Excerpt from National Geographic

[Gamma Ray]

My, delicious friends!

I need your help to understand this expression from article in National Geographic magazine.

"Dunga Nakuwa cups his face in his hands and remembers his mother's voice. She has been dead nearly two years, but for Dunga's tribe the dead are never very far away. In the villages they are buried just below the huts of the living, separated from hearths and sleeping skins by only a few feet of dry, depleted soil."

"... separated from hearths and sleeping skins..." What does it mean. I guess that dead are separated from living ones by only a few feet of soil.

Hearts and sleeping skins it means living people.

 

[Susan612]

The hearths(not hearts) and sleeping skins refer to their cooking areas and the animal skins they use as bedding. The dead are buried below their homes, so the bodies are separated from their homes, and therefore the living, by a few feet of soil.