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

0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.880
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren

0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:12.639
<v Speaker 1>Vollebaum here. The Republic of Ghana is nicknamed West Africa's

0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:17.160
<v Speaker 1>Golden child. It's renowned for its amazing wildlife sanctuaries, and

0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.840
<v Speaker 1>international companies like Google, Guinness, and Coca Cola have set

0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.320
<v Speaker 1>up facilities in Acra, the capital city on Ghana's coast,

0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:29.000
<v Speaker 1>and Acra is also known for another industry, a one

0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:32.160
<v Speaker 1>that's homegrown. The business is so unique that it's caught

0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.760
<v Speaker 1>the eye of death care providers all over the world.

0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:41.040
<v Speaker 1>In Ghana, there's a big tradition behind big coffins carved

0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:44.280
<v Speaker 1>and painted into shapes from chili peppers to taxi cabs

0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.280
<v Speaker 1>to Nike sneakers, just about any object imaginable to suit

0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.760
<v Speaker 1>the deceased's personality. Each one is a vibrant work of art,

0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:58.000
<v Speaker 1>requiring skillful carpentry. In the Ga language, the funerary boxes

0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:02.120
<v Speaker 1>are called proverb coffins. In English, we often call them

0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:08.240
<v Speaker 1>fantasy coffins, but the practice of building these fantasy coffins

0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:11.640
<v Speaker 1>has never gained traction outside of Ghana and neighboring Togo

0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.880
<v Speaker 1>before the article. This episode is based on how stuffworks

0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.640
<v Speaker 1>spoke with Genevieve Keeney Vesquez, a licensed in balmer who

0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.399
<v Speaker 1>serves as the President and Chief Operating officer of the

0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:27.160
<v Speaker 1>National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, Texas. She explained

0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.440
<v Speaker 1>that she's never come across any parallels to fantasy coffins

0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.920
<v Speaker 1>from other parts of the globe. She said, I get

0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:36.480
<v Speaker 1>made aware of quite a lot of interesting rituals and

0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:41.720
<v Speaker 1>customs and have yet to hear of anything close. Her

0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:47.240
<v Speaker 1>museum houses the largest collection of fantasy coffins outside of Ghana. Altogether,

0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:50.480
<v Speaker 1>it has a dozen on permanent display. There are shapes

0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:53.520
<v Speaker 1>ranging from a Mercedes Benz to a red legged crab.

0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.520
<v Speaker 1>Fantasy coffins have been showcased at art museums as well,

0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:00.360
<v Speaker 1>from the Brooklyn Museum to the National Museum of Modern

0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:06.480
<v Speaker 1>Art in Paris, France. These ornate coffins reflect the area's

0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:10.919
<v Speaker 1>blend of beliefs about ancestry and death. Modern fantasy coffins

0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:13.280
<v Speaker 1>were devised by the Ga people, who are part of

0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:17.800
<v Speaker 1>the region's Ga Adongwei ethnic group. Cultural and religious traditions

0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:21.200
<v Speaker 1>described dying as a period of transition from one life

0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:25.480
<v Speaker 1>to the next, and funerary rites as a celebration, and

0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.840
<v Speaker 1>there's also a concept that the deceased still have influence

0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:32.440
<v Speaker 1>over the circumstances of their living relatives. Keep your loved

0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:35.040
<v Speaker 1>ones happy post mortem and they might grant you some

0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:38.760
<v Speaker 1>blessings down the road. So making a good impression on

0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.000
<v Speaker 1>newly dead family members and sending them offen style is

0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:49.480
<v Speaker 1>considered hugely important. That's where fantasy coffins come in. Traditionally,

0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:51.880
<v Speaker 1>it was common practice to bury a body with some

0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:56.679
<v Speaker 1>personalized trinket, like a miniature canoe, that represented the individual's

0:02:56.680 --> 0:03:01.720
<v Speaker 1>former career or aspirations or social standing. Back in the

0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:05.520
<v Speaker 1>mid nineteen hundreds, before Ghana achieved independence from the British Empire,

0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.280
<v Speaker 1>and a craw area carpenter by the name of Seth

0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.640
<v Speaker 1>kenny Quay did something similar, but on a much larger scale.

0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.839
<v Speaker 1>Kenny Quay was born in nineteen twenty two, and by

0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:21.760
<v Speaker 1>all accounts, he had an entrepreneurial spirit. When he was

0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.880
<v Speaker 1>a young man, kenny Quay created a coco pot shaped

0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.680
<v Speaker 1>palanquin for a local chief to ride in during an

0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:32.000
<v Speaker 1>upcoming festival. When the chief died unexpectedly before the festival,

0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.400
<v Speaker 1>kenny Quay persuaded the family to bury him in it instead.

