any igbos here may know about the ogbanje spirits where a child is born only to die and reincarnate to be born again, then die, then re-incarnates to be born again and die etc to punish the parents for whatever reason. our ancestors used native doctors to attempt to stop the vicious cycle. they tried to do things that will either make the child decide to stay and not die or the made the child suffer before dying so he/she wont come back to punish the mother.

however, with the coming of modern science, such beliefs have been put into vigorous critical appraisal. i dont have all the facts with me, but something convinces me, that it might have been a simple case of sickle cell disease, where the children simply die too soon and when the parents have another child, the same sickle cell disease kills the child and so on. our ancestors never did a blood test before marriage to see if they were compatible or not. they never did such things. i intend to do a research on this at some point, but i may as well start collecting ideas from here(if any) prior to my research. your thpoughts are welcome.

yours truly . . . me

Yes sir , I quite agree with you because from my experience. I have not been seeing such cases again especially with modern scientific knowledge of screening and treatment. There is also natural selection of couples eg by not marring from family with freequent and early deaths. Management of Sickle Cell disease has olso considerably extended the lifespan of individuals. Then you have to also consider factors which will lead to repeated deaths with a particular woman like an inadequate pelvis leading to difficult and an unattended labour especially in rural comunities. Children in developed urban centers will not have OGBANJE spirit because of the anti OGBANJE measures arround like medical facilities, qualified medical doctors, learned parents etc. Therefore it seems the so called ogbanje and the spirit controlling it is rooted in our poverty, underdevelopment poor medical and rural infrastructures like lack of roads, water, light, education, political will etc etc