Unusual Coffin Designs Made in Ghana

Ghana, currently hosting the 2008 African Nations Cup, has a unique product: Custom-made coke bottle coffins and other types of coffins. The tradition started in the 1950s is a thriving business in Ghana generating worldwide orders.

Near Teshie, a suburb in Ghana, there is a coffin business company called Paa Joe Works where they make a unique type of coffin. At this workshop, you will find elaborately decorated burial caskets with various shapes. Some of the coffins are in the form of an airplane, whale, football, lion, shoe, snake, a white Mercedes Benz or a Coke bottle. Emmanuel Doku the manager of this workshop spoke to the Associated Press and said:

"We have customers from all round the world. The idea is that you order a coffin to reflect what the person has done in their life…So the lobster could be for a fisherman, the cucumber for a grocer, the aero plane for someone who has worked in the airline industry, or perhaps who used to fly a lot for his job."

He said the tradition started in the 1950s when a coffin maker, Ataa Owuo, wanted to build something special for his grandmother who had died. He built an airplane coffin because she had never traveled in her life. With that coffin, he hoped it would take her to heaven. Doku said they get orders from all over the world and Ghana is the only place they make such coffins. When asked whether he had to make any unusual coffin designs, he said a German doctor asked for a womb coffin in 1992. The doctor had sent him a plastic model of the body part for design. What do you think about these coffins? Is it cool, extravagant or just plain weird?