Excerpt: Chapter Two
of the novel I Saw the Sky Catch Fire by T. Obinkaram
Echewa © ________________________________
2
Why Women Go to
War
"ALA HENTU!"
NNE-NNE SAID. "THE EARTH heaved. But before it heaved,
it
shivered
and sneezed many times. And showed many
signs. But no one saw the
signs, or
c
ould
read them." She gave instances:
In one of the
villages that made up the town of Usotuma, a small village called Okporo
Obasi, it had been the custom of many decades for the women to sweep the
market clearing early in the morning every eighth day. Otolahu, treasurer
of the Women's Solidarity, usually sounded the ekwe after supper the
night before to remind everyone. But rarely did anyone forget this had
been custom for such a long time and furthermore, the village's eighth-day
market, Eke Obasi, was in session later in the afternoon. Other parts of
this custom were that two or three times during the season the women weeded
the main footpaths that led to the junction where the market was situated,
and at the end of the final weeding of the season, the men and the children
joined the women in cleaning up the entire village. Every compound was
swept, every roof re-thatched, every wall and floor rubbed down with fresh
clay. The men repaired the market stalls and pruned the trees, so that dead
branches would not fall on market goers during windstorms. The village's
juju, Obasi, had his hut and shrine at the corner of the market cleaned and
festooned with palm leaves and flowered wreaths.
When all this had
been done, there was a big feast, Emume Ahia Obasi, the Obasi Market Feast.
A delegation of men went to Afara and returned with a big, humped cow, which
the men ceremonially presented to the women, proverbially to "take the
sweeping broom from their hands." Friends and neighbors from nearby villages
were invited. Daughters of Okporo Obasi who were married in other villages
came home for the feast accompanied by their husbands and their children,
each bearing a jug of wine and assorted gifts for the home people. The
feast lasted for up to four days and culminated in a huge, colorful parade
of wives and daughters through the market.
That had always been the
custom for as far back as anyone could remember-until the year after the
taxes came. That year there was no cow. No cow because there was no money
to buy it. The men had totally exhausted the contents of their treasury to
pay their taxes for that year, and instead of a delegation to Afara, they
had sent a delegation to the Women's Solidarity to explain their
embarrassment. The women grunted heavily. Their faces fell. "Mmmh, all
right," they said. Of course, there had been rumors for weeks that what did
happen eventually was in fact possible. Of course, everyone knew that the
men had been under pressure for months to find money to pay their taxes.
Even so, the women had hoped against hope that their men would somehow find
a way to do them proud, that through some heroic effort, through some dint
of resourcefulness that would bring a smile to their faces when they heard
about it, their men would find a way to continue the tradition. A good
excuse for failing was never quite as good as succeeding in spite of
difficulty. They were disappointed and the tradition was indeed broken.
There was a feast,
but it was flat like palm wine without ntche. The excitement of
anticipating the return of the men sent to Afara, the ceremonies associated
with watching, discussing, tethering, trussing, killing, and skinning, was
not to be had. Same for all the ceremonies, big and small, associated with
making a sausage out of the stomach and the intestines, the little quarrels
that always arose about what special groups should get what special parts of
the meat. In the absence of the common cow, people made do with group goats
and individual chickens. On the whole, that year's feast was not very
festive.
The following year
was even worse. Not only did the men not have the money to buy a cow from
Afara, they sent a delegation to the Women's Solidarity seeking to borrow
money to help pay their taxes.
The women refused.
The men were
consterned but initially good-humored. However, as the deadline neared for
paying their taxes, they lost all sense of humor and talked sternly to their
wives.
Still, the women
said, "No!"
At length, however,
divisions arose within the Women's Solidarity. Some advocated lending the
money to the men. These asked: "What kind of feast could we possibly have
if our husbands and the fathers of our children are in the White man's
jail?" Still, a majority of the women said no. The money in the treasury
was theirs to keep. The men should find another way to pay their taxes.
Throughout the year, they had scrimped and collected cowries, which had
turned into manilas, then farthings and half-pennies and pennies, and
finally into shillings and pounds. Before each year's festival, they paid
most of this money to a tailor or seamstress who made a new outfit for every
woman in the village, so that during the market parade at the height of the
festival, they all came out dressed alike, singing and laughing and teasing
and bantering with one another, complimenting one another on how good they
looked in their clothes, discussing how good this year's design was compared
with the designs of previous years:
"Ikodiya,"
one woman called gaily to another
in mock astonishment.
