Have you ever head of a town or village that women are not allowed to give birth inside that location?
How about a village that pregnant women need to rush out of the village when they are about to go into labour, because of a very old tradition that bans women from putting to birth in that village.
How about a town that doesn’t have a cemetery because they placed a ban on burials ?
Well, in Ghana, the Mafi-Dove community, which is located in Central Tongu district of the Volta Region, along the Accra-Aflao road, has villages like this.
This village comprises of peasant farmers, a community elder that they called Kwame Tsiditse Gbenua. He said; the founding ancestors that discovered the land while he was hunting, heard a voice from the cloud told him, the ground is a holy ground.
The voice also told him that if people want to live in that land, they are not supposed to give birth in that land or rear domestic animals, or conduct burials.
With this custom, pregnant women need to walk long distances or make use of any means of transportation, just to go to where they will give birth to their baby.
At the moment, the young women of the community have said that they want their elders to scrap this tradition, because they want to give birth to their babies in their hometown without violating any tradition.
A female resident of the community known as Hannah Kosinah, has appealed to the Togbui or chief of the town to abolish the custom. She said that other towns with similar customs have scrapped out this custom.
Due to this custom, no domestic animal is in this village, apart from birds in the sky.
The elders believe that any child that’s born in this village will be deformed