Life Cycle Pregnancy Botsetsi Childhood Initiation Engagement Marriage Death Ancestors

© 2018 Dr Margaret Sheppard

Pregnancy

Nowadays many pregnant women attend the antenatal clinics, of which there were two in Kanye 1977-83. (1973 - 75% of all pregnant women in Botswana attended an antenatal clinic).  One is at the Government Clinic and the other at the Seventh Day Adventist Mission Hospital. Although many women still give birth to their children at their own homes it is becoming increasingly popular to be confined at the hospital (especially for the first baby) where the mother will go at the onset of the labour pains and stay for up to ten days after the birth of the baby. (36% of all births in Botswana in 1973 took place in a hospital or clinic maternity facility).

Traditionally women gave birth at home in the manner described by Schapera. There are still many traditional practitioners who specialise in helping pregnant women and at confinement. Even those women who will be confined at the hospital use these practitioners as well, some of whom are male traditional doctors who help the pregnant woman with herbs during pregnancy to relieve pains and other ailments connected with pregnancy, but others are female specialists who not only do this but also can massage the woman to bring about an easy delivery and can predict accurately when the baby is due. For example a pregnant Motswana friend of mine who believed herself to be 8 months pregnant consulted one of these specialists. The lady massaged her abdomen and told her the baby was due within the next two days. The next day my friend went into labour and gave birth to a healthy "full term" baby. She had been attending the clinic and they had told her that she still had another month before her time.

These traditional practitioners are paid quite small fees, for example in the case given below the fee was 10 thebe (about 5p).

However, whether or not a pregnant woman attends antenatal clinics, or whether or not she is confined at the hospital, traditional taboos concerning pregnancy and childbirth and the period following childbirth still appeared to be widely observed.

Traditionalists believe that children are a gift from the Badimo (ancestors). According to Schapera premarital pregnancy was traditionally frowned upon and the offenders severely punished. (N.B. There is a difficulty in defining premarital pregnancy, as will be seen in the later description of Marriage.) Today (1977-83), however, so called unmarried mothers are very common. In fact there is often great pressure on a girl to have a baby and there is much suspicion that women without children are committing abortions (this is a terrible taboo). Traditional people will not allow such women to touch their children as a woman who has aborted is believed to be fatally dangerous to children if she touches them. (She has maoto a molelo (hot blood) - see section on Medicine

Pregnancy was traditionally believed to come about by the mixture of a woman's menstrual blood with her husband's semen. Therefore once a woman is pregnant she is not allowed to sleep with men other than the father of her child. Another man would be endangered by her "menstrual blood" when it entered him during intercourse. The father of the child should however continue to sleep with her as his semen is believed to help the child develop properly in the womb (often referred to as the stomach).

A pregnant woman should not do hard work and if she asks anyone for anything, for example food or wood to burn etc., they should not deny her. If they do sores are believed to develop in the eyes of the person, which will then publicly advertise the fact that they have refused to give to a pregnant woman. This was presumably a custom to encourage people to help pregnant women and make sure their lives were comfortable. However a pregnant woman should not eat food cooked for a Motsetsi (a woman in confinement), as this will seriously affect the Motsetsi's child. Men believe that if they are with women who are pregnant they feel tired and sleepy and may become stupid. Nowadays this is a common way for school boys to tease girls at school when they want to make an excuse for sleepiness or laziness during lessons!!

Again a pregnant woman should not touch traditional medicines prescribed for another person or that person's symptoms will be aggravated. This is probably to do with the fact that pregnant women are believed to suffer from maoto a molelo (hot blood) and can therefore weaken the diriti (shadows) of others. She herself may take certain herbal medicines that are believed to help her to have an easy childbirth. Pauw refers to one such herbal medicine known as Magorometso, that is taken by pregnant women to ensure an easy confinement. He also refers to a special powder called tshitlho that is used by traditional doctors to treat pregnant women. A pregnant woman should not enter the cattle kraal or walk through a flock of livestock or the animals will be subject to fatal miscarriages.

When a woman is ready to be confined, she will either give birth at the hospital or at her own home. If she is married it is customary for the first and maybe also the second birth to be organised from her paternal home, not from the home where she is married. (See section on Botsetsi).

