I didn’t know this then, but the Ovambo of Namibia have words for this concept. It is, as Professor Olupona wrote, “a distinction [that] exists between ‘ancestors’ and the ‘living dead.’ The former (aathithi) refers to the ‘forgotten deceased,’ those whose activities and memory cannot be recalled by the living members of their lineages. The living dead, on the other hand, are the recently deceased.”
