Abstract/Summary

This chapter explores young people's responses to the death of a parent, sibling practices and continuing bonds in diverse families in East and West Africa. Drawing on qualitative research with orphaned young people in Tanzania, Uganda and Senegal, I show how parental death may reaffirm young people's conventional role in providing moral guidance and informal education to their younger siblings and lead to a heightened sense of responsibility to provide care. Young people sought to fulfil their deceased parents' wishes, demonstrate their legacy and safeguard their inherited parental home and land. Such efforts to 'do' and 'display' family to those within and outside the household can be seen as an important means of expressing 'continuing bonds' with their deceased parents. The chapter provides a fresh perspective on how to understand the materiality of sibling practices, care after death and ‘continuing bonds’ in the context of the global South.