The Craziest Funeral We Have Ever Been To!

Last week a seven day funeral was held in Dipale. It was the funeral of the former chief's eldest son. He was also our counterpart Ibrahim's senior uncle. He died 7 monthes ago. So many people came to Dipale for the funeral. We have never seen so many people in our village.

On the first day of the funeral, members of the dead person's family get their head shaved. If they don't want to get their head shaved, they pay money.

While they shave everyone's head, the drummers are playing continuously. They only stop to shoot off guns between shavings. They invited Scott to sit and play with them for a little while. Being one of the cheif's drummer is a tradition that is passed down through the family. At a very young age the drummers teach their children how to play the traditional songs. The drummers also act as oral historians. The songs they learn tell the story of the Dagomba people.

Sorry about the sideways video. We can't rotate videos in one of our cameras.
Actually we can we just learned how,but it is too late now

After all the members of the family has shaved their heads, all the elders gather under a canopy to have prayers.

The whole community gathers around the family as they go to meet the elders for prayers.

The two with the brown hats are the eldest son and daughter of the dead man. We aren't too sure who the guy in the white is, but he looks awesome.


After the prayers have concluded, two of the grandchildren dance with the drummers




On the last day of the funeral, the family leaves their compound and circles the house three times. Two of the grandchildren wear cardboard hats and leaves are placed around the bottom of the hat. It is kind of like a big parade around the house.

The cheif's warriors stand around the compound and shoot guns off when the family passes by. They are only shooting blanks, but it is still a little frightening. Since the village is prodominantly muslim there is no alcohol. An interesting aspect of the cheif's warriors is that they are allowed to drink, which means they were a little toasted. So the only people in the village who drink are the ones with the guns.

The chief's grandson rode the cheif's horse for the march around the compound. Many of the visitors waited to see the family come around the house. The men under the umbrellas are chief's from nieghboring villages.

After the family has gone around the house three times, everyone celebrates and they shoot off guns like crazy. It is so loud. Then all the members in the family dance to the drummers.

During the evening, after a prayer and dinner break, everyone gathers back at the funeral house. There is druming and dancing until day break. We stayed up until two in the morning. it was a blast.

Another Baby Naming Ceremony

Our supervisor Obaku’s second wife just had a baby.  It is his sixth child.  We got invited to the baby naming ceremony. A man on a motorcycle came to our house to formally invite us.

Our invitations. These are cough drop flavored candies which sounds gross, but they are not that bad tasting. They our popular because during the dry season, it is dry and dusty and everyone has sore throats and stuffy noses. This weather makes for some amazingly black boogers. 

 

Obaku, his wife, the new baby, and another one of his daughters.  Obaku is pretty young to already have two wives and six children, but his father was a chief and he is better off than most men.

Wedding Day

 

Sunday we attended a wedding in Tamale of our friend Fataou.  The bride and groom spend the day at different houses.  First we went to the groom’s father’s house to greet the family. 

From left to right:  Fataou (the groom), Scott, James (our assemblyman),Katy, Jennifer, and Fataou’s father a sub chief of Tamale. The first thing the guests do is greet the elder of the family.

When you greet a chief he will give you kola.  It is a stimulant you chew.  It tastes awful and is really bitter.  We took very small bites to be polite, but it takes a lot of effort not to gag.

Next we visited the sub chief’s wives.  He has four.  Katy and Jennifer borrowed two of their scarves for the picture.  They were very sweet ladies.

Here are a few of the children at the groom’s family’s house.

 

We got another photo with the groom and his sister.

You can’t leave a wedding with out eating.  Four of us shared this T-zed and groundnut soup with okra.  The soup was great! They also served us malta drinks.  Malta is a drink that tastes like liquid raison bran.  It’s not really one of our favorites.   

Jennifer and James eating the T-zed and soup from the communal bowl.

 

After eating we walked to go greet the bride at her family’s house.  These are some members of the bride’s family we met on the way.  The one in white is not the bride.

Katy, the bride, Jennifer and Scott.  We had a blast at the wedding.  This was only the first day of the wedding.  The bride and groom will not actually see each other until the next day. A wedding can actually take up to four days. 

The Road Leaving Our Village

The other day we rode on the back of a sand truck to the main road. We took some footage leaving Dipale so you could see our village. It is a little bumpy.

Things you will see in this video are our counterpart Ibrahim's purple compound on the left side of the road. The Cheif's palace is the house with the blue truck. It is the only truck in the village. The school is opposite of the soccer fields were you will see the kids playing soccer.




This video is 5K down the road in our nieghboring village Tunayili. At the end you will see a a bunch of kids yelling, "Silaminga,silaminga!" It basically means stranger. We get this all of the time when we leave the village. It feels like were are on a float in a parade sometimes.

A Day at Dipale School

Tuesday we went to Dipale school and visited Mr. Babamo's P5 class. They drew pictures of their houses, family, and things around their homes. We will send their pictures to our friend Blair's 5th grade class in Moore, OK.

Dipale school Kindergarten classroom, surprisingly there is only one goat on the school ground.

The students drawing their pictures.

Mr. Babamo talking to the students.
The students with their final works of art. We took pictures of a few so you could see all of their hard work.

We had a lot of fun with the kids. The kids loved it. There are no art classes in the school, so it was a great opportunity for them to exercise their creativity.

Fire Festival

We may have a new favorite holiday! Last week was the Dagomba fire festival, Bugum Chugu. To celebrate,the whole village assembles in front of the chief's palace around eight. Everyone has long torches made of bound grass. The kids in each family spend the day making them for their relatives. Our counterpart Ibrahim's children made them for us. The drummers begin to drum to announce the arrival of the elders. Traditionally the chief would come out and light the first torch, but since our chief is sick, one of the elders started ours. Then everyone lights their torch off of the first one and begins to march through town, singing and dancing. The young men of the village are at the heart of the parade with the drummers, dressed in traditional clothes. There faces are covered in ash and they carry machetes, guns, tools, or juju sticks. Every so often the parade will stop moving and the young men will test their strength by screaming and pushing each other over. It is really crazy and the women, children, and everyone else backs away during this time. At the end of the procession there is a tree in which everyone throws their torch on to light it on fire. After the tree is set on fire everyone walks back to the village. They gather fresh branches from shea and neem trees raising them while singing and dancing all the way to the chiefs palace. After the chief's palace, the drummers lead everyone to different compounds. People run into the compounds and water is thrown on them. We went all through the village, sprinting through the dark. It was a blast. Living in a village with no electricity made this celebration that much cooler. So our videos kind of really suck, because it was so dark and dusty. Also it is really difficult to film while holding a giant torch and it was way more exciting to participate than record it. We went ahead and posted them for you to look at. There is no way to show how amazing this was.

The Garden

We haven't taken nearly enough photos of the farm. Here are a few before and after photos.

Right now we are growing okra, cabbage, aleefu and bra. Aleefu and bra are both leafy greens used in soup. They both can be used like we would use spinach.

This is the garden/farm just as we began weeding

Here are two beds we built

Scott and Ibraheam harvesting aleefu from one of the beds a few monthes later

Jennifer with Ibraheam carrying aleefu to be sent to Tunayili school

This is bra just before harvest

Some girls from Dipale Primary School harvesting bra