Soft comforting parting words such as “Rest in peace,” “Da yie,” “Nyame mfa wo nsie” and “Sleep well in the Lord,” are common when paying tributes to the dead. But during the week, such words were seriously challenged and virtually mocked at on social media and other news channels in an unfortunate incident that seemed like a movie.
Per a video that I saw and pieces of news that I read in the tabloids and on the internet earlier in the week, the conclusion I came to was that the dead should never be asked to rest in peace or sleep well because even at a solemn place like a graveside and even before the priest’s final committal, anything can happen to the lifeless body of a dear one about to be buried.
The video and news that made the rounds pointed to a drama which unfolded last Saturday when a mortuary attendant purportedly seized captive, a corpse that was about to be laid to rest at the Tema Community 9 cemetery.
According to the story, the family of the deceased allegedly refused to pay the mortuary attendant an amount of GHC40 which he had demanded for dressing the corpse for burial. While waiting for the family to pay him the money, he went on to attend to other corpses. On his blindside and before he realised, the family had managed to smuggle the body out without paying his GHC40.
As per the story which was published in Today newspaper on 15th February, 2017 and monitored on Kasapafmonline.com, the attendant, in the company of his friend, quickly went to the graveyard and at a point when the family was about to bury the dead man, seized the coffin, opened it, picked out the body and started heading back to the mortuary with it.
Much as the story sounded like an African movie, there have been pictures in circulation showing the attendant and his friend actually at the graveside of the deceased and seen removing the body from the coffin. What is surprising is that while all that drama unfolded, family members and some sympathisers stood by watching on while some others were busy taking pictures and videos with their mobile phones.
Since the unfortunate drama at the graveside last Saturday, there have been reports that the management of the Tema General Hospital has issued out a press statement indicating that a team had been put in place to investigate the conduct of the mortuary attendant.
But this unfolding event baffles and leaves one wondering as to what happened to the reverence that our culture is supposed to give to the dead? So closing the casket on the dead is not the final rest? The whole incident sounds disgusting and an affront to the dignity and respect we normally accord to the dead as far as our culture is concerned. Why would the anger of a mortuary attendant over GHC40 be turned on a dead body, in the heart of a cemetery and about to be buried? And then we have mourners who would look on helpless for the sake of GHC40 for their departed to be so humiliated even in at his graveside?
One does hear about desecrated and looted graves in some cemeteries and one frowns on those acts. However, the story at the Tema Community 9 cemetery is probably the height of it. These despicable and horrendous acts tell us that we should not be too quick in bidding farewell to our loved ones and pronouncing a peaceful rest on them because even in the grave, they could be held to ransom.
What unfolded at the Tema Community 9 cemetery was nothing but a truism that we have reached a point of utmost indiscipline in all aspects of our lives. There is no fear and there is simply no order. People would dare anything and are prepared to take the law into their own hands and play it according to their own dictates, no matter the circumstance.
Where on earth would a hospital’s mortuary attendant, over and above his scheduled job, fix his own terms with a customer and hold them to ransom in default? Is that even not a case of corruption? That someone who is paid a monthly salary for his normal job uses his employer’s time and sometimes resources to demand from a customer further payment on his own terms?
How rotten can it get that a bereaved family could be blackmailed simply because we love the dead? We have allowed unruly behaviour to go on unchallenged for too long. It is almost like destroying institutions and practices and to some extent, our culture.
It is good that the hospital’s management has taken the matter up with the promise to investigate what happened at the Tema General Hospital’s mortuary last Saturday. One can only hope that the hospital sends a strong message out there to all of its staff members who are involved in any untoward practices that can hold patients and families to ransom.
All said and done, I would not be surprised to see all this captured in the next African movie near you – “Holding a corpse to ransom – parts 1 and 2.”
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