ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a brief glimpse into the lives of indigenous African peoples as they go about the daily business of death, dying, and interaction with the afterlife. Death rituals performed by the Zulu often include various attempts to reverse the normal order of behaviors. Wiredu, among other scholars, has clarified that most African traditions have some idea of a Supreme Being, but as one might gather from the section above, this notion is not in keeping with a Christian ideal of monotheistic transcendence. Death stinks and it must be 'cut' from the living or else it will infect those that it has yet contaminated. Wiredu makes an important distinction between ancestor worship and ancestor veneration. Christ's sacrifice brings about an internal form of salvation whereby the souls of Christian followers are saved, and thereby granted entrance into an infinite and transcendental heavenly realm. Nommo's resurrection, in contrast, affects a wholly physical change in the day-to-day lives of the Dogon.
