Traditional views of Childbirth in Africa

[Kala]

On this thread will be excerpts of info I find on "traditional" beliefs and practices on child birth in Afrika. The info on the placenta comes directly from a book (see title below). The info is unfortunately not written from an African-centered perspective, however, as with many aspects of our culture that is researched, stolen, copied, manipulated by yurugu scientists and academicians to suite their purposes- until we do our own work and research on such topics- it is the expectation that we look passed any yurugu interpretations on our cultural practices and pull out the pertinent info. Medase!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Book Title: Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community. Contributors: Kathryn Linn Geurts - author. Publisher: University of California Press. Place of Publication: Berkeley, CA. Publication Year: 2002. Page Number: 85-87.

TREATING THE PLACENTA AS A STOOL

Birth attendants and village vixelawo in Sr[ch596]gboe, Whuti, Atok[ch596], and Kplowotok[ch596] sometimes called the placenta zikpui, which is a term referring to a traditional African stool on which chiefs sit. While they were clear that in the Ewe language the word amen[ch596] was the technical or literal term used to describe the afterbirth, I often heard them talk about the placenta as a stool (zikpui). Before elaborating on the significance of calling the placenta a stool, let me note here that I distinguish between three different categories of people who deliver babies. When I use the term “midwife, ” I mean a person who has received biomedically based training as a nurse-midwife. The term “traditional birth attendant” is reserved for those who have participated in a brief government-sponsored training program to upgrade their delivery skills. I use “village vixela” to refer to other people in the rural area who deliver babies on a regular basis but who have not received formal or state-sanctioned training. 1

Many traditional birth attendants and vixelawo reported imagining the baby sitting on a little stool inside the womb, and after delivery they would talk about waiting for the “baby's seat” to emerge. This belief was not literal; they were amused by my questions about whether they really thought the baby was sitting upright (on top of the placenta) inside the womb, and they clearly understood that a preferable presentation during delivery was head (rather than feet) first. The symbolic expression is striking, however, in the association it conjures to stools (which hold profound spiritual significance in Anlo-land and throughout West Africa) and to posture and balance. There is an imagined baby composing or arranging her body into a still and balanced form, poised on an African stool, even in the womb.

Those experienced in the meditative arts of yoga might readily understand the underlying concept here, but to truly appreciate the sensory experience symbolized by zikpui, perhaps one needs to have sat on a carved wooden stool and felt how resting in such a (balanced) position stills the body's proprioceptive and kinesthetic sensations. Nonetheless, the image of the baby atop a zikpui or “placental stool” drew on cultural categories of balancing (agbagba[ch598]o[ch598]o), kinesthesia and movement (az[ch596]liz[ch596]z[ch596]), and the more general sense of seselelame (feeling in the body, flesh, and skin).

I hasten to add that this is not all that is involved. The symbolism suggests that the baby is linked to the mother via the placenta as the individual is tied to the lineage through the ancestral stool. 2 An ancestral stool is considered a symbol of heritage and authority, being a “seat of power, ” and it plays a significant role in religious rituals of the lineage, or clan. Amoaku (1975:119–120) explains “the symbolic significance of the ancestral stool as the source of all traditional political and spiritual power among the Ewe. ” In ritual contexts, stools are even “fed” and “given drinks” (Glover 1992), which is suggestive of a nourishing capacity paralleled by the placenta being the life-support system for a baby. Stool festivals (called zikpuinu or aƒedonu) involve offerings of food and drink to the ancestors (Nukunya 1969b:27), often literally in the presence of or while standing before the ancestral stool. While I do not know how conscious these connections may have been on the part of the various traditional birth attendants and village vixelawo who referred to the placenta as a stool, the symbolism suggests that just as it is from the placenta that the baby derives nutrients, oxygen, and blood, it is in relation to the ancestral stool that members of the lineage sustain themselves (by knowing who they are and to what group they belong). Just as the ancestral stool is treated reverentially, the placenta is typically buried somewhere in the compound that serves as the baby's lineage ground. It is a place to which most Anlo-speaking people return regularly to pay homage to their ancestors and is therefore instrumental in the formation of identity.

Notes:
1 *Here I have simplified some categories that are actually quite complicated and politically charged. For more information on this, see my discussion of these issues in “Childbirth and Pragmatic Midwifery in Rural Ghana” (Geurts 2001). *
*
2 *Also see Nukunya (1969b) and Fiawoo (1959a) for incidental information on stools. *
*
Bib:
Fiawoo, Dzigbodi Kodzo 1959a The Influence of Contemporary Social Changes on the MagicoReligious Concepts and Organization of the Southern Ewe-Speaking People of Ghana. Ph. D. Dissertation. University of Edinburgh.

Fiawoo, Dzigbodi Kodzo 1959b Urbanisation and Religion in Eastern Ghana. The Sociological Review 7(1):83–97.

Nukunya, G. K. 1969a Afa Divination in Anlo. Ghana Research Review 5(2):9–26.

Nukunya, G. K. 1969b Kinship and Marriage among the Anlo Ewe. London: Athlone Press.

Nukunya, G. K. 1969c The Yewe Cult among Southern Ewe-Speaking People of Ghana. Ghana Journal of Sociology 5(1):1–7.

[Kala]

LABOR AT THE DRUM: MASHONA CHILD BIRTH PRACTICE

"Some time before the child was due to be born, arrangements would have been made with the midwife who was to attend the delivery. She would be sent for as soon as pains began and, as the contractions got faster, she would tell the woman in labour to strip herself naked and put herself in a sitting position, with her back against a drum or grindingmortar--which is why, among the Mashona, they will sometimes describe a woman in childbirth as 'at the drum'. The woman's legs would be placed wide apart and bent, and she would be told to grip the insides of her thighs and exert pressure in that way. No men were allowed near the hut during the labour, but women would often come to watch or help at the birth."

Book Title: The Tribe and Its Successors: An Account of African Traditional Life and European Settlement in Southern Rhodesia. Contributors: William Rayner - author. Publisher: Frederick A. Praeger. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1962. Page Number: 62.