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NOTES  ON  CULTURAL  ASPECTS  OF  MENSTRUATION  IN  GHANA

CHRISTINE  OPPONG*

The original version of this paper was prepared for a World Health Organisation
Task Force on Acceptibility of Fertility Regulating Methods, Geneva, April, 1974.
In this brief collection  of notes some of the traditional  Ghanaian attitudes and
practices regarding menstruation, its onset and cessation, are described. These include
puberty rites, menstrual taboos and postmenopausal privileges.

Menstruation and Pregnancy

The fact that the beginning of menstruation heralds the potentially fertile period
of a woman's life is known by people of all occupational and ethnic groups in Ghana.
There is evidence that among the daughters of the better placed sections of the popula-
tion the mean age of menarche is  12.9 (95 per cent in one school sample began to
menstruate between the ages of 12.5 and 13.5 years) (Ofosu Amaah, 1969). In contrast
there is evidence that among rural farming populations the age of menarche is some-
what later,  the mean age being 15.6 (Ofosu  Amaah 1974).

There is strong pressure among the illiterate girls in all ethnic groups to marry
and have children as soon as the menstrual cycle is established. Thus in a recent study,
first pregnancy was found to occur at the mean age of  18.7, the majority  of women
beanng  at least  one child in their  teens. Ofosu  Amaah (1974) has commented  that
the age of the onset of menstruation appears to be falling by about 2\  months every
decade and warned that if this trend continues the likelihood of girls becoming preg-
nant in their teens will continually increase. As will be seen below puberty ceremonials
or the physical signs that puberty has been reached indicate that the time is ripe for
marriage among all, except the school-going girls. Even among these a considerable
number drops out of school through pregnancy or are constrained to cause  abortion.
Although the connection between menstruation and the possibility of childbearing
is universally known, the way in which ovulation occurs during the menstrual cycle
is not generally realized for the erroneous idea is widespread among would-be family
planners that the days following menstruation are unsafe and that the midpoint of the
cycle onwards is safe, a 'method' of planning apparently current among some villagers
(Belcher,  1974). There  are indications  that  illiterate  women  may  keep  tract  of  the
days  of  the  month  on  which  menstruation  occurs  according  to  the  phases  of  the
moon. How widespread  or accurate this reckoning is, requires documentation. Some
village  women  are also  said to  record  with  written charcoal  marks  the number  of
days by which menstruation is overdue, so that they can calculate their expected date
of delivery or take the steps they may consider necessary to terminate the pregnancy.

Puberty Rites

Among most of the peoples of southern Ghana the menarche is a time for public
ceremonial. Among the matrilineal Akan the first menses is an  occasion for  public
rejoicing  and  congratulations,  for  display,  ritual,  music,  song  and  prayer.  It  has
even been called the most important event in an Ashanti girl's life (Fortes, 1954:268).
Shaving, washing, anointment, the use of special foods, dusting with white clay and
so on, all indicate the ending of the childhood state and the entry into womanhood.
During the rituals prayers are said stressing the importance of maternity and fertility.
Ten or even thirty children may be mentioned as the goal (Rattray,  1927: 73; Field,
1948:137). From that day on the girl is addressed as mother to signify her new status.

* Senior Research Fellow, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon Accra

•••aP

33

Thirty years ago or more it was a sin and a crime for  which both parties were
liable to a heavy fine and to public obloquy for a girl to conceive before her puberty
ceremony.  But after  this ceremony no disgrace follows  premarital pregnancy if the
girl has not been promiscuous (Fortes  1950:265-266). Before the ceremonies may be
performed  the local queenmother  and a  few elderly women would accompany  the
girl during the more esoteric rites of bathing at the stream (Poku, 1965).

The puberty rites not marriage rites are the sine qua non for legitimate birth and
as Rattray  notes (1927: 188-189) the  rites are held far  more with the idea of safe-
guarding the community than in indulgin gin a display for the benefit of a particular
individual. In contrast customary marriage is almost devoid of public ritual or display
These  puberty  rites  are  still  held  to  some  extent  particularly  in  rural  areas.
Among Christians the confirmation  ceremony has partly taken over the function  of
declaring publicly the nubility and maturity of daughters. Formerly and still in some
cases the puberty rite was the preliminary to marriage. Education for girls has meant
however that in modern times a gap of ten or more years may intervene between the
onset of puberty and marriage.

