Traditional funeral rites and social expenditures

Traditional funeral rites are expensive and affect household vulnerability in the study area. For an adult to be accepted into the ancestral world when he or she dies, or to qualify as an ancestor, his or her funeral has to meet a three-phase funeral ritual requirement. These stages include – (1) Kuum Nyoka, (2) Bǔǔka and (3) Kuure. In order to illustrate what it takes to go through these stages, I will centre my discussion in reference to a case, the case of Atugba who performed the Kuure of his late Yidaana (Landlord) as the present Yidaana of the Yire during my fieldwork in Yua. I personally attended this funeral and made some observations. These observations later proofed useful when Atugba granted me an interview a few days after the funeral on the subject – funeral rites celebrations. According to Atugba, his Uncle who was the Yidaana passed away three years ago. As the current Yidaana, he had responsibility to perform the funeral rites of his late Yidaana in order that the deceased can be accepted by the ancestors – for him to qualify as an ancestor him self. This is usually dream and value held in high esteem for any person who led a meaningful life in the entire basin.

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The first rite he organized was the Kuum Nyoka, that is, the burial ceremony that is often described as a „fresh funeral‟. This rite is essentially a burial ceremony that is associated with offerings, sacrifices, and the provision of food and drinks for key players in the ceremony. The ceremony lasted for about three days with key actors playing key functions. The first group of key players are the grave diggers/undertakers. He offered several „gifts‟ to them in honour of the deceased. These included slaughtering two (2) sheep and two (2) goats, and the provision of food and drinks. Another key group of players are the drummers who play and dance to traditional music during such occasions.

Five of such groups participated in the Kuum Nyoka. Several guinea fowls and fowls were also slaughtered for preparing meals for drummers and dancers. Alcoholic drinks were added to motivate them wake to perform well during the funeral. For the Pokima, that is, sympathizers who kept wake outside the compound, another goat and several fowls were slaughtered for preparing meals for their refreshment. Atugba received several donations of fowls and grains from relations, neighbours and friends from within and without the community to support feeding of the guests.

The second rite Atugba performed was the Bǔǔka. This ceremony is also a blend of traditional rituals, sacrifices and social activities usually lasting about 3 days. In all four key activities are associated with this ceremony. These include (1) traditional offerings, sacrifices and spiritual diagnosis of the cause of death; (2) merry making over food and drinks and; (3) the war dance. First, the Bǔǔka is meant to diagnose the cause of death. A Bakolgo (soothsayer) and elders meet and after a series of rituals and spiritual consultations of the ancestral world lead by the Bakolgo; the cause of death is pronounced and made public. Is death a natural call to join his ancestors or somebody caused the death? Prior to this, the Yidaana would have done earlier consultation of a Bakolgo on the cause of death but this information is meant only for circulation among key family members. The essence of this second consultation is to confirm cause of death and to make cause of death public. A different Bakolgo presides over each stage of consultation. If it is established that he died a natural death, they make offereings and sacrifices to the ancestors to thank them. If it is established that somebody caused it, they

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still take it in good faith and make offereings and sacrifices to facilitate the deceased acceptance into the ancestral world (Photo 2.1).

Photo 2.1: Sacrificial cow as offering during Bǔǔka for Atugba‟s late Yidaana

Source: Field Photo 2009.

The diagnosis of cause of death is usually accompanied by traditional offerings to the deceased first as tribute to his „great‟ legacy and second as a symbol that the deceased left behind a family of good economic standing. In the case of Atugba, this meant slaughtering a number of animals including one (1) cow (photo 2.1), eight (8) goats, three (3) sheep and several fowls and guinea fowls. The extended family contributed to buy the cow. In addition, individual family members presented goats and sheep and contributed several quantities of grains. Friends and neighbours contributed fowls and guinea fowls as well as grains to support the process – lots of numbers in in-kind grain contributions are often involved. The fowls were used for preparing food for guest. As custom demands, the family was only entitled to the head and skins of the livestock that were slaughtered as offerings. The remaining portion of the meat is shared among the elders

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who came for the Bǔǔka. Pito (Sorghum beer) is brewed for ritual purposes and for entertaining guest (Photo 2.2).

