Buying a personalized coffin in Africa

In Ghana, coffins are designed to look like Coke bottles, fish, and cars. One woman's story of ordering one of her own

AS SOON AS we shake hands, I know I'm going to like Eric Kpakpo Adotey. He's got sparkly eyes and the sweetest smile. He's sturdily built, and has a look of youthful vitality, something I feel is a good thing to find in a person — particularly when that person is going to be your coffin-maker. Eric and I meet at his workshop in Teshi, a seaside suburb of Accra, the sprawling capital of Ghana. Here, strung along a coastal road like beads on a necklace, are ramshackle shops and shacks housing the offices and workshops of traders, car mechanics, fishermen — and coffin-makers.

Commercial enterprises share the roadside with stalls whose neat pyramids of oranges are shaded by tattered beach umbrellas. There's plenty of time to take it all in. Traffic in Accra makes for a stressful visit, even when you're not on a mission to commission your own coffin. Still, two things about Ghana have, on previous visits, left me wanting to return. First, I always come away convinced that Ghanaians are the nicest people in the world. Second, they have the craziest coffins.

Ghana's tradition of fantasy coffins started by accident in the 1950s, when a chief from the Ga tribe who had made his fortune in cocoa farming commissioned a well-known carpenter to build him a giant cocoa pod as a ceremonial palanquin. The chief died before his palanquin was finished, so it was transformed into a casket and used for his burial. Today, Ghanaians who can afford it are buried in anything from an enormous Coca-Cola bottle to a massive fish. Monstrous chickens and scaled-down elephants are popular models, as are luxury cars. Majestic eagle caskets are generally reserved for chiefs, and huge vegetables for farmers. Boldly carved in wood and painted in bright colors, they're more than coffins — they are works of art.

OVER THE YEARS, human bodies have been buried in all kinds of things — baskets, jars, earthenware pots, animal skins, dugout tree trunks, and even whole suits of armor. And coffins were not always used for burial. In 17th-century England, many parishes had a single coffin that was loaned out to parishioners to contain the shrouded body during the funeral service. Moreover, for many centuries, the graves of ordinary people were merely temporary homes; eventually their bones would be dug up and placed into crypts, charnel houses, and ossuaries.

Early American caskets, like their British counterparts, tended to be plain, often made of pine, although hardwoods such as chestnut or walnut were the choice of more affluent customers. Anthropoid shaped — wide at the shoulders and narrow at the feet — they were known as "toe pinchers." Today, caskets are churned out in impressive volumes. Batesville Casket Co. in Indiana, the world's biggest coffin-maker, produces them at an industrial rate; its executives compare what it does to car manufacturing. It buys the paint from the same suppliers and has even found that trends in car colors are later reflected in casket choices. However, the form of the casket — an anthropoid shape or an elongated rectangle — has remained much the same until recently. Rising obesity has prompted the arrival of new supersize coffins. In Indiana, one company has made a business "serving the oversize needs of the funeral industry." With coffins named Harvest, Heartland, and Homestead, the Goliath Casket company offers a variety of sizes — ranging in width from 29 inches to a massive 52 inches (the standard is 24 inches).