Rob Walker points out a story on branded burial vessels in Ghana. Honoring the dead through the use of "brightly colored coffins that celebrate the way they lived," Ghanaians apparently sometimes use name brands, from Coke to Mercedes Benz to the local beer, to encase their loved ones as they head off to the next life.
Update: For my Google-impaired commenters, a few more shots:
By Missisippi Snopes on Flickr
Via Squidoo
I must be dead in order to even SEE this. Please don't let me be buried in a Coke bottle.
ReplyDeleteIs everyone out of their mind? Coke coffins may indeed exist, but this is not a photo of one. Look at the shelves and the door. Come on folks. This is a display that goes in a store. Don't you have better things to do and to speculate about? Look around a bit more.
ReplyDeleteYou're a West African Expert? Right.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080128-ghanacoffins-video-ap.html
Shelves. Talking about shelves. See any shelves in a coffin?
ReplyDeleteThis is a valid and interesting subject for a blog, so I ask the Master to please post a photo of a coffin and not was is obviously a storage cabinet with shelves.
Poor people in third world are buried in coke bottles, rich people in middle east are killed in humvees...That's the way the world is going. Marlboro shoudl try to advertise through incineration, it works both in Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteMost of these images come from the book "Going into Darkness" by Thierry Secretan (1994 Hazan).
ReplyDeleteWhether or not the coke bottle is a coffin is imaterial. the same craftsmen make coffins just like it, or even more spectaular.
My lord this is not a photograph of a coffin. Let's continue this debate after a photograph of a coffin is posted. I don't care if it is a coke coffin or a beer coffin or a coffin advertising a funeral home. Seriously, Fox news sometimes makes more sense than you guys.
ReplyDeleteMy lord you're an idiot, Sean Hannity.
ReplyDeletethe shelves must be for a mini bar when your dead
ReplyDelete