Twins are Fady

OR Numerous instances of twins offending the gods in African culture

I went a different way with this blog post (it is a free-for-all, after all) and decided to do a bit of a research project involving a cultural phenominon I rediscovered while reading Things Fall Apart. The issue where the Igbo people put newborn twins in baskets and leave them to die bothers me. I have heard mulitple instances in African cultures where twins are hated and treated in this manner, and I wanted to see why this happens.

I read The Poisonwood Bible in 2005 and thought it was a terrific book about Africa. It examines many of the same subjects we have been discussing in class (PoCo, the other, etc.) and was probably my introduction to thinking about African culture and what Europeans have done to affect it.

Also, I was lucky enough to travel to Madagascar a little less than a year ago, where I visited a friend of mine who lives there working for an landscaping company that specializes in biodiversity planting to prevent erosion. He has been there for over four years, so he speaks the language and could tell me a lot about the culture. I experienced a lot in my short three week stay, discovering many differences between Gasy (short for Malagasy, which is the descriptive term for someone or something from Madagascar) and American culture, as well as many more similarities. I basically discovered that the people of Madagascar are really just like Americans, the only differences lay in cultural quirks. For instance, the kids in Madagascar revere pro wrestling, and John Cena in particular. Also, the most requested songs on the radio are 80's hair band power ballads, like this song.

Then we read Things Fall Apart, and of course, many of the same issues I discovered in Poisonwood Bible and experienced in Madagascar were reiterated and peaked my interest. One of these strange cultural quirks that kept reoccurring was the fear of twins. As we read in Things Fall Apart, newborn twins are abandoned in the forest because they are believed to attract evil spirits and offend the Earth goddess. Similarly, in Poisonwood Bible, twins of the villagers are immediately killed, and the villagers also fear the two twin missionary daughters. Finally, in Madagascar, I learned that American volunteers and the Malagasy government are working hard to fight the local superstition that twins are "fady" or offensive to the gods.

"Fady" is a pretty broad term in Madagascar, meaning anything from "please" to "sorry" to "excuse me" to "taboo" to "leave me alone" etc. Literally translated, it means taboo, but I think a better description is "offensive to the gods". Wearing a hat in a cave, for instance, is fady, because the spirits who live in the cave demand respect. To bear twins is fady, and often the twins are separated, abandoned, or given up for adoption. This goes right along with how twins are treated in The Poisonwood Bible and Things Fall Apart, but it is pretty disturbing to me. I felt compelled to do some research on the place of twins in African culture and see if most of the continent had this reaction to multiple births.

I discovered that most cultures in Africa honor and respect twins. This is more of what I expected, since children are, in my experience, universally venerated and loved. You would think that having multiple children would be viewed as blessing, especially in farming cultures where more labor is needed. I was somewhat relieved that twins weren't hated all across the continent, but I still wanted to look in to possible explanations as to why twins were feared in the Igbo, Congo, and Malagasy cultures.

Apparently, the occurrence of multiple births is high in West Africa. According to one study, the occurrence of fraternal twins is three times higher in West Africa than it is in most of the rest of the world. One explanation is yams, another is genes, but either way it is definitely higher. It's amazing to me that two cultures in West Africa saw this same issue so differently: The Igbo (Okonkwo's people) killed their twins, while the Yoruba saw them as a blessing. This article examines the differences between how these two cultures with regards to the twin question, and poses a possible explanation: that multiple births are for animals, making twins inhuman.

It is so incredible to try to see how different cultures evolve solutions or explanations to natural phenomena. Some cultures venerate the same things that other cultures disparage. It makes you realize that we all have to take a step back and think about cultural differences before we judge a custom as primitive or inferior.