There are indications that the psychological effects of these ceremonies and their
significance to the girl may in some cases be traumatic in effect  (Field, 1960:461). It
was however  an  occasion all parents looked forward  to and which they  celebrated
with pride and gratitude.

Among some sections of the Ga people the girl's puberty ceremony is as necessary
a preliminary to socially acceptable pregnancy as it is among the Akan (Field, 1940:
23). In former days a girl pregnant before her puberty rites might be driven away from
the community with her child. Among other Ga groups, for instance the La families
described by  Mills Odoi  (1967: 77) the puberty rites are minimal  and  may  merely
consist of the presentation of a fowl by the father for a special meal and the occasion
'for advice and admonition by the maternal grandmother.

Among the neighbouring  Krobo and  Shai however the rites were traditionally
elaborate and formerly protracted up to one year of seclusion; In former times groups
of  dipo girls who were undergoing the puberty rites would ordinarily spend at least
twelve months in the ancestral mountain homes of the people under the supervision of
priestesses and old women (Huber, 1963: 37). The occasion was one for special foods,
cosmetics,  dress, songs  and  ceremonies  which  are  still  to  a  great  extent  used  and
observed (Ayi,  1966) just  as in the case of the Akan  and some of the  Ga, if  a girl
conceived before passing through her puberty ceremonies it was thought to cause a
situation of ritual pollution for her family and community which required cleansing
and pacifying rites for the supernatural world (Huber, 1963: 77). Such an unfortunate
event was and now is avoided by the performance of the puberty ceremonies for girls
at the tender ages of seven and eight (Huber 1963: 101). As among the Ga and Akan,
it is the puberty rites among the Krobo which have been an even more crucial pre-
requisite for pregnancy than marriage. We are informed  that premarital conception
is rather common, many of such children becoming attached to the families of their
mothers' father  rather  than  to those of their genitors. The dipo ceremony is the time
when the Krobo girl enters womanhood and is the most important ritual in her whole
life.  It is more than  simply  a  celebration  for first menstruation  with which it does
not necessarily coincide. According to Quarcoo (1965: 149) the Shai dipo ceremony
has  been  shortened  first  to  three  months  and  now  is  a  three  to  six week  affair.
While  the  teaching  of  mother  craft  aspect  of  the  Shai  dipo has disappeared  it is.
considered  crucial  to  prevent  barrenness,  which  is  felt  to be increasingly prevalent
After dipo a Shai girl is expected to many and bear children.

34

V*

Among  the  Ewe the  girl's  physical  development,  puberty  rites  and  marriage
follow each other in quick succession (Nukunya 1969:152). In former times Ewe girls
among the Anlo who had reached puberty went through a ceremony in which they
were paraded through the village dressed in rich beads and clothes, a demonstration of
their  nubility  (ibid. p. 79). At  the  present  time  puberty  ceremonies  are  no  longer
performed. Instead youths begin to court girls as soon as they know that they have
come of age.

In the northern and upper regions of Ghana the menarche is rather the signal to
prepare for marriage than for  the celebration  of public puberty rites. Indeed young
girls have frequently  in the past been married before puberty, menstruation marking
their maturity and readiness to take up residence or commence sexual relations with
their waiting husbands. Some groups such as the Konkomba  have widely practised
infant betrothal, fiancees going to join their husbands at about eithteen years of age
or when pregnant, whichever is earlier (Tait, 1961: 163).

