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What Is The Igbo Culture

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The passage above gives us world knowledge about the culture of the Ibo people. The medicine man “brought out a sharp razor from the goatskin bag from his left shoulder and began to mutilate the child.” (Achebe 79) The child was known as an ogbanje, or “a child who repeatedly dies and returns to its mother to be reborn.” (Achebe Glossary) The medicine man then “took it away to bury in the Evil Forest.” The Evil Forest was a place where anything that was not accepted in the religion of the Ibo people was taken. (79) By mutilating the child, the medicine man had hoped that “it would think twice before coming again,” (79) however, some of the “stubborn ones” (79) would return, “carrying the stamp of their mutilation—a missing finger or perhaps

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