WIDOWHOOD RITES DEHUMANISE WOMEN (PAGE 11, SEPT 28, 2010)

AS a professional Nurse, a widow and a native of northern Ghana, Madam Batty Ayagiba, believes that under no circumstances should widows be subjected to dehumanising and culturally related human rights abuses.
To champion the fight against dehumanising widowhood practices in northern Ghana, Madam Ayagiba has set up the Widows and Orphans Movement (WOM), to ensure that the multiple human rights violations suffered by widows and their children in the name of culture are done away with.
In some communities in northern Ghana, the belief in widowhood rites still remains widespread and a number of widows and their children suffer from human rights abuses. The continuing practice of these violations in the name of culture put widows and orphans into mental, physical, and emotional torture.
The main aim of WOM is, therefore, to end the cruel, dehumanising and discriminatory cultural practices that do not help anybody.
Madam Ayagiba said for the past 10 years, WOM had been working to educate women, chiefs, elders, opinion leaders etc. to know their rights and refuse to bow to negative culture.
Some people believe that widowhood rites primarily are aimed at driving away the ghosts of the deceased. Under the practice, widows are forced to strip naked in public and undergo other unpleasant exercises that abuse their right to dignity.
Narrating the ordeal these women go through when she delivered a paper on “Culture and Human Rights, Focus on Widowhood Rites in Upper East Region” organised by the Cultural Initiative Support programme , she said those who refused to go through the process were expelled together with their children from their homes.
According to Madam Ayagiba the practice started when a woman lost her husband. “When that happens, an elder in the house goes out to consult a soothsayer on the cause of the death especially when the death is considered ‘sudden’. “Those who perpetrate this act forget or are ignorant that some sicknesses like hypertension, CSM and heart attack can also cause sudden death”, she said
According to Madam Ayagiba, “normally it is concluded that the widow killed her husband through adultery or unfaithfulness. A male or female ritualist who is usually a person that has lost a spouse and claims to know all the rites that the widow must go through is contacted. Upon the arrival of the ritualist, the widow removes the cloth she wears and these cloths are for the ritualist while she then wears leaves”.
She said “this means if the widow has only one cloth it is collected by the ritualist as custom demands. Concoction is given to the widow to drink to prove that she did not kill her husband. The concoction is made of leaves worn by a previous widow during her husband’s funeral. It is normally collected by the ritualist; burnt and boiled and given to another widow to drink. She then wears leaves and sit on a mat. She may be lucky if she has a good mat. If the women are more than one, they all gather in one room. She is asked to hold a calabash and a knife at the same time”.
She continued “in some communities the widow does not drink water in that yard until the husband is buried. If she is lucky to have a good friend, the friend goes to a nearby house to fetch some drinking water for her if she is thirsty.
“But in most cases the people become so occupied with the funeral of the dead man that they forget about the widow. The widow is seated there with the ritualist like a teacher. When they are to bury the man, she is accompanied outside to where the corpse is, to see the husband before it is taken out”.
“She is served food in the calabash she is holding, and as she eats, some of the food may drop on the floor inviting ants to her mat; but if an ant should bite her she must say it. Otherwise she will die (she is threatened).
“The soothsayer is consulted again to know why she was bitten by an ant. It is always the woman who is not faithful to the husband and this has caused the biting of the ant. It is noted as a disgrace on the part of the widow that she was bitten by an ant when the husband died”.
According to Madam Ayagiba, the widow is sent outside wearing only the leaves around the pubic part to bath and eat at a refuse dump. As she walks out, the crowd sees her nakedness and some widows confirm that, the practice is so dehumanising and affect them emotionally and psychologically and makes them develop a low self esteem.”
The hair of the widow is then shaved; but these days’ widows can pay some money to prevent the shaving of the hair because of education. In some areas, a rope is put around her neck as a necklace. She cannot travel far, cannot remove the rope until they perform the final funeral rites of her husband.
She said the widow is only allowed to wear clothes when the man is buried, adding that during the performance of the final funeral rites, she must wear the leaves. The widow is supposed to feed the ritualist with nutritious food for the period the funeral lasts.
After the funeral, she is supposed to accompany the ritualist to his house with different types of food stuff. Due to this practice the ritualists admit that though they know that what they are doing is wrong, it is like a source of employment to them.
Madam Ayagiba said in other tribes, two separate people bath the widow. “While one holds hot water, the other holds cold water. When the one with hot water throws the hot water on the widow, then the one with the cold water will also throw the water at her. If the one handling the cold water is slow, the widow will be burnt; and when she is burnt, she is accused of not being faithful to her late husband”
Madam Ayagiba explained that all these practices were aimed at disfiguring the widow so that the husband’s ghost will not recognise her or scare the ghost so that he does not come to call her wife to where he is (land of the dead). Again the widow is expected to choose a brother or a relative of the late husband to remarry because of the dowry paid by her husband (cows). Hence she is seen as a property and not as a partner
Madam Ayagiba blames the practice on the high illiteracy rates of widows in Northern Ghana, and said some of them proudly drink the concoction to prove that they are innocent of the accusations levelled against them.
Again, she said, since the family of the widow could not pay back the cows they took from her late husband as dowry, the widow has no choice but to remarry her late husband’s relative and continue to give birth for the dead man.
“If she refuses to do that, she becomes an enemy because this means she does not respect authority and might be asked to leave the house. If the widow agrees to remarry, then she incurs the displeasure of her rival and at any slightest mistake, her rival insults her for being a bad luck woman and a witch who has killed her husband and now wants to kill hers.
Madam Ayagiba said the practice can lead to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS. Also the widow uses and loses all she has during the funeral and ends up with nothing hence her children becoming wayward due to her inability to cater for them.
Clearly, these acts contravene the rights of women as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. Article 26 (2) of the Constitution spells out clearly that, customary practices, which dehumanise or are injurious to the physical and mental well-being of a person, are prohibited, and it is strange that despite these constitutional provisions, nothing has been done over the years to curb the negative practice.
These women and children who are made to undergo this ritual in the name of culture and tradition must be assisted and education intensified to end the practice.
It is crucial that the government, traditional rulers, the law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) concerned about the rights of women, among several others, act on time to address the problem.