Photo 2.2: „Pito‟ brewed outside a compound in funeral rites of an old woman in Yua

Source: Field Photo 2009

There are variations in the Bǔǔka depending on whether the deceased is regarded as elderly (man/woman) or young (man/woman). The Bǔǔka of a young man or lady is not made a big function. The Bakolgo is invited and a small group does the Bǔǔka. The Bǔǔka of an elderly person is made a big function. An old woman for instance will likely have many children and grandchildren, and all of them will attend the funeral. For both elderly deceased men and women, the sorghum beer (Pito) that is brewed is done outside because large volumes and many people are involved (Photo 2.2). Such people turn to have a large family and social following who will participate in the funeral rites so that there is no enough space for accommodating this activity indoors. On the contrary, that of younger men and women is done in the courtyard because no large volumes and people

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are involved. Such people do not have a large family and large social following that will give rise to a large gathering for the funeral rites.

An important cultural activity during the Bǔǔka is the Diia (war dance) especially if the deceased was regarded a warrior. This may entail different groups of war dancers dressed in war regalia (bows and arrows), singing, and dancing to war songs (Photo 2.3). This performance is known as the „war dance‟. In the case of an elderly woman, the Diia is not performed but all other activities associated with the Bǔǔka are done. As part of social change driven by the interest of the youth, hired services of modern musical bands that play modern systems of music are organized alongside Diaa (Photo 2.4). It is common to have a noisy environment arising from the mix of these traditional and modern systems of music, although from time to time one system gives way for the other. For most of the youth, this hired modern musical system is what keeps them awake and active throughout the funeral rites. It has indeed also become a major attraction to the youth and fast becoming a standard to be measured by the youth of every family in every funeral rite.

Cost is involved and has become a newly emergent additional social expenditure that is footed by the youth. In the case of Atugba, it was the youth; specifically the children within the extended family hired the band that provided the music at the funeral (Photo 2.4).

The third and final rite is the Kuure, referred to as „the funeral‟. This stage is associated with some rituals and merry making over food and drinks. An important traditional practise at this stage is that the elders come together, pour libation and make some traditional offerings and sacrifices by slaughtering fowls. A deity is then moulded in the house to represent the deceased and is symbolic that the deceased is an ancestor. For the rest of the life of the Yidaana, and subsequent generations of Yidaama, they will pour libation and make offerings to this deity, to seek his mediation and the interventions in the ancestral/spiritual world for the general wellbeing of the family.

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Photo 2.3: Diaa during a Bǔǔka at the funeral ground by war dancers

Source: Field Photo 2009

This last funeral rite is very important because it qualifies the deceased as an ancestor to which everybody in the society seeks to be after death. It is believed that if somebody dies, until this final funeral rite is performed, even if it takes 100 years, that person will not be accepted by the ancestral world and will therefore, not qualify as an ancestor.

During the final funeral rite, a lot of food and drink is prepared for consumption during this ceremony. Family members, neighbours and friends contribute a wide range of grains - sorghum for brewing „pito‟, beans for making bean cakes, millet for preparing TZ and the boiling of Bambara beans – all for consumption and merry making. Smoked guinea fowls are used for preparing food for important guest.

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Photo 2.4: Modern musical system organized by the youth at the funeral ground

Source: Field Photo 2010

The case of Atugba illustrates the typical funeral rite in the community and shows that a funeral in the community is an expensive business. These funeral rites with the exception of the Kuum Nyoka (burial) are often organized during the off farm season (November to April). Many families strive to maintain standards in order to honour the deceased and to maintain family prestige and social status in the community. However, this comes with it high social spending and this adversely affect the capability of households involved to meet their basic needs especially food thereafter as subsequent discussions (chapters 4 to 5) will reveal. This is particularly so given the high incidence of poverty in the area.

There is the option of celebrating funerals at lower cost but even the poor find it difficult to finance such costs. The fact remains that funerals are generally expensive for all categories of people and this contributes to the state of vulnerability after such expenditures have been undertaken. Financing funerals and funeral rites requirements of livestock, poultry and a wide range of foodstuff reduces household food stocks and savings among a large number of households.

