I read the sign and understood it for the first time today as I was being carried in. It said “REMEMBER WE WERE LIKE YOU†and I recall being nervous for the first time since I went away three months ago.
 There was nothing extravagant but it felt kingly- being carried by four able bodied men I had never met in my entire existence to this place I’d passed a million times and entered only on a few occasions when someone I knew closely or distantly was carried in in like manner. Today, it was my turn.
The inhabitants of this place, I imagined had long lives full of experiences and night tales to be shared, until I saw the grave of a resident who had aged only seven weeks on the other side. I couldn’t possibly imagine how hygienic this new environment would be for this under aged soul.
It was all very closely unfamiliar and all the familiar faces wailing behind me in no organized melody made matters worse. Their drama at my passing only confused me some more at whatever fate awaited me in this perfectly disorganized place.
Unlike other gated communities I’d visited before in my other life, these concrete mini houses were huddled together like a dough stuffed together in an oven for lack of space. The only hint of privacy between neighbours was a thin stretch of unkempt grass in the space between gravestones and the weeds hugging the graves made me wonder what the caretaker was paid to do at all.
In some cases, the overgrown bush had seeped into holes created under the graves and had comfortably settled in from the looks of it. Was this to be my fate in a few weeks, or months, or worse, years?
In case you need directions to see it before you are carried in like the king or queen you never were, it’s a few metres from the Accra Sports Stadium and shares border with the parliament house. I really can’t say if it’s because of the overgrown bush that is in constant competition with the walls or the 'scathed' painted walls that consistently contradict the idea of “resting in peaceâ€.
I honestly found it very unbelievable how anyone of all those present, yet, not in my realm in any sense imaginable, expected me to rest in such filth and stench. Only a stone throw away from where I was to be buried, a heap of mess rested ‘peacefully’. The trash, unlike us, had no business being deposited there by the people whose judgment, or the lack thereof had led them on this senseless journey to dump trash at the place where their once counterparts now lay in no rest at all.
I would know.
The only decoration I could muster my eyes to see were those of filth, littered amongst the rows of dirty gravestones with flags of polythene hanging loosely on the weed that had grown long enough to serve as flag holders. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, dare the inhabitants of the parliament house to make an early trip to this place which will be their ultimate home away from the mansions they presently inhabit on all your dimes. After all, we share a wall, don’t we?
In my new state, I wondered how long the tears in family’s eyes would prevent them from seeing how unwholesome my newest accommodation was and who they would hold accountable for this mess if they saw it like I did now. Now when I am as powerless as I am voiceless.
When they lowered my remains into the ground I doubted if anybody noticed the contradiction of my expensive polished casket in the pit with dirt walls and the yoghurt rubber that had strayed in the wind and landed in my underground loft. It was to be my roommate until whenever the trumpet sounded.
One by one they began to leave. In twos and in groups, the soles of their shoes munched on dried weed as their hands parted the tall enough ones to pave the way for them to LEAVE.
I’d wager my last funeral donation in my casket that in their grief, none of them looked up to see the back of the same board that read ‘REMEMBER YOU WILL BE BACK’. Whoever wrote that I imagine had no intention of inviting them back to this filth and overgrown bush ridden place.
I knew them well. Well enough to know how many of them would ply this route on their way to work tomorrow in their cars and forget to look my way behind the sign that reads ‘WE WERE ONCE LIKE YOU.’
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