Funerals

Burying at all costs

The anthropologist Joël Noret, of the Université libre de Bruxelles, wrote the reference study on the subject, the fruit of research in southern Benin since the early 2000s. His 2010 book follows a real mourning step by step, that of an old woman, from the announcement of her death to the last rites after the burial^[2]. It shows how the dead person’s lineages negotiate, and sometimes quarrel over, the many ceremonies of mourning, and how mortuaries now make it possible to keep the body longer than custom once allowed, while everything is prepared^[3].

Families may spend considerable sums. In a 2023 article, Noret analyses these investments as inseparably emotional, social and economic: people bury also to express their grief, to hold their rank, and to honour a debt towards the one who leaves^[4]. Mourning, he concludes, very often means giving of oneself^[5].

Funerals by family and religion

Southern Benin buries its dead according to very diverse religions, and the same families often combine several traditions. Joël Noret has studied the organisation of Catholic funerals in Abomey, and how the Celestial Church of Christ buries and honours its dead^[6]. Everywhere the question is the same: what is owed to the dead, and who is responsible? Not every family holds the same funerals: practices change with origin, religion, lineage and the circumstances of death. A sudden death, the death of a child or that of an elder with a religious function do not call for the same gestures^[1].

When funerals remain incomplete

When funerals are said to be incomplete, one must avoid hasty interpretations. It does not automatically mean that a dead person will return, punish someone, or that a catastrophe will occur. In a traditional view, an unfinished ceremony rather means that a family or ritual obligation was not fulfilled as it should have been. The question then becomes: what should have been done, by whom, and why was it not done? That is where the Fâ can have a place, when a family seeks to understand a situation; see What is the Fâ?. But the Fâ must never be used to manufacture fear: the bokonon interprets, he does not decide in the family’s place^[1].

What I refuse

I am very wary of people who immediately tell a family: “Your dead one is angry,” “Your ancestor is blocking you,” or “You must pay this sum to settle it.” That is a way of working I refuse. A grieving family is vulnerable, and it is precisely at such moments that a practitioner must show restraint. One may help a family understand what remains to be done; one has no right to exploit its grief^[1].

What to expect from a serious practitioner

A serious practitioner first listens to the family, its history and its worries. He says what he understands, even when the family hoped to hear something else. He states clearly what is needed, why it is needed, and what truly belongs to the work. And he does not promise what the Fâ does not allow him to promise. Being paid fairly for one’s work is normal; exploiting the fear of a grieving family never is. It is the same rule I defend for every consultation: see The bokonon^[1].

Death that transforms the bond

Funerals open the place of the dead among the ancestors. Once completed, they allow the family to continue its relationship with them in another form: memory, obligations, and, in some traditions, the visible return of the ancestors, as with the Egungun in the Nago towns^[1].