Abstract
This chapter examines how burial practices and understandings of reincarnation are changing for people in the Commune of Cobly, northwestern Benin. The relatively recent introduction of coffins, together with church teaching, is challenging people’s notions of the self and what happens to a person’s invisible components when they die. These challenges result in personal struggles and controversy about burial practices as people try to negotiate different authoritative ideas and understandings about mortuary rituals and how these relate to the afterlife. Despite exposure to church teaching, however, many do not reject their customary ideas of reincarnation and associated practices, but rather redefine them. This results in a variety of localised understandings of the afterlife.
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