September 19, 2008

Ghana Journal: Funeral

At times it feels like everything you attempt to do in Ghana requires a fire and commitment that goes beyond simple desire. Half measures avail you nothing in Ghana. On Saturday, I rose at 3am to travel to a chief’s funeral in the Volta Region on the Togo boarder. The chief was a relative of my Fanti teacher Rose. In Ghana, your work colleagues are considered as important as you family. At the same time, there are two events in people’s lives that have to be honored. The first is marriage. The second is death. The passage from life to the spirit world must be honored and the rituals to ensure this passage are extremely important and heavily prescribed. So we were to catch the bus at 4am to ride to Govieffe Todzi in the Kpeve area along the Volta River.

Rose picked me up at 3:45am and we arrived at the meeting spot right on time. The bus however did not arrive until 5am. After we got under way, the driver pulled alongside the road after about 10 miles. He told us that the bus was not going to make it up the steep mountain tracks in Kpeve, so we turned around and headed back to the bus parking lot. Several people got on their cell phones to rouse the lot manager to get another bus. As we waited in the lot for another bus, Rose pointed out the license plate on our returned bus. The license ended with the letter “A.” “In Ghana, the last letter on the plate tells you how old the vehicle is,” she said. “The letter ‘A’ tells you that this bus is 25 years old. New cars have a ‘Y.’” We finally got underway at 6am.

When we arrived, the service has already begun. More than 2,000 mourners sat under tents in a soccer field. The tents from a hotel in the regional capital Ho made a square of the weed-choked and stone strewn pitch, which was canted at about twenty degrees from one goal to the other. The team playing uphill had a definite disadvantage, but we were now in the mountains so flat ground at any angle was in short supply. The service lasted for three more hours in the hot sun. The casket was a replica of a KLM jet airplane in honor of Mr. Agbo’s years in the airline industry as a flight radio operator, pilot, instructor and general manager. What was remarkable was how often Barak Obama was invoked during the tributes. Agbo died at the ripe age of 85, but the minister delivering the eulogy compared Chief Agbo to Obama and not the other way around. This seems disorienting and strange since Obama is nearly forty years younger.

After the service, Chief Agbo was interned in a cement crypt next to his home The Agbo clan then served the entire group of mourners a large feast of joloff rice, light soup with stewed goat, fried chicken, fried fish, pasta salad with Vienna sausages, banku and other dishes. They provided beer and soda for everyone as well. While we ate, the local Asafu military brass band played somber hymns such as “Amazing Grace.” By the end of the afternoon, I was once again exhausted from the heat and sun. I fell asleep almost immediately when the bus headed back to Cape Coast. On the trip back, we stopped numerous times to purchase yams, smoked eels and fish, which were half the price in this remote region than on the coast.
Photo link: http://picasaweb.google.com/labanhill/ChiefAgboSFunderal#

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cb9goDk8Is

Selected Works

1. Nonfiction

DJ Kool Herc
The first picturebook biography of the founder of rap and hip hop, DJ Kool Herc!

America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60s
"Phenomenal."–Howard Zinn "Excellent."–New York Times Book Review

Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance
“Harlem Stomp! is a wonderous new book: it celebrates a time, a place, an energy, and a people who refused to be held back and so they created a culture the entire world is still reeling from.”

--George C. Wolfe, writer, director, and producer of the Public Theater, NYC

3. Poetry

Dave the Potter
A picturebook poem describing the life of the slave potter Dave. Illustrated by Bryan Collier.

Contemporary Poetry of New England
“Contemporary Poetry of New England offers a vivid portrait of a region, its colors and smells, its physical and emotional textures, and the people…. It presents a range of poets, few of whom would call themselves a “region poet,” although each has taken to heart in a private way Frost’s haunting dictum: ‘Locality gives art.’”

--from the Introduction

2. Fiction

A Brush with Napoleon
A seventeen-year-old is plucked out of the Grande Armee to sit in place of Napoleon for a portrait of the Emperor by the artist David.

Casa Azul
"I felt like a kid reading every word on the page! I liked the strains of "magic realism" coming through in Frida's house! Children will relate to this very much! The story is charming and reads like a thriller." –Margarita Aguilar, Assisant Curator, El Museo del Barrio

4. Middle Grade Series

Xtreme Mysteries
These kids love extreme sports--snowboarding, skateboarding, rock climbing, wake boarding--and are ready to fight when the right to do their sport is threatened.