Restrictions and Taboos

There are many restrictions and taboos commonly associated with menstruation
in traditional Ghanaian thought and practice. There is a widely recognized traditional
taboo  on a menstruant woman's cooking food  for  any man including her  husband
(e.g. Rattray,  1927: 74). It may be thought necessary to protect even crops from her
evil influence (Rattray,  1932: 380). She may be forbidden  to enter sacred places and
to touch ritual and sacred objects  (Rattray,  1927: 74-5). She may even be forbidden
to cross the threshold of any man's house (Rattray, 1927:75). She may not be allowed
to enter any stream to get water (Field  1948: 137). Thus traditionally Akan villages
have  had  special  houses  where  women  should  go  to  stay  during  their  menstrual
periods,  so  as  not  to  come  into  contact  with  men  or they may stay outside their
homes till night fall. The taboo may be so strict that  she cannot  speak to her hus-
band at this time except through a spokesman usually a child or even touch the pans
and plates used in cooking her husband's food. A menstruating woman is referred to
by the Akan as oko mfikyir  "she has gone behind the house".

Field  (1948: 95)  states that the chief  reason one seldom finds a nuclear  family
household among the Akan is that a woman may neither cook for her husband, enter
his room nor (in strict households) penetrate beyond the entrance porch of his com-
pound while she is ceremonially unclean. This does not  mean that a man and  wife
never  share  the  same  house  but  that  there  must  always  be  another  woman  who
can relieve her of cooking from  time to time and there must always be an arrange-
ment whereby she can avoid her husband's room (ibid.: 96).

Among the Ga the segregation of the sexes is such that they did not traditionally
coreside and one of the main reasons for this residential separation was said to be that
in the former time many lineages procured war medicines which were buried in their
compounds  and  it  was believed  that  these medicines would  be rendered  useless if
meanstruating women were allowed to  live there (Mills Odoi,  1967: 24). Thus the
only women occasionally observed to live in men's compound are women who have
passed the menopause (Manoukian,  1950: 74).

Among the Krobo because of the supposed ritual uncleaness of the menstruating
woman, she traditionally passes her time living behind the house and taking her meals
separately from  others and only after  ritual cleansing and sprinkling of her cooking
pots with herbal water does she return to her normal way of life. At the present time
this custom is not observed everywhere any more (Huber, 1963:188). Such restrictions
and taboos appear to have been most strict among those people, the southern Akan,
Ga,  Ewe and  Krobo  who  also have puberty  rituals.  Among  northern peoples  the

—*?

35

taboos are much less strict. Thus Tait notes that a man will still go to sleep in his wife's
room at the time she is menstruating when it is her turn in a polygynous household
even though sexual relations are then forbidden  (Tait,  1961: 183). However among
the Gonja, E. Goody notes that the linking of cooking and sexual services is central
to the distribution  of tasks and privileges among co-wives in the households and as
wives take turns to cook or sleep with their husbands and as a menstruating woman
cannot cook or sleep with her husband she will arrange with their co-wife to reschedule
their  domestic tasks (1973:  109). Among the Tallensi  of  northern  Ghana there  are
apparently no taboos connected with puberty or menstruation (Fortes 1949: 201).

In  modern  times many  of the  taboos  are no  longer  observed,  but  observance
remains strict in houses of chiefs and traditional religious officials.  For the idea is
widespread that contact with a menstruating woman will have a negative effect on all
supernatural  and  protective  powers  possessed  by  individuals,  spirits  or  objects
(Rattray (1927:75). Field (1960:41) goes so far as to say of the Akan that a potentially
bad magic is thought to be possessed by all menstruating women. It is even believed
that water or cloth which has been in contact with menstrual blood can be used to
destroy supernatural influences and to cause harm. At the same time the menstruating
woman is thought to have special powers so that no ghost, bad medicines or witchcraft
can harm her (Field,  1948). Since traditionally men have had about  them  so many
objects subject  to  supernatural  influence  of  one kind  or  another,  such as ancestral
stools, shrines, medicines talismans, blessings and  medicines attached  to  tools and
instruments,  it  has  been  considered  dangerous  for  an  unclean  woman  to  be  near
these and spread her contagion to them.

