CHILDBIRTH

When the pregnant woman starts having labour pains, word is sent to the midwife in the village. The (experienced, elderly) lady called Ebe comes and chants, "Others flew like rivers and multiplied, let us also flow and multiply," and, repeating the Islamic formula, starts to work. It is common belief that the foregoing chant facilitates childbirth.

If it is a baby girl, she says, "Let her be a granny with a walking stick," and if it is a boy, she says, "Let him grow with his fother and mother, becoming a while bearded grandfather “thus indicating the sex of the new-born, announcing the qood news, and adding her prayers for  a long life, all at the same time.

During childbirth, the locks, the doors and the windows are all unlatched and left wide open, the faucets are turned on and any water in jars and other pots is poured out, with the belief that this would facilitate the process.

Confinement after childbirth After the childbirth, the mother is well tended for fourty days. She is never left alone. Precautions are taken against childbed fever. This fever does not occur in lit areas and where there are moles. For this leason, the light of the room where the new mother lies is never put out, A Koran is placed at the bedside; a broom is placed in a comer ot the room, and a sewing needle and thread are put on the table. Special attention is paid to have sky-blue colour

dominant in the swaddling. The baby is not shown to anybody before a charm is put on and until a week elapses after the childbirth.

For the new-born baby, a woman who has not lost a child is asked to give a piece of cloth. If o dress is made from this cloth and out on the baby, ''it will have