86 2.6 Policy planning and regional development

In the domain of policy planning, both colonial and postcolonial development policies have partly shaped the present state of development (underdevelopment) in northern Ghana. At independence, Nkrumah‟s CPP government inherited an exploitative-based economy marked by significant spatial disparities in development between northern and southern Ghana. Colonial development policy emphasized development of places in [southern Ghana] where cash crops such as cocoa, coffee, timber, rubber, palm oil and various kinds of mineral resources including gold, diamond, and bauxite were mined for export (Bening, 1975, 1990; Kuu-ire, 2009). Economic and social infrastructure such as roads, railway lines, schools and health services were also concentrated in these areas to support the exploitative-based economy. Thus, development in terms of infrastructure and services came to be concentrated in the area between Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi described as the „Golden Triangle‟. The northern territories comprising today‟s northern Ghana [north of Kintampo] was largely deprived of the investments needed for its development. This neglect of investments in the northern territories was partly a deliberate discriminatory colonial development policy that supported its designation as a

„labour reserve‟ to service the exploitative economy south of Kintampo (Songsore, 2001;

Saaka, 2001). This set in motion a „north – south‟ labour migration stream involving movements of the northern active labour force to work on cocoa farms and mines south of Kintampo, southern Ghana. Due partly to these policy interventions, northern Ghana became impoverished and underdeveloped relative to the southern part of the country.

Successive governments since independence have made efforts within the total endeavour of national development, to accelerate the rate of national development, especially northern Ghana. Not much has been achieved to date. The development gap between northern and southern Ghana remains. In some areas of development, the gap has widened. Efforts at bridging the gap through postcolonial development policy have produced dismal results. The enormity of poverty remains unacceptably high (Ghana, 2003; Dittoh, 2008; Kuu-ire, 2009) and worsened by contemporary development policy and macro-economic conditions.

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I will discuss postcolonial development policy and their impact on development (with focus on northern Ghana) around the past two governments (eras), the Rawlings and Kuffour regimes. The first era represents a period of liberal economic reforms and social development programmes under the Rawlings regime. Rawlings first took over power in a 1979 military coup but it was short lived as it handed over to a democratically elected government. The overview of policies and development programmes here spans two separate but continuous eras. First was the PNDC military regime under the leadership of Rawlings from 1981 to 1991. Second was the NDC constitutional government from 1992 to 1999 also under the leadership of Rawlings. The Rawlings regime embarked on an ERP under the support of the World Bank and IMF in 1983. The overall objective of the ERP was to reduce Ghana‟s debt and to improve upon its trading position in the global economy. The specific objectives included many specific policies: lowering inflation through prudent fiscal, monetary and trade policies; increasing foreign exchange flows into priority sectors; restructuring the country‟s economic institutions; rehabilitation of economic infrastructure for enhancing production and export; and increasing the availability of essential consumer goods (Berry, 1994). The implementation of economic reforms lead to initial expenditure cuts, improved tax collection and reduced budget deficits. A series of cedi devaluations also boosted exports. The reforms saw a remarkable shift towards liberal economic and structural adjustment policies that saw a shrinking role of the state in economic development. Many state owned enterprises were put on divestiture and many workers were retrenched. The state however, maintained its role in the provision of social infrastructure and services that also saw the introduction and or increment of user fees for a wide range of social services in health and education.

By the end of 1991, ERP had improved the country‟s international financial standing and ability to service loans (Ibid.). Critics of the reforms however, maintained that it had failed to bring about fundamental transformation of the national economy. Therefore, the economy still heavily relied on cocoa and some agricultural commodities mainly produced in the southern part of Ghana. The export economy therefore, mainly developed south of Kintampo with virtually no participation or very limited participation of northern Ghana in the export trade. Structural adjustments came with it significant hardships because some Ghanaians were retrenched in the wake of divestiture of state owned