Hie Menopause

It  has  been  estimated  that  the menopause among rural women seldom occurs
before the age of fifty (Field 1960:150). The cessation of the monthly bleeding is the
beginning of a new era in the life of a woman. On the one hand she may be worried
that she will now loose her attraction for her husband and be replaced in his affections
by a young and fertile  wife.  Field (1960: 150) has indicated the plight  of the aging
woman, who at  the onset  of amenorrhea may go from  shrine to  shrine for  several
years with the complaint that she is pregnant but that the pregnancy does not grow.
This fear is a very real one in the light of the fact that several surveys have revealed
a desire for larger numbers of offspring  on the part of men than women in both rural
and urban areas (e.g. Belcher, 1974; Caldwell, 1968; Oppong 1973).

On the other hand the end of her periods of 'uncleahess' may give a new era of
freedom  and power to a woman who may be now able to undertake many kinds of
tasks and positions she was barred from carrying out before. She may be able to reside
in men's houses (Manoukian,  1950-74); she may be able to approach the ancestral
shrines and stools and participate in rituals from  which she was previously  strictly
barred  (Nukunya  1969: 152). As the  Lowiili phrase it  at the menopause a  woman
'turns into a man' (Goody 1962:56,201: Goody 1967:52). She can no longer perform
the main task of women, bearing children  and  so is in a sense of sexual. As Goody
states, "Authority ritual and otherwise is normally vested in men; within the general
category of women, it is those past menopause who most nearly approach the male".
Thus  she  may  be  able  to  perform  intimate  physical  acts  for  both  sexes including
bathing of corpses and midwifery. The extent of her power may even be such that she
can become a chief in her own right as among the Mamprussi and Dagomba, among
whom a number of important  titled  offices  are specifically reserved for  women past
the menopause (Rattray, 1932: 557; Oppong, 1974). Among the Akan however fertile
women may be made queenmothers, may obtain both at the community and domestic
level a role in decision-making which she could never have aspired to as a potentially

36

fertile  sexually active woman. Thus speaking  of the Tallensi, Fortes has written, a
woman attains her fullest freedom in the family when she ceases to have sexual value. ...
when she ceases to be reproductive" (Fortes, 1949:100). Indeed her ceasing to have a
sexual value in marriage may in some cases be associated with a withdrawal from the
married state a retreat to residence with kin, as among the Gonga described by Goody
E. (1973) and called terminal separation of marriage.

The  menopause  obviously  has  its  traditional  drawbacks  and  compensations,
which for the individual woman will differ according to her personal evaluation of her
roles as wife, mother, kinswoman or community member.

A Concluding Comment

In  these  brief  notes  we have recorded  several  facts;  one  is  that  the  onset  of
menstruation is treated differently in the various Ghanaian ethnic groups but that its
connection with fertility is universally recognized. Among the Akan, the Ga and the
Krobo puberty ceremonies were formerly essential and are still carried out by tradi-
tionalists. Among the Ewe puberty ceremonies were formerly  important  but are no
longer so. Among the peoples further  north marriage rather than puberty tends to be
publicized.  Among  all  groups  the  menarche  indicates  readiness  for  marriage  and
pregnancy usually follows quite soon.

Menstruation  in general is associated  with ideas of  uncleanness and  pollution
but again the extent varies to which taboos are upheld and enforced  including resi-
dential and culinary taboos. They appear to be most strict  and far reaching among
the peoples who have public puberty ceremonials. These taboos appear to be falling
into disuse especially among the Christians and the socially and spatially mobile, but
to  be still observed most strictly in households inhabited  by men of importance in
the traditional, political and religious heirarchies.

Among all peoples the menopause is associated with a relaxation of such taboos
and  greater freedom  and  authority  for  women in  religious, political  and  domestic
matters.

Further  studies in detail of attitudes and practices related to menstruation  and
in particular  to  traditional  procedures intended  to postpone  or  prevent  pregnancy
through  regulation  of  menstruation  could  be  of  relevance  to  the  current  Family
Planning Programme. In addition ceremonies warrant  documentation  such as those
performed by the Akan after the birth of a tenth child Badu, intended to bring about
the end of childbearing through ancestral intervention or the seating of a royal woman
upon a black ancestral stool with the invocation to the ancestors that her child-bearing
should now cease.

References

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Fortes, M.,  1949 The Web of  Kinship among the Tallensi. Oxford  University  Press.
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38