Ghanaian community fundraising for grandmother found dead in ditch

The Ghanaian community is raising money to send Mavis Otuteye's body back to Ghana.

She's the 57-year-old woman whose body was found in a drainage ditch just south of the border near Emerson, Man. on May 26, after the local sheriff's office got a call about a missing person.

"We want to help Peace," said Maggie Yeboah, president of the Ghanaian Union of Manitoba, referring to Otuteye's 28-year-old daughter living in Toronto.

"To us, everyone needs somebody and this is the time Peace needs help. We take death very hard and mourn with those who mourn."

The family would like to return Otuteye's body to Ghana, where her husband, Dick, still lives. However, they say the price tag for that could add up to $40,000.

That's why they have started a GoFundMe account, entitled Mavis Korkor Otuteye's Funeral.

"We as a community want to do all we can to give this wonderful woman a befitting burial. With your help we want to ensure that every expense is covered. We need your help to raise these funds and every little bit counts," the writeup on the site reads.

Augustina Otuteye, Mavis' niece, said she's grateful for all the support.

"Thank you to them for doing that. I think it's a good thing. It will help us," she said when reached by CBC News.

Mavis Otuteye was living in Delaware. CBC News learned last week she was in the United States on a visitor visa that expired in 2006.

She died while trying to visit her newborn granddaughter, born just over a month ago in Toronto.

The fields around the Emerson, Man., border have become a pathway for many asylum seekers hoping to make a refugee claim in Canada. 

In the first four months of this year, the RCMP intercepted 477 asylum seekers in Manitoba, according to federal government figures. Thousands more have walked across fields, forests and ditches along the international border, many afraid of President Donald Trump's immigration stance and travel ban.

Immigration lawyers say, based on the birth in Canada of her granddaughter, Otuteye would have likely fallen into an exemption of the Safe Third Country Agreement. It means she could have entered Canada at an official border crossing, rather than walking across and risking her life.

There's still some question about how Otuteye got to a farmer's field just south of the border in Noyes, Minn., and what happened before her death.

Preliminary autopsy results found she died of hypothermia. A final report could take weeks, as the medical examiner's office awaits the results of a toxicology report.

In the meantime, family members in the U.S., Canada and Ghana are trying to decide what to do with her remains.

"Traditionally, the body belongs to the family back home. And tradition also demands she gets a befitting burial," Yeboah says.

"Since her husband is in Ghana, it's very important that he sees the body before she's buried. Family needs and would love to pay their last respects."

There are also some customary rites that will be performed based on the circumstances under which Otuteye died.

"If you die an accidental death, some tribes believe your soul doesn't depart the body because it wasn't your time [to die]," Yeboah explains.

Funerals in Ghanaian culture are a community event that can take place weeks, even months after death.

Cremation is not traditional or common and Yeboah says Otuteye's family is not considering it in this case.

There's no update on the investigation into her death, says the Kittson County Sheriff's office and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

A second GoFundMe campaign has been started by Jason Stone of Matthews, N.C. He could not be reached for a comment.

Yeboah says that campaign has not been endorsed by the Ghanaian community.