(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-13 07:34

That should be good news for Yorubaland, where twins are regarded as a special gift from God and bearers of good luck, Akinyemi said.

"Twins are treated with affection, love and respect. Their birth is a good omen," he said.

But while many African cultures see twins as blessed, they often believe twins also have divine powers and the ability to harm those who cause them displeasure.

In pre-colonial times some communities used to kill twins and occasionally their mothers, believing a double birth was an evil portent and that the mother must have been with two men to bear two children at once. A Scottish missionary is credited with ending this practice.

In Yorubaland and indeed in large swathes of sub-Saharan Africa, twins are also believed to possess one soul between them. This belief accounts for a whole series of distinctive, and in some cases macabre rituals that are often country specific.

If one twin dies in a Yoruba family, the parents order a wooden figure called an "ibeji" to be carved, to take the place of the dead twin. The half soul of the deceased twin is thought to live on in the ibeji figure -- which is clothed, "fed" and carried by a mother exactly in the same way as the living twin.

When living twins reach maturity they take responsibility for the ibejis' care.

Meanwhile, a twin who dies in Malawi is buried with a piece of clothing belonging to the surviving sibling.

But when a twin dies in South Africa, the surviving twin is made to lie face down on his sibling's coffin the night before the burial, to mourn his death and say goodbye properly.

Another variant has the surviving twin being made to lie face up in the freshly dug grave the day before his sibling is buried. If not, communities fear the surviving twin will pine so much for his dead sibling that he will also die.

Amongst the Yoruba -- one of Nigeria's dominant ethnic groups who are also present in Benin, Ghana and Togo -- a mother who loses both twins will take part periodically in ritual ceremonies where she dances with both ibeji figures, either one in each hand, or both tucked into her shirt.

Anthropologists say the elaborate rituals surrounding twins go back to the days when perinatal mortality was very high for twins -- the increased chances of premature delivery compounding the problem of inadequate healthcare in traditional societies.

The rituals were destined to help communities come to terms with the loss of the babies.

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