0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:41.280
<v Speaker 1>Shortly after that, the artist's grandmother passed. Remembering the mourner's

0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:44.839
<v Speaker 1>enthusiasm for the chief's coffin, he crafted an elaborate one

0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:47.600
<v Speaker 1>for her in the shape of an airplane. She had

0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.480
<v Speaker 1>lived in a suburb near Across Airport and had loved

0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:52.760
<v Speaker 1>watching the planes go by, but had never taken a

0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:56.080
<v Speaker 1>flight herself, so Kenny Quay gave her a way to

0:03:56.160 --> 0:04:02.040
<v Speaker 1>fly into the afterlife. Kenny Quay was approached by mourning

0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:06.400
<v Speaker 1>clients requesting personalized coffins whose designs would tell the stories

0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:09.280
<v Speaker 1>of their occupants, like a boat for a fisherman or

0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:14.440
<v Speaker 1>an onion for a farmer, and the rest was history.

0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.360
<v Speaker 1>Kenny Quay wasn't the sole inventor of fantasy coffins as

0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:21.240
<v Speaker 1>we now know them, but he did popularize the concept.

0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.360
<v Speaker 1>Artistic coffins became the specialty at his workshop, where he

0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.279
<v Speaker 1>passed on his skills to his sons and grandson, who

0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:31.120
<v Speaker 1>still manages the shop to this day, as some of

0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.280
<v Speaker 1>his other apprentices, like the now renowned artists Pa Joe,

0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:36.520
<v Speaker 1>would go on to found their own businesses in a

0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:40.760
<v Speaker 1>crap and supply coffins as art on the international scene.

0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:43.839
<v Speaker 1>Joe told the BBC back in twenty sixteen that when

0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:46.680
<v Speaker 1>he goes he's considering a coffin in the shape of

0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:52.520
<v Speaker 1>a hammer. Given their elaborate shapes and details, it's easy

0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:56.000
<v Speaker 1>to forget that in first and foremost. Most fantasy caskets

0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.360
<v Speaker 1>are purchased for their original intention and must be functional

0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:04.159
<v Speaker 1>for burial in the ground. Building materials vary. A funeral

0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.800
<v Speaker 1>ready coffins will consist of less expensive, lightweight woods and

0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.640
<v Speaker 1>go for a couple thousand dollars. Others are tailor made

0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.120
<v Speaker 1>display pieces built to wow the patrons of art galleries

0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:18.200
<v Speaker 1>and museums. The latter tend to be made of hard

0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.600
<v Speaker 1>woods like African mahogany. A coffin of the sort can

0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:26.920
<v Speaker 1>easily sell for more than ten grand. Regardless of where

0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:29.400
<v Speaker 1>the coffins are headed, they all need to be carved,

0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.960
<v Speaker 1>painted and sanded before the client hauls them off. They

0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:35.719
<v Speaker 1>can take a couple of weeks to build, as for

0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:38.919
<v Speaker 1>the shapes, and that's up to the buyers. Artists have

0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:43.520
<v Speaker 1>built human sized wooden cameras, eagles, hair dryers, pineapples, and

0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:49.000
<v Speaker 1>beer bottles for their customers. In Ghana. Bodies can spend

0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:52.440
<v Speaker 1>months or even years inside refrigerated storage units, while the

0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:56.280
<v Speaker 1>family of the deceased organizes the funeral. After the day

0:05:56.320 --> 0:05:58.280
<v Speaker 1>and time are set and the coffin is paid for,

0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:02.480
<v Speaker 1>the event can proceed. Gone in Funerals are lengthy and

0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:05.479
<v Speaker 1>expensive affairs that might last for three full days at

0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:10.000
<v Speaker 1>a time with the community and extended family. The dozens

0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:16.039
<v Speaker 1>to hundreds of guests are attended to by musicians, DJs, photographers, caterers, bartenders,

0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.520
<v Speaker 1>and morticians. Visitors might help the inner family recoup some

0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.920
<v Speaker 1>of the costs by raising funds on site while also

0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:31.560
<v Speaker 1>dancing the night away. Today's episode is based on the

0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:35.360
<v Speaker 1>article Gana's Fantasy Coffins Are to Die for on HowStuffWorks

0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:38.440
<v Speaker 1>dot com, written by Mark Vancini. Brain Stuff is production

0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.039
<v Speaker 1>of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and

0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:44.520
<v Speaker 1>is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio,

0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:47.960
<v Speaker 1>visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:54.840
<v Speaker 1>to your favorite shows.