ABSTRACT
The events of birth and death are life itself. Before birth and death can be described however we must first turn to the notion of life or the cause of life mpiini as the Tio call it. Everyone lives with two mpiini, a word that means both life-container and that which makes someone live. The Tio held that a person existed before birth, some indeterminate time after conception. All the rituals of birth implied that life and personality were not believed to be identical, for people acquired their individuality gradually. The rituals of death include the dying, the preparation of the corpse, the wake and mourning, the burial, and the end of the mourning period, a sequence which could take up to a year for a king. Birth and death are biological facts with a social significance. But the great differences in the treatment of birth and death did not flow only from the difference between the events.
