The Ivory Coast is situated in the west part of Africa. It has thirteen million inhabitants. French is the national language. The Ivory Coast has four ethnic groups, which are the Akan, the Krou, the Malinke, and the Senoufo. The Akan are located in the East and Middle East. The Krou are located in the West and Middle West. The Malinke are located in the Northwest. The Senoufo are located in the Northeast. All of those ethnic groups are subdivided into seventy-one ethnic groups In the funeral tradition of the Akan, the ethnic group I come from, when someone dies, the family organizes the funeral in the village where he comes from. The Akan family is an extended family, not a nuclear family. Most of the time the entire village organizes the funeral. As we all know, death brings sadness in the family. It is the same in the Akan community. This aspect will stay until they bury the deceased. The night of the burial, the situation changes for the rest of the village. The deceased's family brings food and drink for them to thank them for their support. One year after, the deceased's family organizes a big party for everybody in the village; they also invite friends who are not from the village to celebrate with them. That ceremony is organized to free the deceased's family from death. The deceased's family, in the morning, goes to church to pray for the late family member. Then, the family goes to the cemetery with a specialist of funeral rituals to do some sacrificial rituals, as they use to do before the spread of Christianity in Africa. Those sacrifices are made for the ancestors. The specialist implores them to keep the deceased near them and to also support the deceased's family in their day to day living. The sacrifices involve offerings to the ancestors. Those offerings are alcoholic drinks and domestic animals like cows, sheep, and chickens. Then, they go backs to the village to share the inheritance between family members. It is after the ceremony that the deceased's spouse can be remarried. 
Finally, at night, everybody celebrates the deliverance of death from the deceased's family; in another words, they celebrate the release of the family from pain, with dance, food, and drink. In the picture, my friends and I were coming from one of those ceremonies. We stopped on the road to get some drinks. |