
Zombi (Haitian)
The zombi of Haitian folklore is a dead or seemingly dead person taken from the grave by a sorcerer and kept as a slave without will. The word comes from Central African languages, and the belief was shaped by the plantation slavery of colonial Haiti, where death was supposed to be the one escape from forced labour. Researchers have proposed drugs, mental illness and mistaken identity to explain reported cases, and none of these accounts is settled. This figure, a body that works and obeys but is no longer a person, is the origin of the word and the concept behind every later zombie.12
- salt or salt water, which is said to wake it or release it
- preventive burial: laying the corpse face down, filling the mouth with earth or sewing the lips shut
- sesame seeds scattered on the grave to keep the spirit counting
Abimaki mbala ya liboso ntango nini?
The word is first recorded in English in the 18th century; the belief took shape in colonial Saint-Domingue under slavery
Oyo maziba ya sango elobi
Okokaki kokima yango?
Etuluku ya lombangu na kolanda ndenge maziba ya sango elimboli yango (atambolaka na kobendana), kasi bomekeli te.
Maziba ya sango
Likambo nyonso na lokasa oyo euti na maziba oyo ya sango, ekomami na maloba na biso moko. Omoni libunga? Yebisa biso na [email protected].