Begging for the Life of Your Twins.

Begging for the life of your twins

A lot of Mary Slessor's work was geared towards removing the taboos associated with twins in sub-Saharan Africa specifically Calabar, Nigeria. In that colonial time, twins were believed to be messengers of evil spirits and were either killed or discarded in what was known as evil forests. But I hope you know that this practice cannot in its entirety be taken as 100% Nigerian or African in application. Remember Sophocles's Oedipus Rex that Ola Rotimi adapted as The Gods Are Not To Blame. In Oedipus Rex, the new-born child was fated to kill Laius, his father the king and marry and bear kids by his mother Jocasta the queen. Consequently, they had ordered the poor lad to be killed but the executioner hadn't the heart to kill Oedipus. He gave Oedipus to be adopted by a hunter thereby keeping him alive to fulfill a destiny that was said the gods prescribed.

Let's go back to Calabar and Mary Slessor. It is not possible for me to say now what the situation would be today if Madam Slessor had not embarked on that crusade to rescue those unfortunate children and nurture them. Really what would it have looked like? Would we still practice that custom that twins were messengers from evil spirits and deserve to die as soon as they were born?

I cannot answer that question. But what I do know is that in today's Nigeria, twin children are very attractive and somewhat celebrated. The parents of these children usually get some kind of support from neighbours and friends particularly when it seems that it is mostly the abjectly poor that often have twins. There was a time in Benin City when a couple had sextuplets - six of them. Our town buzzed with excitement and everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of the children but three of them had died before the government got there. Their parents were poor people.