We are facing two very dangerous scenarios as a people. First is the preponderance of people whom age is bestowing the status of elder without the knowledge and wisdom that goes with it.
Second is a growing number of young people who are eager to learn and understand our culture and tradition, and by extension some of the deeper knowledge that guided our ancestors, but they lack the patience and rigor required for such.
Understandably, this is the first time many people would be hearing this, but instead of trying to understand, they would claim that it is not so in their village, while still trying to argue over what was not so in their village.
That your father or grandparents didn’t teach or inform you about certain things doesn’t invalidate their existence.
Third, MOST of you know NOTHING about culture and tradition. I do not blame you, as non-formal education is almost dying out.
The Igbo refer to the menstrual flow as “Nsọ”. That “Nsọ” is not the “Nsọ” of taboo; rather, it is the “Nsọ” of sacredness, of reverence. Why is that so?
Because the preeminent of all Igbo pantheons is Ala. She is considered the most important deity in Igbo Cosmology and is referred to as the daughter of Chukwu, the supreme god.
She is the goddess of fertility, morality, and the underworld. The Igbo see her as the mother of all things, encompassing both the fertile earth and the land after harvest. That’s the reason fighting on farmlands is a taboo in Igboland, because it is a desecration of the Earth.
Also, spilling the blood of the innocent is a taboo because it is a desecration of the Earth.
She is revered as the source of life, both in the physical sense (birth and growth) and the spiritual sense (receiving the dead into her womb). That’s why evil men or women are not buried in the ground, to avoid desecrating the Earth.
And in Igbo Cosmology, the unfertilized egg in a woman’s body is sacred. It is treated with utmost care when it flows, and discarding it is also done with care and respect because our ancestors understood it as having a life-force.
It is a neutralizer that can affect harvests if not properly handled. To avoid mistakes, our ancestors kept it at a distance.
The Igbo see womanhood from a multidimensional prism. It embodies many things according to different stages. That’s why in Igbo traditional religion, there are certain sacrifices that require a virgin’s input to actualize, some require a nursing mother, and there are also those that require a woman in her menopause who gets reverence because of the men she has raised.
I saw situations where an entire community woke up to see some fetish stuff at the village square or market. The elders would call women to urinate on it as a neutralizer, nullifying whatever evil it was meant for.
I saw these things and I asked questions, and I got answers.
Ala, being the Mother of All Things in Igbo Cosmology, is the mother of fertility for humans, animals, and crops. That’s why even a goat giving birth tethered is abhorrent to the Igbo. Ala is directly in control of agriculture by ensuring that the land is fertile.
So Yam, being the King of Crops in Igboland, represents a special place in this regard, as one of the gods that answers to Ala is the god of Yam, Ahịajọkụ.
And its presence is at home in the barn. The presence of menstrual flow, which is sacred, is forbidden in the barn and, in some parts of Igboland, on farmlands, because it is a life that didn’t manifest, thus treated as sacred.
Contrary to some beliefs amongst some Igbo that the flow is “corrupting,” thus real men shouldn’t touch a woman in her period, it is not corrupting in the negative sense. Rather, the Igbo see it as sacred in relation to the Earth, the Mother of All, thus tampering with it could have dangerous repercussions.
Even men whose hands were enmeshed in diabolism are scared of having anything to do with it, thus the reason some in times past forbade their wives to cook for them during that period. This is because the Igbo believe the sacredness of the flow has a neutralizing effect on diabolism.
Growing up, many of you never made efforts to ask questions about certain rituals, traditions, or cultural practices. You didn’t pay attention or observe, nor did you seek information and knowledge. Unfortunately, many of those who would have educated you are dead.
You don’t know what you don’t know!
A Different Perspective on Cultural Practices
When queried about the exclusion of menstruating women from yam barns, suggesting that such practices in 2025 are sexist and should be reviewed, Kelechi Deca offered a counterpoint:
"First, it is not the Igbo man that feels so; when we couch narratives in that way, it promotes the same thing it intends to dismantle.
The first time I became aware of this cultural fact, I heard it from my step-grandmother who was educating my sisters about it, not my father or uncles.
Second, there are over 100 cultural practices across different cultures globally that if we interrogate them, we may discover that the beliefs may not hold water in 2025, but they are still there, observed, practiced, and respected.
Culture is culture for a reason.
Not all contributes to the growth of the economy or human advancement, but as long as a culture is not an impediment to human advancement, why should we discard it?
That’s how I see and appreciate culture.
Do you know that we are growing only about 10% of yams today that nobody cares about such a belief than we used to grow decades ago when it was observed?
To what extent has discarding it helped us grow more yams?
Culture is just culture."
Quote from Kelechi Deca on Facebook.