Abiku is a
Yoruba
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
word that can be translated as "predestined to death". It is from (abi) "that which was born" and (iku) "death".
Definition
Abiku refers to the spirits of children who die before reaching puberty; a child who dies before twelve years of age being called an Abiku, and the spirit, or spirits, who caused the death being also called Abiku.
Not only is an ''abiku'' a spirit of a child who dies young, the belief is that the spirit returns to the same mother multiple times to be reborn multiple times. It is the belief that the spirit does not ever plan to "stay put in life" so it is "indifferent to the plight of its mother and her grief."
The spirits themselves are believed to live in trees, especially the
iroko,
baobab
''Adansonia'' is a genus made up of eight species of medium-to-large deciduous trees known as baobabs ( or ). They are placed in the Malvaceae family, subfamily Bombacoideae. They are native to Madagascar, mainland Africa, and Australia.Tropic ...
and silk-cotton species.
Literature
"
Ben Okri's novel ''
The Famished Road'' is based upon an abiku.
Debo Kotun's novel ''
Abiku'', a political satire of the Nigerian military oligarchy, is based upon an abiku.
Gerald Brom's illustrated novel, ''
The Plucker
''The Plucker'' is a 160 page novel both written and illustrated by Brom. There are three parts to the story, in 22 chapters, and over 100 illustrations in full color.
This story takes place in the shadowy land of make-believe, where Jack and hi ...
'', depicts a child's toys fighting against an abiku," as described by Pulse. An Abiku Child's return also occurs in the writing of Slovenian Novelist
Gabriela Babnik
Gabriela Babnik (born 1979) is a Slovene writer, literary critic and translator. She has published three novels and her journalistic literary and film criticism regularly appears in national newspapers and magazines in Slovenia.
Babnik was bor ...
, in her novel
Koža iz bombaža. We also see
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: ''Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká''; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded t ...
's poem 'Abiku' rely heavily on this occurrence.
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (born 29 January 1988) is a Nigerian writer. Her 2017 debut novel, ''Stay with Me (novel), Stay With Me'', won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize f ...
's nove
Stay With Mehas a couple whose children die at infancy. And an abiku is the central character in
Tobi Ogundiran ToBI (; an abbreviation of tones and break indices) is a set of conventions for transcribing and annotating the prosody of speech. The term "ToBI" is sometimes used to refer to the conventions used for describing American English specifically, whic ...
's short story "The Many Lives of an Abiku".
Research
A review of the oral histories around ''abiku'' note that:
"Such accounts (sometimes they are just hasty definitions) often mix facts about ''àbíkú'' with facts about ''
ògbánje''; represent àbíkú as homogeneous across time and space; fail to distinguish between popular and expert, official and heretical, indigenous and exogenous discourses of àbíkú; assume that the belief in àbíkú has a psychological rather than ontological origin; and hastily appropriate àbíkú to serve as a symbol for present-day, metropolitan concepts and concerns."
See also
*
Ogbanje
References
* {{cite web, title=abiku definition - Dictionary - MSN Encarta , url=http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_561535516/abiku.html , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090926020334/http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_561535516/abiku.html , archivedate=2009-09-26 , url-status=dead
*Jones, Gertrude. ''Dictionary of Mythology Folklore and Symbols''. New York:Thevj Scarecrow Press, 1962.
External links
Sacred Texts.comgives more explanations about Abikus - facsimile of a chapter from ''Yoruba-Speaking peoples of the slave coast of West Africa'' by
A. B. Ellis
Alfred Burdon Ellis (1852–1894) was a British Army officer and ethnographer, known for his writings on West Africa.
Life
The son of Lieutenant-general Sir Samuel Burdon Ellis and his wife Louisa Drayson, daughter of the governor of Waltham Abb ...
, 1894
Yoruba culture
Yoruba mythology
Yoruba words and phrases
Reincarnation