Yoruba communities have used ‘igbas’ (Yoruba word for calabashes) as an integral part of everyday life for thousands of centuries. The calabash has been used as bowls, spoons, and containers that hold anything from river water to stew.
As well as being used as part of everyday routines, the ‘igba’ plays a role in ritual practice and serves as a container for spiritual and magical substances. Igba appears in descriptions of Yoruba traditional stories, divination and praise poetry. In Yoruba cosmology one half of the igba (Yoruba word for calabash) represents heaven and the other represents the sea, or “primordial waters”, on which the earth floats.
