An Ogbanje (strictly "Ogbanje" and cannot be substituted with "Obanje", the "gb" forms a single consonant in the Igbo language) is a term in Odinani for what was believed to be an evil spirit that would deliberately plague a family with misfortune. Its literal translation in the Igbo language is "children who come and go". It was believed that under a certain amount of time from birth (usually not past puberty), the Ogbanje would deliberately die and then come back and repeat the cycle causing the family grief. Female circumcision was sometimes thought to get rid of the evil spirit, whereas finding the evil spirits Iyi-uwa, which they had dug somewhere secret, would ensure the Ogbanje would never plague the family with misfortune again. The Iyi-uwa was the Obanje's way of coming back to th