If a pregnant woman is unfortunate enough to have a miscarriage, she and the father of her child are believed to have maoto a molelo -  "hot blood". The foetus must be carefully buried in a shady place, usually under the floor of one of the houses. Failure to do this would be a dibeela - an abomination  - which would cause drought. Such a woman must then be confined as though she is a Motsetsi (see later) and she is not allowed to visit or move around the village until she has been "cleansed" by a traditional doctor. She is not allowed to touch children as to do so might kill them. Even after she has been "washed" many traditional people will not allow her to visit, especially inside their houses, as they believe she is bringing death with her. In any case, before she enters a person's house for the first time, she must smear a little wet cow dung on the wall, or take cold' ash from the fireplace and put it inside the house before she enters. All the children in the yard where she lives, with whom she is likely to be in close daily contact, are "washed" to protect them from her if she has to touch them.

How a miscarried woman is cured


In December 1981 one of my main informants unfortunately had a miscarriage, so I was able to observe at close quarters the treatment of women in this condition. The aim of this traditional treatment is to "cool" her maoto a molelo (hot blood) which can endanger the diriti (shadow) of others, if she was left untreated. As the miscarriage took place at the hospital the foetus was not buried traditionally, but when she returned from the hospital her mother had collected the traditional cleansing medicines from their traditional doctor. The patient had to wash her body in cold water to which these medicines had been added. These herbal medicines are called mogaga, which is the same remedy that is used to heal widowed people. She did this at sunset and she was not allowed to wash them off until after sunrise the next morning. ~

Then with another bowl of water to which another herbal medicine called mosiama - the Holy Tree - had been added, she had to wash all the young children of the home, including a newly born baby. First she washed their hands, then arms, legs, head, back and front. This was to enable her to touch them without harming them. If she had not done this it is believed that the children would die if she touched them.

She was obviously not allowed to touch other people's children as they had not been protected in this way. The children had to leave this medicine on  their bodies until after sunrise the next day.  These medicines were all mixed with cold water (normally people wash in warm water) to cool the "hot blood". If a miscarried woman is not treated at the hospital there is a traditional remedy to cleanse the womb. The woman steeps herself in a bath of hot water in which donkey dung has been boiled.

The miscarried woman, after cleansing, still has maoto a molelo (hot blood) and is subject to several taboos, for example, she is not allowed to sit on chairs as this could be very harmful to men; as already stated she cannot touch "unwashed" children nor should she walk where small children can walk on her tracks. If by mistake children do walk on the tracks of a miscarried woman and become ill the cause would be divined by a traditional doctor, who would then cure them by taking mud from the miscarried woman's foot-prints, mixing it with water, and give it to them to drink. These women are not allowed to walk through kraals as this would cause cows to miscarry, she has to enter houses she visits by first throwing in a cold ember. If parents allow her to touch their small children she has first to blow on all the orifices of their bodies or they could sicken and die. She of course may not sleep with any man other than the father of the miscarried child. This man must also be cleansed as he, too, can be a danger to other small children.

These taboos are still taken very seriously in Kanye (1977-83). At the end of January 1982 a young man died in the mines. After Christmas, which he had spent in Botswana, he became swollen and could not be cured in the hospital at the mines. When his parents called a traditional doctor, it was divined that the man had slept with a woman who had made an abortion, while he was in Botswana. This woman had not been cleansed with mogaga medicine.

Treatment with the mogaga medicine allows the miscarried woman to walk freely in the village without “spoiling the rain”, harming livestock, or small children. If mogaga is unavailable then sekaname (the red onion) that is used to make a protective cross on the threshing floor can be substituted. (See section on the Agricultural Year traditional protective practices). Many people do not like women in this condition to come near their tools or work places. For example one informant who was showing me how she made clay pots (a specialist skill) showed me her firing pits, and also an old firing pit she had had to abandon after such a woman had walked close to it. Apparently when she later had tried to fire pots in that pit, they had kept cracking and even breaking. The traditional doctor she had consequently consulted divined this cause and advised her to make a new firing pit.

Miscarriages are frequently attributed to boloi (sorcery). Although the father of the miscarried child is also supposed to follow these same taboos (except the confinement) this has become less common in recent times due to the increase in casual relationships. Increasingly the taboos are applied only to the woman. Women in this condition are extremely dangerous to men, I heard of several cases where such women (they are particularly dangerous before their menstruations restart) were reported in their family dikgotla for sleeping with men whilst in they were in this condition.

It should be noted that when a woman is pregnant it is bad etiquette to refer to her pregnancy and unlike in England, refer to how many months she has been pregnant. Women who have not had children are not supposed to know about pregnancy, and unrelated women who are close comrades might be suspected of wanting to bewitch the woman . Naturally men do not refer directly to a pregnant woman's condition.