Xeni on the road in West Africa: Coffin Shaped Like Taxi, Presumably for Deceased Taxi Driver

(In case you've missed previous posts and tweets, I've been traveling in West Africa for the past couple of weeks.) Driving in Benin this weekend on the long road from the Burkina Faso border down to the port capital of Cotonou, Benin, we spotted this: a car carrying a handmade coffin which was crafted to resemble a taxi cab. Presumably, this bespoke box was to be the final resting place for a taxi driver who perished. It is customary in some West African cultures to create coffins that call to mind some aspect of the deceased's life or work. Not everyone here gets buried in a customized coffin like this, but it is a sort of regionally specific popular art form. Perhaps someone more versed in West African culture than I can chime in, in the comments. I don't have Photoshop on this laptop, so I can't blur out the number, but please don't call it. The guy's not gonna answer, and it might ring one of his survivors, which would be mean and rude.

• [CharlieCoats]

  I saw some of these when i was in Ghana last year. Very strange, the coca-cola one seemed particularly twisted – being buried with your corporate product of choice…There’s some pictures here on my girlfriends flickr stream:

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/22913607@N07/2200069211/

• [Anonymous]

  Messagebank.

• [bminkus]

  great pictures and posts- i spent my summer in Mali, burkina faso, benin, togo, and ghana- doing interviews for my dissertation. I thought it was such an amazing part of the earth!!!

• [pelrun]

  One of his survivors? Oh dear.

• [Anonymous]

  hello
  Just a link

  http://images.google.fr/images?gbv=2&hl=fr&safe=off&q=Kane+Kwei+&btnG=Recherche+d%27images

• [adamnvillani]

  I saw a thing about custom coffins in West Africa at the L.A. County Museum of Art about 10 years ago. I remember there was one shaped and painted like a rainbow trout, a fish that doesn’t live in Africa.

• [lungkiss]

  oh hey xeni, you can use a web/flash-based image editor if you don’t have big ol’ photosop. Free, on the web and fast: pixlr. I am sure more and better will come out–without the usual concatenated name bit.
  on the other hand, I don’t think anyone will call this number. but if you are gonna blank it out, get the license plate too.

• [reginald]

  “Presumably, this bespoke box was to be the final resting place for a taxi driver who perished.”

  “The guy’s not gonna answer, and it might ring one of his survivors, which would be mean and rude”

  i call number plates all the time with interesting results.

  love the sarcasm though . . . you should write a book, once you get over taking photos of presumed funeral processions.

• [Xeni Jardin]

  @lungkiss thanks so much for the reco, I’m in Benin still, and the internet here is so shitty i can hardly open boing boing, let alone download gimp or use a flash/web editor. gah! so this is what ya get right now.

• [pattihaskins]

  Here’s a bunch of info on fantasy coffins in Africa:
  http://www.squidoo.com/GhanaCoffins

• [reginald]

  xeni – we will deliver you an airdrop of extra bandwith as soon as the skies clear

• [Auto Parts for Brains]

  I sure am not going to like going out in a taxi (coffin) when I die. I think it would be better if the family of the deceased put the person in a car he dreamt of driving when he was alive like a Limo coffin or a Ferrari coffin.

• [lost feliz]

  These are made into anything you could imagine: whisky bottles, pack of cigarettes, a paperback, a boat, a bus, a box of condoms. Ernie Wolfe of Turkana and Tom Patchett’s Track 16 Gallery went nuts for these things.