Nigel Barley: Cameroon youth on what happens when you die

Cameroon-guys
“What happens to a man’s powers/soul/spirit after he dies?” I tried querulously, like a vicar hoping to get a current affairs discussion going at a youth club. They ignored me. Then one young man turned round and snapped, “How should I know? Am I God?”
 
Nigel Barley in The Innocent Anthropologist, describing a conversation with locals in Cameroon
Cited by Stephen Jones
 
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Photo by Bill Adams
 

Negro spiritual: Nobody knows the trouble I see

Nobody knows the trouble I see, Mrs_fanny_parrott_georgia_1941
nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I see,
glory hallelujah

Sometimes I’m up,
sometimes I’m down,
oh yes Lord,
sometimes I’m almost to the ground,
oh yes Lord.

Nobody knows the trouble I see,
nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I see,
glory hallelujah.

Sometimes I'm up,
sometimes I'm down,
oh yes Lord,
but all the time I'm heavenly bound,
oh yes Lord.

If you get there before I do,
oh yes Lord,
tell all my friends I'm coming too,
oh yes Lord.

  --This is a beautiful old spiritual whose slow, sad music conveys the tragedy of slavery. It was sung in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. You can hear Paul Robeson singing it here.