Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

davidoks.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 245 posts

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#201

Post by herodoturtle »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #196
Semaphor wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is Sotho from South Africa. While there were certainly a bunch of, to me, very strange practices when my FiL died, it was nothing like what was mentioned in the article. That said, funeral insurance is extremely common in SA, as even normal burials can be pretty expensive.

> That said, funeral insurance is extremely common in SA, as even normal burials can be pretty expensive. This is off-topic, but how does funeral insurance even work? You're guaranteed to die at some point, right? To me, insurance is there to hedge against something not very likely , but expensive. The odds are you're going to pay money in, and never see it back (if you don't get sick / crash your car / whatever). Is…

Indeed it is forced savings but with the benefit of covering your funeral expenditure if it is required suddenly and unexpectedly.

For context, it might cost you $5 per month, and give you funeral cover of $500.

As OP mentioned it is very common in South Africa, likely owed to the unpredictable life expectancy. All the large insurers offer it, it’s a massive market.

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#202

Post by porridgeraisin »

Dead_Lemon wrote: post #195
Semaphor wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is Sotho from South Africa. While there were certainly a bunch of, to me, very strange practices when my FiL died, it was nothing like what was mentioned in the article. That said, funeral insurance is extremely common in SA, as even normal burials can be pretty expensive.

Funerals are a big thing in South Africa. It can be often to the same level as a wedding, where families will take out loans to host the event. Hence the funeral insurance being common. You go to an ATM and get advertised Funeral Cover, offered by your bank.

Funerals are huge in india too. It runs for 13 days in some communities. To be clear, the actual cremation happens immediately, but the funeral ceremonies continue for 13 days after that.

Most of the expenses are days of one-meal-a-day for guests, and the general extra expenses of having a lot of relatives over at your house. The ceremonies themselves are fairly cheap - it's mostly prayers.

However there is no insurance and so on, since the aforementioned expenses scale with usual QoL.

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#203

Post by internet_points »

nntwozz wrote: post #79
klooney wrote: post #2

> Modernity is about not doing what your family says The flip side is that rich and modern people feel lonely and sad that they don't have strong social bonds.

If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company. — Jean-Paul Sartre

or just an extrovert, but nuance doesn't make for pithy quotes

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#204

Post by exceptione »

tim-projects wrote: post #182
jillesvangurp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social pressure to do stuff like this is enormous in some families. It's not necessarily about the subjects (deceased person or the newly wedded couple) but about re-affirming the status of their relatives. Arguably the dead don't really care. But their nearest relatives definitely do care how they are perceived to be dealing with the death of the deceased. It underlines their importance and status. People come to "p…

> In many cultures it used to be (or still is) quite common to treat brides as property. Property is not the right word for this. Responsibility is the right word. When a bride price is paid, you give money (or goods) to the family. In return the responsibility of the care of the woman is passed down. This is not a traditional monetary style transaction in the way it appears. In practice, a lot of families that accep…

You can replace bride with dog and nothing changes.

We can sugarcoat it all the way we want, but in biblical times, when parents are under economic stress, female newborns are laid in the sun for post-natal abortion. Female offspring is a financial liability, they do not provide the same 'value' as males do. So when a father raises a women, the father gets compensated.

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#205

Post by pseudohadamard »

madradavid wrote: post #142

I am Ugandan. These kind of burials are unheard of in my country. The Author is labeling this an “African” thing which is just the usual daft nonsense. A number of Ghanaian and Nigerian tribes bury their dead like this , it is more a celebration of life. This is like taking something a small town in Louisiana does and declaring it an “American” tradition.

The writer is using the elaborate funerals as a life story to draw people into the article, because starting with an abstract discussion of African culture isn't going to draw many readers. This is a standard journalistic technique, which is why you see writers interview Gemma the soccer mom who's affected by whatever the story is rather than an academic who produces fifteen paragraphs on the societal implications of the event. This is completely normal. They're not claiming that the personal-interest bit is representative of all of Africa any more than Gemma's complaint about getting her kids to school is representative of whatever country she's in.

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#206

Post by Tade0 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
Tade0 wrote: post #43

There's an interesting film focused on this topic: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1499420/ The author traveled through Cameroon and documented, among other things, the realities of having a backlog of dead one must properly bury. Turns out not everyone can afford putting their deceased relatives in a freezer - especially for extended periods of time, so sometimes the dead are stored in a separate storage area next to the…

> so sometimes the dead are stored in a separate storage area next to the home until the living gather the necessary funds Isn't this an own goal when it comes to disease?

