“If you ask me, we find sickness especially hard to deal with, especially if we have a lot of children because they are always getting sick and needing to be sacrificed for. This is because children easily annoy the spirits by breaking the taboos. It is not always the person who breaks the taboo who gets sick either.
“We are really scared of sickness because we have so much of it. We do not name our children until they are about 2 years old because we know that they will have constant sickness and be likely to die before that age. Sometimes, in order to obey the taboos, we have to bury our children at birth.
For instance if a baby has its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck at birth, that is a bad omen and the baby must be buried. We have to crush up some ginger root and stuff it down the babies throat and then place it in a shallow grave under the house. We don’t like doing this because many times we hear the baby screaming from under the ground for a long time.
“We also have to worship and obey our ancestral spirits because they control every part of our lives. They are the ones who control our crops and give power to the tribal leaders and who also help us catch wild deer and pigs.
Without their help our crops would not grow and we would experience floods, storms and earthquakes. They also help us defeat our enemies and keep away warring neighbors.”
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- “Unripe Ones – From Fear to Faith” Part 1
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- “Unripe Ones – From Fear to Faith” Part 5
- “Unripe Ones – From Fear to Faith” Part 6
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