Uncle Ezekiel got married and adamantly made up his mind not to engage in the compulsory ritual in our community. He's not just a religious man but also a learned man, he sees some traditional acts as barbaric and so, he made himself of huge difference from the indigene of the land.

It's not that the compulsory ritual is heavy; it doesn't take much; in fact, one can't get someone to stand for him or her. My uncle knew all these, but he still refused to perform the ritual.

The community made it compulsory that every new home must dedicate the first pregnancy to a deity. Just like I stated earlier, it's not compulsory that the pregnant woman must be available for the ritual, anyone can be used to stand for her. Failure to engage in this ritual; it'll be hard for the family to have their baby stay up to 5years.

My uncle's wife got pregnant and my father approached him to quickly do the ritual before the wife delivers but he refused. My father tried to persuade and convince him with previous encounters of people that refused to do the ritual and kept loosing their children.
Uncle Ezekiel didn't just want to listen to anything concerning the topic, so whenever my dad starts, he usually find means to silence the topic. The persuasion continued and my dad was able to win the heart of the wife, she agreed to succumb to the ritual but the Husband still refused.

Nine months reached and the wife was delivered of a baby boy, everywhere was sparked up with joyfulness and the man(uncle Ezekiel) concluded that he had beaten the tradition but little did he know that the violated law of the land was warming up to strike.

Just three weeks after the baby was delivered, he was visited with sickeness. He was rushed to the hospital but they couldn't heal the baby.

They moved the baby to religious houses but all to no avail.
Then it became obvious that it was the strike from the law of the land that's affecting the baby. My uncle didn't want to loose his first child, so he agreed to perform the ritual.

On the day, they rented a lady that would stand for the wife, traditional items were bought, two bike men that would transport the items to the forest were brought also.
![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmeqd6qEHJZhP2kD2hAzWWGMBytthVPmTNaecMsSWr7G5D/photo_1607628892008_f3daff45cdaa.jpeg)[Image source](https://unsplash.com/photos/9Y06DbOzUOs)


The rented lady was dressed with white rapper, while they used native chalk to draw some signs on her body. After the arrangements, the items were wrapped up in a native Mat and tied to a bike, then the bike men carried the item to drop in the forest.

On their way going, women are not allowed to set their eyes on the bike carrying the stuff, so the other bikeman would have to drive to ahead to give signals to women on the road so they would go into hiding for the bike carrying it to pass successfully.

The ritual was successfully performed that day and the next two days, the new born baby became well again and never got disturbed by a terrible sickeness.