In many African knowledge systems, eggs hover in a space neither fully alive nor fully lifeless.
Last weekend, the Kenya Post carried a story from Kayole that grew legs faster than a rumour in a crowded matatu queue. A woman woke to find two eggs placed neatly outside her door. She was "badly shaken".
She believed someone had targeted her with witchcraft. She filmed the eggs, posted the clip online, and within hours, Kenyans on social media were on fire. Some people laughed and advised her to fry the eggs for breakfast. Others insisted it was a grave spiritual attack driven by envy. By late afternoon, the video had gone fully viral.
The noise around it caught my attention because I have been doing a writing project on food and power in African societies. Eggs kept appearing in the material. When that woman in Kayole looked at two eggs and felt dread, she was responding to an old African reading of the world. Across the continent, an egg is never innocent. It sits between chance and fate, birth and ending, safety and danger.
In many African knowledge systems, eggs hover in a space neither fully alive nor fully lifeless. The Yoruba in Nigeria often use eggs for cleansing. A healer may roll a raw egg over the body of someone believed to be under attack, then throw it far away so whatever clung to the person is carried off. That same egg, placed quietly at a doorway, becomes a curse. Whoever steps over it is believed to trigger the intended harm.
Among the Akan in Ghana, elders offer eggs at shrines or leave them at sacred trees before journeys, political announcements, or funerals. An unbroken egg cools the spirits and clears the road.
Drive through western Kenya or across many parts of Uganda after a death, and you may see eggs crushed on the road. The hearse and the mourners' cars run over them. The cracking of the eggs is believed to neutralise whatever might follow the bereaved home.
Make peace
In Shona communities in Zimbabwe, an egg can settle a dispute. Two people hold it between them as they confess, negotiate, or make peace. If the egg breaks before the matter is resolved, it signals dishonesty or spiritual imbalance. In some cases, rumours spread that the ancestors did not approve of the settlement, so the matter is reopened until balance is restored.
In Benin, a country that only the other day sidestepped a coup attempt, eggs are part of Voodoo practice. Priests may guide clients to place eggs at doorsteps, riverbanks, or crossroads when something harmful needs to be diverted. Eggs become messages for unseen forces. They announce that a problem must be shifted, cooled, or carried away.
Why eggs? The literature points to their nature. They are fragile but complete. They hold life that is not yet living. In many African systems, anything caught between two states is powerful. An egg fits this category perfectly. It stands at the threshold between being and becoming, which makes it valuable for rituals that touch on destiny, danger, and transformation.
Yet eggs also have a more earthbound role in African societies, which is what has intrigued me most. For generations across Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and elsewhere, women and children were forbidden from eating eggs while men ate them freely. The stated reasons varied. Claims that eggs would make girls promiscuous. Eggs would cause miscarriage. Eggs would block fertility. These explanations differed from place to place, but they shared one theme: they warned women away from a food too important to "waste" on them.
Nutrient-dense foods
The real reason was protein. Eggs are among the most nutrient-dense foods available. In societies where hunger was common, reserving them for men produced healthier, stronger, more muscular men. Physical advantage became political advantage. Men used that strength to dominate labour, warfare, cattle herding, and authority. Over time, the taboo hardened into a rule that looked natural. People forgot that the root of it was food control.
Women were often barred even from touching eggs during certain rites. Spiritual power was marked as male. The monopoly over ritual and food created a closed circle. Men controlled the nourishment of the body and the symbols that shaped belief. Even today, older women in parts of East and West Africa recall sneaking eggs behind their mothers' backs. Some still warn their daughters away from them, repeating a rule whose original purpose has long faded.
Nutrition shapes destiny. What a society calls sacred or taboo often reveals what it wants to control. The egg's spiritual meaning, with its promise of life and fragility, provided cover for a political ordering: who gets to be strong and who gets to decide. So when the woman in Kayole stared at two eggs and felt fear rather than hunger, she was reading a text written long before smartphones and hashtags.
In Africa, sometimes an egg is never just an egg.
Follow our WhatsApp channel for breaking news updates and more stories like this.
—The author is a journalist, writer, and curator of the "Wall of Great Africans". X@cobbo3
