Over the weekend I had the opportunity to visit one of my cousins, who is seldom at home because of his kind of job.

I have not seen him in a long while because, these days I hardly have time to socialize, more so, he lives very far from me.

So, yesterday I paid him a visit but, I had called him two days earlier to inform him of my visit so I wouldn’t be stranded outside.

I got to his place and I walked in on him arguing with one of his friends about something I couldn’t understand.

They were arguing and shouting at the top of their voices and I wondered if they didn’t constitute a nuisance to his neighbors!

I know how it feels when you have nuisance neighbors who don’t care about other people around them.

His friend was more serious with the topic and seemed to be the one supporting while my cousin was the one opposing.

They were arguing about the ‘ogbanje spirit’ and its existence, they told me after I asked them to let me in on their argument!

My cousin watched one of the Nollywood movies with the story line of a young girl tormenting her parents with the ‘ogbanje spirit.’

So, I think his friend came in while he was watching it and they watched together and thereafter started arguing on it after it ended.

I was interested in that topic too because; I have always wondered what ‘ogbanje’ means and what Nigerian language it represents!

Because almost every tribe in Nigeria uses the word ‘ogbanje’ to describe someone who they think has an erratic behavior.

I grew up hearing ‘ogbanje,’ that someone is an ‘ogbanje,’ or that someone behaved like one, and that most young girls are the suspects.

While I was in school, we read a poem but I cannot recall who wrote it, it was called ‘abiku’ which means a ‘strange spirit.’

I don’t know if ‘abiku,’ and ogbanje means ‘strange spirit’ but, that is the suitable word I could find to match it.

How will I ever forget one woman who lived the opposite building from my parents when I was in secondary school?

She was divorced from her husband and was living single with her five children; I recall they were all very beautiful children!

She worked somewhere on the island and was not home till about 11pm every day, her children would be all by themselves.

So one day she asked a house-keeping agent to get her a female house keeper to help in taking care of her kids and home while she was at work.

As soon as the agent brought the young girl to her, the woman raised an alarm claiming the girl was an ogbanje.

She immediately sent for my mom (she was my mom’s friend) when my mom came she told my mom to take a closer look at the girl the agent brought!

My mom looked bewildered because, she didn’t understand how the woman could tell someone was an ogbanje by mere looking at them!

I was too young to comprehend what was going on that afternoon as me and my siblings watched from the comfort of our balcony.

The ogbanje confusion has led many people to slaughter innocent children and even young girls who they ‘think’ has the spirit.

Why do white people not have ogbanje? Or is it not the same God that created all of us? If they could have diseases we have, then they should also have ogbanje too!

That belief is very barbaric and should be scrapped and anyone caught punishing any child or young girl for it should be sent to gaol straight up!


What is your own 'ogbanje' experience? Please share your thoughts!

More mind blowing topics from source: http://www.chichiuncensored.com/ogbanje-really-exist/

Ogbanje comes from the Igbo language. Ogbanje literally translates as one who is on a 'repeated' journey: o gba nje. The phenomenon of ogbanje started in the past before westernization when children born to parents would die in succession after each other. This was attributed to an 'evil spirit' that kept visiting the parent through each child. It was thought that it was the same evil spirit tormenting the parents as a child born would die, and be reborn to the same parent only to die again. Sometimes one child or two would survive. It was not until westernization that it was discovered that this was actually due to the sickle cell disease. Sickle cell is very common among black people, especially in africa and it is thought to have developed as the body's natural resistance to the scourge of malaria present in Sub Saharan Africa. Scientifically speaking, the normal human (AA) red blood cells are oval-like in shape and transport oxygen around the body efficiently and by virtue of this the malaria-bearing pathogen survives well on them. Sickled cells are C-like in shape and do not transport oxygen around the body too efficiently but the good thing is that the malaria-bearing pathogen does not survive on these sickled cells. By developing sickled cells in the body, that was the body's natural response was to stave off falling sick to malaria. However, early on in the evolutionary phase, the first individuals that developed some sickled cells and the others normal (AS) showed no signs of the sickled cell disease but this caused problems when they tried to reproduce with another individual of similar combination of sickled + normal red blood cells (AS), producing progeny with nearly all sickled cells (SS) that rarely survived infancy (the phenomenon of ogbanje in the past). AA individuals have healthy red blood cells but fall very easily to malaria. AS individuals have a combination of healthy and sickled cells, they don't exhibit SS symptoms because they have enough normal red blood cells to survive on and they don't fall sick to malaria easily (they would need enormous malaria-bearing mosquito bites to get them to fall sick). SS individuals have mostly sickled cells and therefore exhibit SS symptoms in full but hardly fall sick to malaria. The development of sickled cells in the blood stream of our early ancestors in black africa was a direct evolutionary response to the scourge of malaria rampant in the area. However, it didn't go down well when they reproduced further generations, producing AA individuals, AS individuals and SS individuals (ogbanje).

Unfortunately, our ancestors were unaware of this biological occurrence until westernization came which explained the phenomenon of 'ogbanje' and enlightenment about blood match for potential couples helped to reduce the occurrence of sickled cell individuals in black africa. However, ogbanje now has been attributed a new meaning sort of especially to a female, especially if she is too beautiful (she must be from the spirit world, is the common thought). That's the modern impression sort of nowadays. But the original meaning came from the occurrence of several births of SS babies that rarely survived infancy or even if they did barely made it through adulthood. In other words, ogbanje is now used to refer to someone perceived to be a 'witch'.

Abiku is the yoruba equivalent of ogbanje and carries similar meaning in terms of context.

Lol, I didn't know Africans kill their own kids, because of some stupid folklore. No wonder you guys never developed past spears and mud huts.

CzChB:
Lol, I didn't know Africans kill their own kids, because of some stupid folklore. No wonder you guys never developed past spears and mud huts.

Ēlénū pelebe.