Categories of Deceased in Kiswahili Language

I’ve been reading Grant about a couple of words that create an interesting distinction in terms of time.

And these are from the language of Kiswahili in East and Central Africa.

In that language, they divide the dead into two categories.

There is Sasha, and they’re the recently departed people whose time overlaps with those of us who are still here.

And then there’s also Zamani, and those are the spirits who aren’t known by anyone currently alive.

So when the last person to know an ancestor dies, then that ancestor leaves the Sasha and joins the Zamani.

Oh, interesting concept, right?

Yeah.

I thought that was a really beautiful way to look at it.

I was thinking about the fact that I had put a post on Facebook recently in memory of my mother.

And it was just so lovely, the people who chimed in who remembered her.

Right.

You know, so that means that she’s still among the Sasha.

Oh, yeah.

And will be until all of us who knew her are dead.

That you could bring together all those people who knew her and still somehow recreate the idea of her and the memory of her.

Right, right.

She lives on in a certain way.

Oh, I love that.

But I love those two words, Sasha and Zamani, Z-A-M-A-N-I.

And it is an interesting thing to go into another language and find that the words perfectly match concepts suited to their culture that we don’t quite have.

And also part of the argument for preserving languages around the world.

Exactly.

It sort of reminded me of that, you know, that there are sort of Sasha languages and Zamani languages.

They contain within them ideas that might not be perfectly executed in another language without a great deal of more understanding.

Yeah, and then a language dies out and there aren’t any more speakers left.

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