"Oweyi!"
the other jauntily replied.
"Could that be you
that I see?"
"Yes, it is me you
see. Have I not always told you that there was nothing wrong with me that
could not be cured by a good bath and a new set of clothes? Don't we all
look good?"
"Ozugwo!
You look as colorful as a royal
python!"
"Arirah!
With your uhie, you look
as colorful as arirah.
"Ibara!"
"Yes, ureh!"
"Yes, amara.
What would they be
left with, a majority of the women asked, if they were forced to give up
this one highlight of their collective year?
For their part,
too, the men were not altogether united. Some of them thought it demeaning
to their manhood to seek to borrow or seize the women's money. Others
thought it was far wiser to lose a little face with their own wives than to
go to jail for not paying their taxes. Yet, even those who were for getting
the money from the women in whatever way possible recognized that something
was amiss with this state of affairs -- something that should have been
straight was crooked; something that should have been erect was leaning.
Seeming to relent,
the women asked if the men wanted to borrow the money or to have it given to
them.
"Borrow, of
course," the men said, jointly snickering and winking at one another. The
money belonged to their own wives, and hence was really money they were
borrowing from themselves. If it was a debt, it was "payable when able."
In the end, a
diehard group among the women said no. Then hearing a rumor that the men
were planning to do something untoward, a small group of women devised a
plan to send the money in their treasury out of town for safekeeping.
Ugbala was the person with whom they decided to entrust their strongbox.
The collection box had two locks. Otolahu, the treasurer, held the box.
Nwanyi-b'Uka held one key. Imoria held the second key. These three women
were delegated to take the box to Ugbala.
The men got wind
of the plan and in response organized a raiding party. Several men jumped
on the delegation as it was about to leave the village and took both the box
and the keys. The three delegates woke up the whole village with their
screaming. They had recognized their assailants and demanded for them the
type of treatment usually accorded to thieves. The women massed in the
marketplace and with a united voice said, "Emegh-eme!" [Something
unspeakable!) They flung their market and farm baskets, their head ties and
loincloths, on the ground and said that this was an abomination of a type
they had never seen or heard of before. The men met later in another corner
of the market and voted to tell the women not to make such a ruckus, lest
the people of the neighboring villages hear of it and shame them.
In the end, to
calm the women, whose excitement rose over the days, the men agreed to
consider the money a loan. "We will pay you back quickly," they promised
the women, "and put back the smile on your faces." But no, they would not
sign an agreement with their own wives showing that they had borrowed the
sum. Their words ought to suffice as an instrument of trust between them
and their own wives.
Needless to say
there was not much of a festival that year. There was no cow, and no money
in the women's treasury for new outfits. Some women suggested that they
wear the previous year's outfits. "No!" was the general response. Then
someone else suggested covering their faces with indigo, and to this
everyone said "Hey-ey-ey!" That was a uniform everyone could afford,
and it fit their mood perfectly. They had a dispirited and mournful parade,
one that people talked about for months, improvising their own drumming
because the men refused to drum for them.
Nne-nne said, "A
woman suffers long. A woman is like a pot that at long last boils over and
drowns the fire that is making it boil. Ndom went to war," she said,
"because the proverb says that if the main debtor cannot pay the debt then
the person who stood surety for him has to pay it. With a grunt, mmmh!
deep in her heart, a woman understands a man. But a woman does not
want to go on forever understanding that her husband cannot any longer get
his penis to rise, or at least to twitch a little once in a while. That is
a manner of speaking. For a time, a woman is willing to understand
that the hunt may be difficult, that animals in the forest may be nimble and
hard to track, that some of them in fact may be dangerous, but she does not
want to understand forever that her husband
comes home every day empty-handed from the hunt. A husband has to win
sometimes, track
and kill some game animals sometimes, overcome someone or something
sometimes, be a hero sometimes, so
that when his wife lies beside or beneath him, she can
feel herself joined to strength and victory, rather than weakness and
defeat, so that when he leaves his seed in her, she can feel that she has
been implanted with strong, virile seed and not afiri-kpoto, and
if perchance she becomes pregnant, she will be the mother of robust and
stouthearted children, not of cowards and weaklings. No woman wants to be
married to okpokoro futa, na nri eghela!"
"When the War
started," Nne-nne said, "the women of Okporo Obasi were in the forefront of
it."
