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Why was David Livingstoneās heart buried in Africa?
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David Livingstone
Portrait of Scottish missionary. physician, and explorer David Livingstone, albumen silver print by John Jabez Edwin Mayall, c. 1857; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
David Livingstoneās heart was buried in Africa because his African servants removed it, along with his viscera, in order to properly embalm his body. Following his death in May 1873 at Chitambo, in what is now Zambia, his followers undertook a difficult nine-month journey to transport his remains to the coast. While his body was eventually returned to England for burial in Westminster Abbey, his heart was interred in African soil as a symbolic gesture of his deep connection to the continent where he spent much of his life as a missionary and explorer.1