For traditional Africans, a person continues to live as a spirit after death, in the company of the ancestors. This is why tombs always face the direction where the tribe came from; the direction of the ancestors.
Many African languages have a word for the abode of the dead. In Uganda, for example, it is “magombe” in Luganda and Lusoga, “kuzimu” in Runyoro and “ates” in Ateso. These words could be the equivalent of the Hebrew “sheol” and the Greek “hades“.
This is the Underworld, the domain of the ancestors, whose gateway is the grave. According to the African way of thinking, every physical entity has a spiritual aspect, and the Underworld represents the spiritual side of the Earth.
Africans are well aware that digging up graves reveals the bones of the deceased, yet they believe that the dead reside in the underworld. This underworld is a spiritual entity, invisible to the physical eye. The bones in the grave provide physical support for the spirit of the dead, just as the living body provides physical support for the spirit of a living person.
This is why graves are respected, well cared for and visited, so that people can remain in contact with their deceased family members.
Africans believe that the dead are still with us, as this poem of Birago Diop clearly states: “Those who are dead have never gone away. They are in the shadows darkening around. They are in the shadows fading into day. The dead are not under the ground. They are in the trees that quiver. They are in the woods that weep. They are in the waters of the rivers. They are in the waters that sleep. They are in the crowds; they are in the homestead. The dead are never dead.”
In the African way of thinking, there is no heaven. When a person dies, their spirit continues to live the life they lived physically and socially. Once, I attended the burial of a baby. The baby’s mother had a relative called Mary who had died in adolescence and been buried in the same graveyard.
When she reached the graveyard, she started crying. ‘Mary, take care of my baby!’ For that mother, this meant that her baby would always be a baby, her adolescent would always be an adolescent, and she would continue to provide the same services as if she were alive. This belief is common in Africa. Kings, chiefs, medicine men, priests, warriors, farmers and hunters continue to do what they used to do in life.
The belief in divinities (sometimes they are wrongly called gods) attached to certain activities or physical phenomena stems from here. For the Baganda, Ddungu was a hunter, Mukasa, the divinity of Lake Victoria (Nnalubaale), was a medicine man famous for giving fertility to women, Muwanga was a blacksmith, Kibuuka was a warrior…. they are believed to be carrying out the same activities to this day and their help is solicitated in the same fields.
Although the dead are dear to the living, death creates a gap between them. The lives of the dead seem to be the opposite of those of their living relatives. This is evident in the way that dead bodies are treated: while the sick is carried head first, the dead are carried feet first. Dead bodies are washed with the left (profane) hand, starting from the feet. For people who sleep on mats in graves, the mats are placed over the body or coffin. Traditionally, everyone who comes from the graveyard after a burial must purify themselves. The dead are both loved and feared.
In Africa, the deceased is on their way to becoming an ancestor. A funeral is a rite of passage from living person to ancestor, and must be carried out carefully and precisely; otherwise, the deceased will remain a restless spirit, haunting particular places and people. In African cultures, this is the equivalent of hell. When we say that the dead are ‘resting in peace’, we mean that they have become life-giving ancestors who are happy with their status and benevolent towards their living relatives. In a sense, the dead depend on the living to preserve their memory through offerings, libations and rituals, which bolster their vital force.
This is why having children is so important in Africa, as they keep the deceased in touch with the world of the living after death. Africans also believe in partial reincarnation. When physical or psychological traces of a deceased relative appear in a child, it is believed to be that individual reincarnated in one of their descendants. To die without children means to slip into oblivion and quickly join what we call collective immortality. (Edward Kanyike)
