Myth

According to Oxford dictionary, myth is a widely held but false belief or idea. Wikipedia also defines myth as a story about the remote past which is considered true within the society in which it is told.

While growing up, there were many belief that were wildly held in high esteem. People passionately held on to these beliefs and do everything to guard them.

The first one that I would like to talk about is the myth of some children predestined to die. It is called imasu in my language, Ebira while in Yoruba language, it is called abiku.

There is this belief that the spirit of some children purposely came to punish the parents. The child is coming not for the purpose of living but to die and come back again. My grandmother narrated to me what she went through in the hand of "predestined to die" child. She said that the child came and went back four times before the spirit shamefully decided to stay the fifth time. They don't have problem with the child himself but with a spirit that they believe was behind the action of the child. This was a serious issue among that generation.

In order to discourage the spirit from going back when a child is born, some unique names are given to the children. In Ebira language, we have names such as Ihiana (when are you going back?), Asimi (if he is given to me), and many more. The first one is asking the "predestined to die" spirit of when it would be going back, since that is what he knew how to do best. It is believed that the spirit may feel ashamed with such a name and decide to stay back. We have many people in Ebiraland today bearing Ihiana. For the second name, Asimi, the parent of the child is referring to the spiritual world where the child's spirit is coming from. It is a form of putting their fate of the survival of the child on the empathy level of the spiritual realm. It believed that the spiritual world might show empathy and leave the child to live.

As popular as this myth, it was later discovered that the era of multiple child mortality was connected with sickle cell challenges. The knowledge of genotype was not in popular existence in this part of the world. Most of those parents that lose their children after birth suffered from incompatibility of their genotypes.

Another popular myth that is still very much in existence in my village today is the belief that when leaving your home to go for a business trip, it is a sign of bad luck if the first person you meet as you step out is a female.

When I was living with my parents, we had a neighbor that used to hawk garri. Whenever she leaves her apartment and meets a female on her way out, she would go back inside and spend some time before making an attempt to go out again. She would only proceed on her journey if and only if she met a male. Otherwise, she would go back inside. It got to a time that she would even call on me to go outside the compound. I would trek for some meters before turning back. She would then leave the house so that I would be the first person that crossed her path. With that, she was sure of making bumper sales that day. Ironically, it was working for her. My mother also believed in the myth. In fact, the whole village held on to that belief.

However, I see no correlation between the gender that one comes across while going for a business and how successful the business would be. It's just a myth. There is no truth in it entirely.