Well, there are many worse systemic issues in the region.

It's been 15 years since I saw that movie, but I recall the remains presented to be just the skull and some larger bones - all dried out completely.

What happened to the rest of the body I don't recall.

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#207

Post by komali2 »

kingofmen wrote: post #143
stavros wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point there was that it's possible that an older tradition from a pre capitalist system that worked fine then is not compatible with how capitalism works. Many things aren't. Oh, yes, agreed there. I can imagine that these communities were very insular in the past, so there wasn't really anything to own that wasn't what they could immediately see and touch around the village. Then again, there wouldn't be a need…

A herd of goats and an apple orchard both exhibit exponential growth in production, to the limits of the supporting land (which admittedly may be reached rather quickly). Indeed this is the origin of interest: I lend you my goats for a season and expect to get back a larger herd. The argument that non-capitalist economies can't have exponential growth from investment is a non-starter.

> to the limits of the supporting land

Exactly, under capitalism, "limit to growth" means "maladapted." Only things that grow forever are considered successful under capitalism, even if that growth is to the detriment of humans, society, the environment, laborers...

Whereas outside of capitalism, things may grow, to an extent, and then achieve homeostasis.

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#208

Post by WA »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #132
kenferry wrote: post #46

The factual material about funeral spending costs is very interesting, but when it gets into "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies" it seems rather… unsupported? That's a sweeping statement that actually requires understanding the whole picture, and the whole picture is not being presented. Is there reason to think the author truly has all the context to make these claims?

It's viewing the situation through the lens of Anglo capitalist opinions. I found the same thing when working in Cambodia; Khmer culture is very, very, family-oriented, the extended family is the main survival mechanism for Khmer people, and individual wishes are often subordinated to the family. This is their culture, Khmer people are happy with it, this is how they choose to live. The Anglo ex-pats (including me) d…

> It's viewing the situation through the lens of Anglo capitalist opinions.

Came here to say this. It's a very narrow perspective that shows in sub headlines like "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies".

One could also take the lens of "Kinship societies are making people's wealth more equal to reduce competition and jealousy, increase harmony and happiness" – although I have no data whether these people are genuinely more happy. It quotes some business-oriented Ghanians who seem quite unhappy about sharing their wealth. And yet, the perspective of indivual wealth over group wealth is assumed and never critically reflected upon.

I'm not saying that their way is better or something like that. I just think that reading the article is a good exercise in reflecting on one's own views on life and wealth.

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#209

Post by stackbutterflow »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #196
Semaphor wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is Sotho from South Africa. While there were certainly a bunch of, to me, very strange practices when my FiL died, it was nothing like what was mentioned in the article. That said, funeral insurance is extremely common in SA, as even normal burials can be pretty expensive.

> That said, funeral insurance is extremely common in SA, as even normal burials can be pretty expensive. This is off-topic, but how does funeral insurance even work? You're guaranteed to die at some point, right? To me, insurance is there to hedge against something not very likely , but expensive. The odds are you're going to pay money in, and never see it back (if you don't get sick / crash your car / whatever). Is…

You're more likely to die each year that passes.

If you subscribe to an insurance in your 20s it'll cost you less per month than if you start it in your 60s.

Re: Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

#210

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #185
3RTB297 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 million% agree - I've lived in Ghana and a number of other countries in West and Southern Africa. I've sadly attended many funerals in each place. These photos that visually drive the sense of opulence are entirely of Ghanaian fantasy coffins. I've only ever attended Ghanaian funerals with regular square coffins, and makers of fantasy coffins are rare, as is their use. Primarily by Ga people, who because they are f…

It turns into a general rant about kinship societies - which again, are hardly unique to Africa, and aren’t hobbling economic development in other places, which means the author’s core thesis is likely untrue. I mean, if we’re treating anecdotes as facts - my grandfather - British - used to send most of his pay packet from the navy back to support his mother and his grandmother - and one can hardly argue that the U.K…

Societies which have the Clan, the family as the biggest institution building unit, are crippling societies they are part of wherever they go.

Family units can not build nations. Only societies that can build meta-families can. You will never be part of the institution of Saud if you are not born into it.

Post reply on HN