Waist beads 2

Well, West African women in particular are given waist beads as children to wear throughout life to help shape their figures. It remains a mystery how the beads shape them, but somehow, curvy African women attribute their voluptuous shape to the waist beads. It is also used to measure the growth rate of children (girls).

When the beads become too small around the waist, then the child is seen as growing. I chanced upon an interesting piece in my readings. In a publication from the newspaper The Mirror, on October 26, 2013, the writer Marcelinus Dery interviewed an 82-year-old woman named Hajia Balkisu Mahama in Tamale, a city in Ghana’s Northern Region, where she shared the magical benefits of waist beads.

According to the publication, waist beads are the best cure for convulsion among children. She said anytime a child suffered convulsions in the past, all that was needed was to place the child on the bare floor in a corner of a room.

Any woman with beads on her waist would gently remove them and place them on the sick child. Within five minutes, the child would be cured. If you think this is amazing, wait till you read what she said next.

She added that waist beads are very powerful weapons in fighting rapists. Yeah, rapists. Any woman with beads on her waist who is confronted by a rapist should just look for a hard ground surface and tear the beads.

The clattering of the beads on the hard ground will magically make the man lose erection immediately. Strange, isn’t it?

Did you also know waist beads in Yoruba are used for birth control? The beads are laced with charms and and worn by the women to prevent conception. 

After reading that, I took the liberty to investigate more about waist beads. My search took me to Ghana’s Art Centre in Accra, the number one shop for the sale of African artifacts including beads.


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