The Adventures of Cosmic Yoruba
& Her Flying Machines too
I saw this post on Cracked; 5 reasons ‘traditional marriage’ would shock your ancestors, and I knew I had to something similar. Nigerians today have ideas on marriage in the past, especially about how women behaved as wives, that may not be the reality. I’ll be focusing on Yoruba people here because that is what…
This is such a disturbing practice akin to kidnapping brides, I’d never heard of it until this. The post is eye-opening and shines a light on a part of Yoruba (Muslim?) culture that sadly remains to this day.
I rolled my eyes when I stumbled across a link to an article in which a faux intellectual accused me of promoting prostitution because of these posts on (historical) sex work in indigenous African societies. I refused to click on the link, no point in giving views, but really one post on a tiny part…
I know I have written on Efunsetan Aniwura before (where I horribly misspelled her name for which I have been told off *haha*) but once is not enough! The more I learn about this amazing Egba woman, the more I am amazed. I went from not knowing anything about her, to learning that she was…
*peeps from behind the curtain* Yes, Cosmic Yoruba (formerly Eccentric Yoruba) is back! A lot has happened between April 2, 2013 (when I last updated) and now. I would like to say that I have grown up in a number of ways since then. I started working a 9 to 5 that drains my soul,…
I have spent a considerable amount of time wondering how single women could have made do in West African history. The non-existent yet much spoken of “African culture” of today paints a picture that such things never happened even though there are several renowned women who we remember today that never married, whether it is…
Since I wrote this post on sex work in pre-colonial Igboland, my interest in sex work as it exists (or not) in the history of West African peoples grew immensely. I was especially pleased to come across, Emmanuel Akyeampong’s research on sexuality and prostitution among the Akan of the Gold Coast, looking through the years…
Ahebi Ugbabe’s life story is to me, equal parts fascinating and frustrating. Fascinating because Ahebi Ugbabe was a woman ahead of her time, and her story provides incredible insights into pre-colonial Igbo attitudes towards gender and sex. And frustrating because of the exact same reason; that is pre-colonial Igbo attitudes towards gender and sex. Ahebi…
Nwando Achebe writes that “woman-to-woman marriage in Africa has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality” (emphasis hers)…and I actually agree with this…kind of. While I strongly believe in pre-colonial lesbian secret societies littered across the African continent, at the risk of falling into the trap of Eurocentric and Western (mis)understanding of African social institutions, it…
In Nwando Achebe’s recount of Ahebi Ugbabe’s life, she looks into the practice of marrying women to Goddesses as a sort of human sacrifice and slavery system. With the abolition of the international slave trade in 1805, some Igbo people created new deities and mystical forces that were to help them fight the internal slavery…