Kings jarred head to be returned to Ghana

The 170 year old preserved head of the former King of Ghana will be returned to its home country after it was discovered in a medical center in the Netherlands.

Bonsu's head was discovered last year in a jar of formaldehyde at the Leiden University Medical Center's anatomical collection by a Dutch author.

Ghana immediately asked for it to be returned and the Dutch government asked the hospital to cooperate.

"It will go back to Ghana, where we assume it will be buried," Dutch Education, Culture and Science Minister Ronald Plasterk told The Associated Press.

The hospital said in a statement Friday it is in talks with the Ghanaian Embassy "to carefully prepare for the return of King Badu Bonsu II's head."

The hospital declined to give more details of the case, citing a "well-considered policy about our anatomic-historical collection."

The decision to return it to Ghana is in line with similar moves by museums in recent years. Several British museums have returned the skulls and other bones of Australian Aborigines following lobbying by indigenous leaders.

The Ghanaian Embassy in The Hague had no immediate comment.

'He's incomplete'
Last year, the embassy urged the return for the king and his clan in the country's Ashanti region.

"Without burial of the head, the deceased will be hunted in the afterlife. He's incomplete," Eric Odoi-Anim, a minister at the embassy, said at the time. "It's also a stigma on his clan, on his kinsmen, and him being a (high-ranking) chief — this is even more serious."

Prominent Dutch writer Arthur Japin told Dutch television he found the head while researching a historical novel.

"He's got a little ring-beard, his eyes are closed as if he's sleeping," said Japin. "And my first thought was, this is not fitting."

I'm glad that he will no longer be haunted in the afterlife and will now be complete.

Burried with a cell phone

The under forty set is increasingly being buried with their portable electronic devices.

It seems that everyone under 40 who dies takes their cell phone with them,” says Noelle Potvin, family service counselor for Hollywood Forever, a funeral home and cemetery in Hollywood, Calif. “It’s a trend with BlackBerrys, too. We even had one guy who was buried with his Game Boy.”

As for the reason why people are asking to be buried with their cell phones it varies. Some do so as a memento of the person just as they would bury a football or other memento. While others leave the phones in the casket and plan to call their dead loved one in the future.

“Some people will call the deceased just as they’re lowering the coffin into the ground,” he says. “It’ll be prearranged and you’ll hear a faint ring. It’s like the new version of ‘Taps’ for people who are identified as being on the phone all the time.”

Apparently the fear of being buried alive is not one of the reasons that people are choosing to be buried with the cell phones. We are very trusting that medical officials will make sure we're dead before we're buried.

Plastic Surgery for the dead?

There is a new hollywood plastic surgery trend. It doesn't involve the living though and isn't done by a Doctor.

It's for the dead and done by the morticians at the funeral home.

“I’ve had people mention that they want their breasts to look perky when they’re dead,” says David Temrowski, funeral director of Temrowski & Sons Funeral Home in Warren, Mich. “Or they’ll say, ‘Can you get these wrinkles out?’ It’s all in humor, but I think people do think [more] about what they’re going to look like when they’re dead and lying in a casket.”


Still others are so concerned about how they will look dead that they are forgoing the viewing altogether. Now I've never been a fan of viewings because I think they're creepy. But to skip one because you're afraid you'll be too wrinkled or your breasts will be droopy? You're DEAD!