Nyongo working dead

Ñu ngi koy wooye itam: nyongo, ekongi, kupe, Mount Kupe zombies

Léeb ak cosaanNéew yu dundaatLiggéeyu dëmm1900 ba 1967

Nyongo is a Cameroonian witchcraft belief in which the newly rich are suspected of killing their kin by occult means and putting them to work as the living dead. The victims toil unseen on Mount Kupe, in Bakossi country, to build their owner's fortune. Anthropologists link the belief to colonial plantation agriculture and, later, to economic crisis. It is one of the best-studied African parallels to the Haitian zombi, and like it turns on the theft of a dead person's labour.1 2 3

Xeexal ko

Jëkk a bindu

1950

Legends current from around the Second World War; first described by the anthropologist Edwin Ardener in the 1950s

Cosaan

Cameroonian (Bakweri, Bakossi and neighbouring peoples)

Kamerun

Lan moo ko waral

Liggéeyu dëmm

Members of a secret witch society are believed to 'sell' relatives, who seem to die but are taken from the grave to work.

Naka ngay doone benn

A nyongo member makes a relative appear to die, then removes the person from the grave.

Xel

Amul xel

Fi mu néewe doole

witch-finding: villages paid the witch-hunter Obasi Njom to cleanse them
suspected members were beheaded or buried face down so they would not rise as ekongi

Kañ la jëkk a feeñ?

Àddina su yàgg Diggu jamono 1500 ba 1899 1900 ba 1967 1968 ba 1999 2000 ba 2009 2010 ba tey

1950

Legends current from around the Second World War; first described by the anthropologist Edwin Ardener in the 1950s

notu gëstu

Li sours yi wax

The victims' labour is said to make their owner rich1 2 3

Dead rats were said to be laid under the 'corpse' to hasten the burial1 2 3

Tin roofs were taken as a sign of membership, which for a time discouraged people from building modern houses1 2 3

Children were warned not to pick up coins from the ground, which might be bait1 2 3

Accusations rose sharply after the economic crisis of the late 1980s1 2 3

A 1992 road accident that killed schoolchildren was blamed on a headmaster 'giving' them to the society1 2 3

Sours yi

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Benn jamono: 1900 ba 1967

AmalanhigVisayan (Philippines), 1967

Felicia Felix-MentorHaitian, 1937