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enterprises. Trade liberalization policies had made Ghanaian products and their prices uncompetitive. Importation of cheaper food products exposed domestic producers to unfair competition and tended to serve as disincentives for production. Agricultural subsidies were removed. Fertilizer was affected and production cost was high. Many farmers could not simply compete for the market at high production costs. After a decade of adjustment, studies revealed growing poverty and widening inequality (GSS, 2002;

Kuu-ire, 2009). From an ailing economy in the late 1970s, results of adjustments began to show positive signs of economic recovery in the 1980s right through to the 1990s. Many Ghanaians still suffered from the impact of adjustment policies. Some social protection measures such as PAMSCAD and user-fee exemptions in health delivery were introduced to ameliorate the sufferings of Ghanaians. These special programmes helped but achievements were modest as the incidence of poverty still prevailed and loomed in northern Ghana in particular.

When Ghana returned to constitutional rule in 1992, the National Democratic Congress Government (NDC) under the leadership of Rawlings launched the „GHANA –VISION 2020‟ that expressed the long term vision of the country as - “to become a middle income country by the year 2020” (Ghana, 1995: iv). Ghana Vision 2020 was a comprehensive National Development Policy Framework (NDPF) that articulated long term, 25 –years (1996 -2020) perspective for Ghana‟s socio-economic development. It outlined medium to long-term co-ordinated programmes of economic and social development policies in the context of decentralization of local governance. Under this comprehensive policy framework, northern Ghana witnessed some significant improvement in economic and social infrastructure and services during the 1990s.The extension of relatively stable hydro-powered rural electrification for the first time, tarred roads especially in the northeastern corridor, and the expansion of health and educational infrastructure resulted in the extension of some social services to new frontiers. The establishment of the University for Development Studies (1992) and the Tamale Polytechnic extended higher education to northern Ghana for the first time. In the 1990s, Ghana Government in collaboration with IFAD initiated spatially targeted schemes to enhance agricultural production, food security and reduce poverty in the three northern

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regions. IFAD provided most of the funding with counterpart funding from the Government of Ghana. These initiatives culminated into three IFAD projects for the three northern regions: LACOSREP for the UER; UWADEP for the UWR; and NORPREP for NR. LACOSREP for instance had five objectives and components: (a) increase food production and household incomes of rural families; (b) establish mechanisms for environmental protection and improvement; (c) strengthen formal and informal beneficiaries‟ organizations; and (d) improve the economic status of women through credit support (IFAD, 2010). Through this programme, many dams in the region had been rehabilitated or constructed providing reservoir capacities by the close of 1998 to support irrigation of about 463 ha. Nineteen dam site nurseries were established and about 631,000 seedlings of various kinds of trees planted for catchment area protection. To the end of 1997, 43 trials involving crop varieties, soil fertility and crop husbandry practices had been carried out. Since the project inception, the Crop Service Department has controlled four major pest outbreaks covering 600 ha in a range of crops involving sorghum, millet, maize, rice and onion. Assisted and supervised seed growing, marketing, and training of about 600 groups with 9000 farmers on safe insecticide use and handling.

In the area of credit financing, the ADB disbursed a total of 2 billion cedis (68 % of the credit) to 8150 beneficiaries across five districts in the region while other banks disbursed the remaining credit (IFAD, 2010). Although all these interventions increased dry season production and thereby increased agricultural production in the UER and in the other regions, food security and poverty is still a major challenge as evidenced by the statistics on poverty. This suggests that many measures did not affect poverty reduction in a significant way although it opened up certain investment opportunities. The need for effective implementation through possible review of implementation strategies in possibly subsequent phases of these programmes were echoed by IFADs own evaluation teams (ibid.). Economic recovery strategies such as fees in social services, removal of agricultural subsidies and cutting back on government subventions to state enterprises tended to affect the poorest the most. These constraints also affected the implementation of IFAD supported agricultural programmes. The three northern regions have remained the poorest throughout the 1990s until date (GSS, 2003).