Nne-nne continued:
"In another village named Umu Okere in lkputu Ala, a man named Uru-Akpa was
too ill to pay his taxes. 'Let his son pay for him,' someone who did not
like him suggested in the village assembly. 'Otherwise the whole village
will have to make up the difference.'
" 'Yes,' the whole
assembly agreed. 'Let Oso-ndu [the son) pay for his father.' "
Oso-ndu, a
struggling young man, was exhausted from having to pay his own tax. No
matter. His kin and fellow villagers said: "Pay." The White man did not
hear "Please, biko," when it came to taxes. He did not listen to
"Have mercy because I am sick." No. Government was like an implacable juju
demanding sacrifice. It was sacrifice or your life. And if the juju
took your life, it made the same offer to your next of kin beginning with
your sons. Yes, Government was like a juju.
Uru-Akpa gnashed
his teeth and wept from his sick bed when he heard what his fellow villagers
had said. "Let them take me to prison if they want someone to take to
prison," he said.
They would not do
that. The court messengers would not arrest a sick man. What would they do
with him? Carry him and his sickbed into the lockup? To do so would almost
be like sacrificing a sick animal to a juju.
Teary-eyed,
Oso-ndu's mother went to women's assembly with a plea. "Ndom Ibem,"
she said. "My only son is about to go to prison because he is unable to pay
his father's tax. My heart is grieved. I am ready to do anything necessary
to stave off this evil thing that has camped at my door. I am ready to
strip myself naked or even to go to prison myself, if that is necessary. I
have only one piece of cloth worth folding and bringing out for you to look
at. Here it is. Hold it in pawn for me against the ten shillings you will
lend me. I shall redeem it in six weeks or you can do whatever you like
with me."
The women of the
village lent her the money but would not keep her cloth. "What will you
cover yourself with when you travel?" they asked. "Will you go to the
market naked?"
"Tax! Tax! Tax!"
Nne-Nne said, sighing and shaking her head. "Nowadays no one seems to mind
the tax much, but in those days it was like trying to put a leash around the
neck of a young goat for the first time. Before the tax came, the times of
the year were reckoned from the Feast of Mgbara Ala-so many weeks before the
Feast of Mgbara Ala, so many weeks after the Feast of Mgbara Ala. But after
the tax came, it became the most important event of the year, such that if
you asked a man, 'What time of the year is it?' he was apt to reply, 'It's
three weeks before tax time,' or 'It's four weeks after tax time.' Tax was
so fearsome the first year it came that it killed Ahu-Ekwe, the chief priest
of Mgbara Ala. Early in the morning on the day after paying his tax,
Ahu-Ekwe got up to go to the latrine and was ambushed by the Spirit of
Mgbara Ala. Later, it came to light that he had used money that someone had
given him for a sacrifice to Mgbara Ala to pay his taxes. Ahu-Ekwe never
recovered and left eight widows.
"You may ask,"
Nne-nne continued, "where were the men when the women were at war?" The same
question, she explained, had been asked by the White man at the end of the
war. Where were the men when their wives were parading around with machetes
and pestles, with war wreaths around their heads and loins? Why did not the
men quell their wives? Or why did they not join their wives at the war, or
ask them to step aside so that men could do what men are supposed to do?
The answer, she
said in response to her own questions, was that the men were nowhere. They
were there but not there, in a manner of speaking. Their hearts were
not in their chests anymore, or they were beating ever so feebly. Their
pricks were limp with fatigue, their testicle sacs empty. "You know how
sometimes you are in the bush looking for snails," she said. "You move
aside rotting leaves and you come upon a shell that makes your eyes bulge
with delight because it is so big. However, as you pick it up, its
weightlessness makes your heart sink in despair. It is empty. My tongue
hesitates to utter it, but in many ways our men were almost like that. They
were like ijere soldier ants which had been scattered by a broom
and hence lost their formations and lines of march. You know, when soldier
ants are in their formations, next to and on top of one another, they flow
and surge like a river. Scatter them with a broom, and what you get is a
crowd of confused little animals sniffing around with their feelers for
their fellows and their purpose. They are themselves only when they are in
formation. Our men had become like that," Nne-nne said. "It was as if a
man was sleeping with his wife, when suddenly there was a noise of a burglar
breaking into their house in the middle of the night, and the husband, who
should have been the wakeful and watchful one, was snoring and snoring and
nothing could rouse him, and in the end, the wife had no choice but to get
up and try to fend off the burglar by herself.
