Witchcraft As a Social Diagnosis by Richter Roxane;Flowers Thomas;Bongmba Elias;

Author:Richter, Roxane;Flowers, Thomas;Bongmba, Elias;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Curse of Multiple Births

It is a complex tale to explain how, in 2006, Richter came to be crowned as “Ama Oyemiyiefo Nksohemaa” or “Saturday-Born Queen Mother of Compassion” in Ghana’s villages of Ekotsi-Bogyano. It all had to do with Richter’s support of a traditionally “taboo” set of triplets in Lawra that were born to a mentally retarded woman. It all started back in 2003 when Richter traveled to Nalerigu Baptist Medical Centre and other public hospitals to donate medical equipment through Medical Bridges, a Houston-based NGO, where she was Program Director. She met a nurse in Accra who had traveled 17 hours by bus to ask for urgent help with a set of triplets—considered a forbidden taboo—who were starving at her remote AIDS orphanage in Lawra as their severely retarded mother refused to breastfeed the three babies. The nurse explained that every set of triplets (four in total) had been killed at her orphanage as family members (usually the grandmother) would “sneak” the babies out in baskets or under their clothing in order to kill babies that “cursed” their families. The nurse stated that this set of Lawra triplets “never left her side” and were kept under 24-hour-a-day watch as the triplets’ grandmother had already been caught attempting to steal the triplets from the clinic.

In seeking to understand the basis of these traditional taboos concerning multiple births (two or more) we were told two versions of this shocking taboo. The first version was that since the mother had effectively had a “litter” she must possess the spirit of a dog or a pig. The nurse from Lawra in fact explained how mothers wail, “I am not a pig!” after delivering more than two babies. The second belief is that one of the children would identify with the father, the other with the mother (this is why twins are acceptable), but the third child would “supervise” the killings of both parents. Since no one could discern which child was unlucky or doomed, one must be sacrificed (given up to be killed), or they all need to be killed. The most common method we heard about was drowning the babies (soon after birth) in the nearby lake. In the past, the mother would also be at risk to be exiled or killed along with her children. Tradition also dictates that the father of any multiple births can never look upon the children. According to the Ghana News Agency, the birth of triplets is every mother’s nightmare in this northwestern region:

In communities in the Lawra District, giving birth to triplets is a taboo to their ancestral gods. Triplets are also perceived as jinxed children and it is believed that if one is not killed calamity may befall their father or the family as a whole. The Upper West Regional Multi-Sectoral Committee on Child Welfare and Protection says any woman who gives birth to triplets is given the options of offering one of them to be killed or having her husband relocated in a different community to escape the ‘consequential’ calamity.

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