Fon Twins Festival
Fon Twins Festival
SHARING A SOUL
Fon Twins Festival
The highest incidence of twin births in the world exists in Benin and Nigeria among the Ewe, Yoruba, and Fon. For every thousand births, thirty of them are twins. In this part of Africa, twins have become the focus of unique traditions and rituals.
In October 2006, crowds gather for the annual twins festival in Ouidah, Benin - the heartland of the Voodoo religion in West Africa. The first part of the festival is dedicated to celebrating living twins, while the second part will be to honor and protect dead twins so that their spirits may rest peacefully. The Ewe,Yoruba, and Fon people believe that twins share a single soul; they are viewed as two halves of the same whole. When one twin dies, disrupting the balance of their shared soul, it is said that the life of the other is endangered. To counteract this, a community priest is consulted and an artisan commissioned to carve a small wooden figure that serves as a symbolic substitute for the soul of the dead twin. If both twins have died, two of these figures are made. The dolls are fed daily at a small home altar, dressed in stylish fabric outfits, and when taken out of the house, carried tucked in the waistband of the mother.
Domengo Pascaline, treasurer of the Association of Twins in Ouidah explains that it is important to keep the twins’ effigies happy, well fed, and well dressed, as they can bring health, prosperity, and happiness to their families. They can also bring disaster, disease and death—and therefore must be treated with respect and love. A departed twin remains as powerful as a living one and must be equally cared for by the parents. In Domengo’s home, she places the dolls in front of an altar, providing them with a plate of coconut slices and kola nuts, and sprays the altar with libations of palm oil.
Later, the dolls are carried to a large plantation of coconut palms, where hundreds of families are gathered with their living twins and the Hovi Dijo effigies that protect them. Throughout the day offerings of food and libations are given to the effigies while mothers sing and dance with them. At nearby shrines, priests bless the generation of children while priestesses in white wraps dance and fall into trances.
Long ago in Nigeria, Yoruba twins were considered carriers of evil and they were killed, sometimes along with their mothers. This practice was abandoned before the colonial era, when the ritual honoring of twins replaced traditional infanticide. This acceptance of twins into Yoruba society today is explained by a myth that they are of divine origin and must be treated with respect to gain protection and prosperity for their families.
Afrika Afrique Africa
