The old system dictated or guided the various shades of necromantic communication between the living and the dead.
In the past, there was a shroud around the dead, especially those who had advanced in age before kicking the bucket. They were considered sacred and ancestral. The living and the dead were not mixed together, in the strictest observance of myths surrounding departed souls.
The breakdown of this spiritual construct began with the campaign of Ghanaian highlife musicians who trumpeted in their lyrics, the need for the living to fear the living human being most and leave the dead alone. They stated that only the living have life force to harm them, but not the dead, who lay in their graves in eternal silence. To wit, “suronipa na gyae Saman,” the Akan language parlance for “fear human beings and leave the ghost.” Gradually, the exhortations were accompanied by an outreach to the dead in the form of burials in the compounds of homes in the case of close relatives and bringing cemeteries closer to all other human dwellings.
The frightening myth around cemeteries broken, people freely sit on tombs. Until we crossed over the Y2K divide, the living feared the dead most and would have taken to their heels once their bodies touched tombs.
The modern dimension of relations between the living and the dead is pictorially depicted, and this is the location of burial grounds within communities of the living. This is now a common sight in all 16 regions of Ghana. The dead are fepicted to be nearer the living community. The former are adored but not feared.
