Superstition Sunday: The Danger of the Broom

Initially, I thought this African superstition emerged from my tribe, but I've come to realize that many other Nigerian tribes and some tribes from other countries share the belief that, hitting a man with a broom ... wait for it ... destroys his ability to impregnate women.

When I was little, while my family lived in Kano state (around 1999), we used to visit our grandma in the village more often than we do now. Understand that superstitions are prevalent in villages, and when you bring my grandma + village setting, multiplied by the many idle village rumor spreaders, the result is a prevalence of superstition, which if even created by someone at 8:00am, would reach the ends of the village by 8:30. Therefore, new superstitions pop up every hour, like those annoying internet ads.

But, this specific belief of 'broom-causing impotence' is a very old one (over 100 years old). It may have been true at that time ... oooorrr, it may just have been a man's way of blaming an inanimate object for his inability to perform his matrimonial duties.

Since I'm a firm believer in the existence of supernatural powers which can cause natural phenomena, it's 'logical' for me to assume that women in the olden times, many of whom were Nkut ('Nkut' is the term for witches in my tribe), put spells on brooms in order to 'sweep off' a man's manhood.