How Do Ghana's Fabulous 'Fantasy' Coffins Work?

In parts of Ghana and Togo, it's common to send the deceased off in style with coffins carved and brightly painted to resemble anything from chili peppers to taxi cabs to brand-name shoes. Learn about abebu adekai, also known as fantasy coffins, in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/funerals/ghana-fantasy-coffins.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Vollebaum here. The Republic of Ghana is nicknamed West Africa's
Golden child. It's renowned for its amazing wildlife sanctuaries, and
international companies like Google, Guinness, and Coca Cola have set
up facilities in Acra, the capital city on Ghana's coast,

(00:25):
and Acra is also known for another industry, a one
that's homegrown. The business is so unique that it's caught
the eye of death care providers all over the world.
In Ghana, there's a big tradition behind big coffins carved
and painted into shapes from chili peppers to taxi cabs
to Nike sneakers, just about any object imaginable to suit

(00:48):
the deceased's personality. Each one is a vibrant work of art,
requiring skillful carpentry. In the Ga language, the funerary boxes
are called proverb coffins. In English, we often call them
fantasy coffins, but the practice of building these fantasy coffins

(01:08):
has never gained traction outside of Ghana and neighboring Togo
before the article. This episode is based on how stuffworks
spoke with Genevieve Keeney Vesquez, a licensed in balmer who
serves as the President and Chief Operating officer of the
National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, Texas. She explained
that she's never come across any parallels to fantasy coffins

(01:30):
from other parts of the globe. She said, I get
made aware of quite a lot of interesting rituals and
customs and have yet to hear of anything close. Her
museum houses the largest collection of fantasy coffins outside of Ghana. Altogether,
it has a dozen on permanent display. There are shapes

(01:50):
ranging from a Mercedes Benz to a red legged crab.
Fantasy coffins have been showcased at art museums as well,
from the Brooklyn Museum to the National Museum of Modern
Art in Paris, France. These ornate coffins reflect the area's
blend of beliefs about ancestry and death. Modern fantasy coffins

(02:10):
were devised by the Ga people, who are part of
the region's Ga Adongwei ethnic group. Cultural and religious traditions
described dying as a period of transition from one life
to the next, and funerary rites as a celebration, and
there's also a concept that the deceased still have influence
over the circumstances of their living relatives. Keep your loved

(02:32):
ones happy post mortem and they might grant you some
blessings down the road. So making a good impression on
newly dead family members and sending them offen style is
considered hugely important. That's where fantasy coffins come in. Traditionally,
it was common practice to bury a body with some
personalized trinket, like a miniature canoe, that represented the individual's

(02:56):
former career or aspirations or social standing. Back in the
mid nineteen hundreds, before Ghana achieved independence from the British Empire,
and a craw area carpenter by the name of Seth
kenny Quay did something similar, but on a much larger scale.
Kenny Quay was born in nineteen twenty two, and by

(03:17):
all accounts, he had an entrepreneurial spirit. When he was
a young man, kenny Quay created a coco pot shaped
palanquin for a local chief to ride in during an
upcoming festival. When the chief died unexpectedly before the festival,
kenny Quay persuaded the family to bury him in it instead.
Shortly after that, the artist's grandmother passed. Remembering the mourner's

(03:41):
enthusiasm for the chief's coffin, he crafted an elaborate one
for her in the shape of an airplane. She had
lived in a suburb near Across Airport and had loved
watching the planes go by, but had never taken a
flight herself, so Kenny Quay gave her a way to
fly into the afterlife. Kenny Quay was approached by mourning

(04:02):
clients requesting personalized coffins whose designs would tell the stories
of their occupants, like a boat for a fisherman or
an onion for a farmer, and the rest was history.
Kenny Quay wasn't the sole inventor of fantasy coffins as
we now know them, but he did popularize the concept.
Artistic coffins became the specialty at his workshop, where he

(04:25):
passed on his skills to his sons and grandson, who
still manages the shop to this day, as some of
his other apprentices, like the now renowned artists Pa Joe,
would go on to found their own businesses in a
crap and supply coffins as art on the international scene.
Joe told the BBC back in twenty sixteen that when
he goes he's considering a coffin in the shape of

(04:46):
a hammer. Given their elaborate shapes and details, it's easy
to forget that in first and foremost. Most fantasy caskets
are purchased for their original intention and must be functional
for burial in the ground. Building materials vary. A funeral
ready coffins will consist of less expensive, lightweight woods and

(05:07):
go for a couple thousand dollars. Others are tailor made
display pieces built to wow the patrons of art galleries
and museums. The latter tend to be made of hard
woods like African mahogany. A coffin of the sort can
easily sell for more than ten grand. Regardless of where
the coffins are headed, they all need to be carved,

(05:29):
painted and sanded before the client hauls them off. They
can take a couple of weeks to build, as for
the shapes, and that's up to the buyers. Artists have
built human sized wooden cameras, eagles, hair dryers, pineapples, and
beer bottles for their customers. In Ghana. Bodies can spend
months or even years inside refrigerated storage units, while the

(05:52):
family of the deceased organizes the funeral. After the day
and time are set and the coffin is paid for,
the event can proceed. Gone in Funerals are lengthy and
expensive affairs that might last for three full days at
a time with the community and extended family. The dozens
to hundreds of guests are attended to by musicians, DJs, photographers, caterers, bartenders,

(06:16):
and morticians. Visitors might help the inner family recoup some
of the costs by raising funds on site while also
dancing the night away. Today's episode is based on the
article Gana's Fantasy Coffins Are to Die for on HowStuffWorks
dot com, written by Mark Vancini. Brain Stuff is production

(06:38):
of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and
is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
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