Dagara Cultural History: Cardinal Peter Poreku Dery

  Dealing with Expectations From a cultural perspective, there are no public funeral or mourning rites when there is a stillbirth ( dɔg-saŋ ) following twenty-one weeks or more of pregnancy or when a child experiencing stunted growth (bi-gbããn ) dies before the mother could have another child. In other words, one cannot grieve publicly and call on the ancestors by wailing ‘Oh My Father!’ ( Sãã Woh-i! ) or ‘Oh My Mother!’ ( Ma Woh-i! ) and we do not gather to sing dirges and praise songs accompanied by the xylophone and the calabash drums. We take it that the expectations of the parents to have a child who will grow to realise their dreams, take fully his or her position as an adult member of the society and achieve the great things that life destiny has assigned for him or her cannot be ritualised in funeral celebration. These must be internalised as a process to understand the situations leading to the stillbirth or the stunted growth in order to keep the fire of expectations and fu