Taboos are part of us. They are, in fact, us, in Africa. Every human society has them. Some are more subtle; others shocking – depending, of course – on one’s acculturation. They serve different purposes.
They are unwritten communal codes that shape moral behaviour – especially in conservatively communal tribes or communities. Taboos also guarantee general communal welfare. In traditional African societies where communal life, more than anything else, determines a person’s behaviour, taboos ensure economic, political, social and spiritual welfare, too. And Africa is sprinkled with a potpourri of them. Taboos are woven into the very essence of African life; more so regarding sex and issues with the slightest affinity to that. This article focuses on some of these very ancient taboos in Africa and tries to make modern sense of them.
The Bambara in West Africa – found mainly in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Senegal – forbid sexual intercourse at daytime time. They strongly believe an albino child will be the progeny of such an abominable union. The Mende – one of two main ethnic groups found in Sierra Leone – and are a subset of the Mande People stretching across Benin, Burkina Faso, The Ivory Coast, Chad, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bussau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone of West Africa, frown on sexual intercourse in the bush. Flouting that taboo invites curses.
Similarly, the Bambara believe sexual intercourse in the open stunts crop growth.
Among the Ganda of Uganda, sexual intercourse on the eve of a battle brings bad luck and defeat. Sex is also forbidden while processing wood for making canoes. It’s also taboo for mourning Ganda women to have sex.
Kwoma men of north-eastern New Guinea are also prohibited from having sex after a cult ceremony has been held.
In certain Ghanaian societies, menstruating women don’t cook for their husbands. According to (Agyekum, 2002), euphemisms are used in the Akan language to represent menstruation. It is taboo to mention the word itself.
Among the Akamba, a Bantu ethnic group of Kenya, an expectant mother is forbidden from eating fat, beans and meat of animals killed with poisoned arrows, during the last three months of pregnancy.
In Ingassana culture, both the expectant mother and her husband are forbidden to carry fire before the child’s birth. Among the Akan also, expectant mothers are barred from eating snails. Certain deformities and defects in babies have been put down to snail consumption.
The Kikuyu of Kenya removed all iron tools and weapons from the house of an expectant mother. They believe such items attract devastating lightning.
According to (Afe, 2013), it is taboo for a Yoruba woman, in Nigeria, to be nude in the market, or fight in the market. The market was seen as a melting pot for the gods.
Still, in Yoruba culture, a pregnant woman can’t deliver a child in the open. It was taboo for women to deliver abnormal children (Olufade: 2010). In some African societies, including among some tribes in Ghana, twins were a bad omen. Triplets or multiple births were interpreted as curses. Times have, however, changed so multiple births are no more in the rungs of abomination.
The volte-face in thinking, as far as multiple births are concerned, is a clear demonstration of the time-relativity of taboos. They are useful at one time and fritter away into uselessness at another.
It is quite obvious that delivering a child in the open, rather than in the confines of a safe enclosure, could pose dangers to both mother and child. Years of observation and oral tradition among the Akans of Ghana may have influenced the fear associated with eating snails during pregnancy. Nutritionists, however, say snails are one of the most nutritious protein sources in the world. It may be befuddling, therefore, attempting to reconcile the ancient fear of eating snails with the current scientific proof of its health benefits.
Sex in the open should cause a public nuisance in any society. There are laws against them. The Ancients may just have pleaded mysticism as a basis to discourage such social deviance. Exploiting the traditional beliefs of a culture easily engenders a law-abiding people. Sexual intercourse on the eve of a boisterous activity such as war could drain a warrior.
Also, it is safer for a pregnant woman to be far away from sharp metal objects, in case of a domestic accident.
She could trip and fall over any such idle objects. The idea of a heavily pregnant woman falling over a sharp iron metal couldn’t be more poignant.
The appeal to lightning, a phenomenon that has wielded mystical influence on man’s imagination since ancient times, may just be a subtle duress to ensure social compliance towards creating a safe home for expectant mothers. Snakes and poisonous rodents could feast on a raunchy couple humping away in the bush. They could also get mauled by wild cats or even set off traps meant for game. Aren’t these better reasons for avoiding sex in the bush than appealing to mysticism?
Several taboos govern virtually every other aspect of African communal life. They range from not violating fishing, hunting and farming holidays in specific river bodies and forest areas, respectively; not hunting or eating certain game at certain times, not felling certain trees, not laying with one’s close relatives, not having sex with a woman who has just given birth or in her period, among others.
Taboos, undoubtedly, are earth-friendly. A lot of them aim to protect Mother Earth from degradation and exploitation. Even without the benefit of scientific knowledge, our forefathers instinctively knew that over-fishing the rivers and water bodies was a bad idea. They knew that hunting game and felling trees indiscriminately were inimical to the earth’s biodiversity and food security. To protect fauna and flora from going extinct, there needed to be some communal codes that could disincentive such recklessness. Taboos came in handy, there.
Apart from serving an environmental conservation purpose, taboos also ensured social order and harmony. For instance, the forbidden practice of bush sex is to serve as a disincentive for rape, defilement, teenage pregnancy, and having children out of wedlock. In traditional African societies, the seeds of such social vices were normally sown in the bush, away from the eyes and ears of the community. Proscribing bush sex was, thus, a perfect way of controlling sex crimes. Long before the criminal codes came into force, our forefathers used taboos as both moral and legal codes.
Security Implications Of Taboos
Overfishing the rivers, for instance, could deny community members enough fish for food and protein. Similarly, over-farming the land could deplete the soil of its nutrients, thus, resulting in poor crop yield. In like manner, over-hunting certain game could result in some animal species going extinct. All these could result in food insecurity and threaten the very existence and sustenance of the community. A society that cannot feed itself is doomed to extinction and becomes vulnerable and, thus, subservient to neighbouring communities that have food in abundance.
This could be the whole idea behind fishing, farming and hunting holidays. Also, social deviance is disincentivised and mitigated by taboos, thus, ensuring social harmony, conformity and peace. Sex crimes, for example, are discouraged, thus, averting the risk of unwanted pregnancy and the contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, which could pose a high health risk to an entire community. One can imagine a whole community ravaged by syphilis, gonorrhoea or some other life-threatening STD contracted from a forced bush liaison.
Murder and suicide were both seen as taboo in most African societies. The disgrace and shame associated with them in such small traditional societies where news spreads faster than the speed of light would be a deterrent.
So, essentially, taboos ensured low crime rates, communal conformity, food security, sustenance of the environment and personal hygiene to avert health risks. They helped avert incest, rape, defilement and other sex crimes. They fostered peaceful co-existence among neighbours, which, in turn, ensured that each was his brother’s keeper. They were more than just societal codes for communal living. They were, indeed, primordial legal codes comparable to the laws we have in our statutes today. That they were rooted in mysticism didn’t mean they were savage. They were worth having. Imagine they never existed in ancient times. Chaos, social deviance, crime, needless communal wars, famine, desecration of the environment, deforestation, and disastrous weather conditions, among others, would have been Africa’s lot.
Source: CISA Analyst