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The Kufour administration embarked on poverty reduction through an economic growth strategy when it took over power in 2001. They implemented the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS I – 2003 to 2005) (Ghana, 2003) and the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II – 2006 to 2009) (Ghana, 2005). The government accessed the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) debt cancellation support package from the donor community. The HIPC initiative was conditionally tied to poverty reduction and this made more resources available for supporting the implementation of poverty reduction programmes in the country. The LACOSREP programme continued to be supported by Government under MoFA and in respect of GPRS. The GPRS II sought to increase access to irrigation and mechanized agriculture, access to credit for agricultural inputs, develop selected crops, increase access to extension services, improve agricultural marketing and increase access to the global export market. Similarly, implementation of the US funded MCA programme as a growth oriented development package disadvantaged northern Ghana. The north was largely excluded in the selection of beneficiaries except for two districts in NR. The Upper East and West regions with the highest incidence of poverty did not benefit from this programme. The export base of the economy was not developed and the north continuous to be at the fringes of the export sector till date. Some other development programmes were introduced during the Kufour administration. These include the SFP, NHIS, Capitation Grants, LEAP and MASLOC aimed at improving education, increasing access to micro-finance and improving the ability of poor households to meet basic needs. Although the national economy grew and some significant investment went into the social sector under GPRS, the manner in which these programmes were implemented did not transform northern Ghana in particular.

This is partly because there were no targeted schemes aimed at poverty reduction in northern Ghana, so that although economic gains were made under GPRS, the poorest of the country did not benefit much from this growth. For instance, a poverty survey revealed that although national poverty reduced from 36 to 18 % between 2000 and 2005, trends remained higher for northern Ghana (Kuu-ire, 2009: 186-187).

The outcomes of some of these policy interventions affect livelihoods, and thus vulnerability at the local level. Given the predominance of farming as a livelihood, the

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removal of agricultural subsidies as part of macro-economic policy reforms combined with high inflation rates have largely lead to high prices of agricultural inputs since the early 1980s. In the context of poverty, majority of peasant farmers lack economic access to inputs such as fertilizer, seed and chemicals for production. Although the current government re-introduced subsidies for fertilizer in 2009 in recognition of this problem, the level of subsidy is minimal and such interventions are yet to benefit the very poor.

The activities and „hijacking‟ tendency of commercial farmers and some other implementation bottlenecks have so far deprived peasant farmers from benefiting from fertilizer subsidies. Thus, they still lack economic access to fertilizer even though soil fertilities are known to have declined considerably over the years. Aside these factors, trade liberalization has resulted in the importation of cheap agricultural products (eg., rice, canned tomatoes) crowding out peasant farmers in the competitive access to local markets. In this respect, peasant farmers have limited access to good local markets for their products. Second, they are not well integrated into the national economy. These structural constraints have secluded them from mainstream processes of globalization (integration) and the benefits of participating in global economic production. Because of the lack of adequate investments in economic infrastructure, access to irrigation as an alternative to rain fed agriculture is limited. Poor road infrastructure and transportation networks have further held back the economic production potentials in northern Ghana.

This further limits the opportunities that exist in northern Ghana, and for that matter in the study area for viable economic production.

From the discussions so far, the Atankwidi basin itself, presents unique risks that households have to deal with in the pursuit of their livelihoods. These risks factors arise from multiple domains and collectively make household livelihoods susceptible to vulnerability. Physical environmental change presents unique set of physical risks that households have to deal with in their livelihoods. As the discussion show, such environmental change is driven by both human factors at the basin level and global environmental change. For instance, while desertification and land degradation is partly attributable to population pressure and land use change in agriculture, such changes are reinforced by climatic changes linked to global climatic changes. Risk factors arising

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from environmental change are multiple and adversely affect economic production in the Atankwidi basin. The overall impact has been low economic production, especially agriculture and excruciating poverty that undermine ability to meet basic needs in the basin. Beyond physical factors, some social characteristics of the population predispose them to increased livelihood vulnerability. Social expenditures on funeral rites and care for high levels of dependants at household levels also contribute to livelihood vulnerability. In addition, discriminatory colonial development policies against the

„Northern Territories‟ partly contributed to the state of underdevelopment in the area.

This led to a wide developmental gap between the northern half and southern half of the country to the disadvantage of the former. Although successive governments have made efforts to accelerate development, commitment to investments has been low so that the entire north continues to experience chronic poverty.