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Africa Subsaharan
Letter from Africa: Should Ghanaian women be limited to three babies?
2018-08-30
[BBC] In our series of letters from African journalists, Elizabeth Ohene considers the controversial proposal to limit women to having three babies in Ghana.

Among the Ga, the people who are indigenous to Ghana's capital, Accra, a woman is entitled to a live sheep on the delivery of her 10th child. The word for it is "nyongmato".

I am not making this up even though it does sound like the kind of apocryphal story that is regularly made up.

Lots of very important people among the Gas can testify to this. Unfortunately, I have not met any woman who has actually got a live sheep for having given birth to 10 children.

Indeed, I have never met any woman who has had 10 children.

I don't know if I have been moving in the wrong circles, because I don't even know any woman who has had five children. OK, as soon as I wrote that, I realised I was wrong.
Posted by:Besoeker

#3  Ewe-tah.
Posted by: Skidmark   2018-08-30 09:37  

#2  Unfortunately, I have not met any woman who has actually got a live sheep for having given birth to 10 children.


Hasn't been to Utah.
Posted by: Skidmark   2018-08-30 09:08  

#1  The true 'Nanny State.'

Actually, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is considerably more generous than 'nyongmato' (Ghanaian goat program), and far less restrictive.
Posted by: Besoeker   2018-08-30 04:44  

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