"When the White
man came, the world truly did a somersault. Top became bottom, and bottom
rose to the top. The scum also rose to the top from the bottom of the
river. The froth you see is not made up of bubbles of aroma, as on
flavorful soup or delicious palm wine, but bubbles of stench as on top of a
pot of fermenting cassava. . . .
"At first, the
White man bought slaves and left. He did not stay. Then a few stayed in
places like Opopo and Boni and Kalagbari. No one then seemed to mind the
White man much. He bought things that we had no use for and brought other
things for sale such as cloth, beads, soap, and kerosene. Ajuziogu, the
hospital where you were born had electric lights. Now, at home we have
these hurricane lanterns. In the old days, we used to soak a wick in
coconut oil and use it for a lamp. On her return from the market, a woman
could walk a mile and visit two or three compounds before she found a
neighbor with a going fire from which she could then borrow an ember and
take it home to start her own fire. Nowadays, we spray kerosene on wood and
strike a match.
"The White man had
magic, which mesmerized our men. When the White man wanted slaves, our men
left whatever else they were doing and began to hunt slaves to sell to him.
They kidnapped strangers and children, women and weaklings, and sold them.
They banded together and made wars and conducted raids for slaves. Then,
one day, the White man said: 'No more slaves! Slaving is now against the
law.' So slaving came to be against the law, and the people who had made it
their life's work were left without a livelihood. Now the White man said:
'Palm oil!' Again all the men went into palm oil. The palm fruit that used
to rot on the trees suddenly became very valuable. Our people became a palm
oil people, spending most of their time harvesting the fruit, extracting the
oil, and cracking the kernels. For a woman, palm kernels fed her family,
put crayfish in her soup, enabled her to buy a head of vegetables in the
evening market, or a block of salt, or a handful of pepper. If a man wanted
to buy a good hoe, a good machete, a bicycle, or a loincloth for himself or
his wife, palm oil paid for it. Palm oil is what your father sold to get
the money with which he paid the bride price for your mother. Palm oil
built your schoolhouse and paid your school fees month by month. The coin
we use, even today, the sini, has the palm tree on one face and the
head of the Queen of England on the other face. When all of our lives had
become pawned to the palm fruit, the White man could control our lives by
yo-yoing the prices up and down. When the prices were good, our soups were
filled with meat and fish, and we could buy an extra length of cloth for
ourselves. When the prices were down, we ate okpoko and ngbugbu
and the loincloths we bought years before rotted on our waists.
"In response to
all of this," Nne-nne explained, "our men became downcast and dispirited
without knowing why. They became sullen and melancholy. I know all this
from personal experience in the case of your grandfather. When a man like
him is seized in front of his wives and children by a force he cannot
overcome or bargain with and is carried away by it against his will,
screaming and flailing helplessly, as your grandfather was when the
kotimas came to take him to jail, he does not recover in a lifetime from
the morale that ebbs from his chest at that moment. His wives and children,
before whom his impotency has been exposed, never forget the moment.
"So, Ndom went to
war to avenge the men. Or perhaps to rekindle the courage the men had
lost. And that is not the first time something like that has happened.
There is a legend among the people of Ama Achara, for example, about a woman
called Mgba-Afor, whose husband was killed during a war between two
neighboring villages. The story goes that Mgba-Afor's husband was killed in
battle, and her husband's people were fleeing in defeat. But then Mgba-Afor
said if her husband could no longer fight because he was dead, and his
people would no longer fight because their hearts were faint, then she would
fight! She took up her husband's shield, spear, and war machete to carry on
the fight in her husband's place. On seeing her, the fleeing men of her
husband's village turned around and found new courage, continued the battle,
and in the end won it.
"And do you know
how Ndom found out we were to be counted? When word came down from the D.O.,
the chiefs summoned not the women but the men to tell them to tell their
wives. The chiefs seemed to know that summoning the women would have been
like walking into a beehive.
" 'Tax,' we all
said on first hearing about the counting.
" 'No,' the men
said on the strength of what the chiefs had told them.
" 'What then if
not tax?' Ndom wanted to know.
"The men opened
their hands in bewilderment. They did not know. Who knew why the White
man wanted certain things? All they knew was that there was supposed to be
a count."
Ndom!
Nne-nne went on
and on. Her stories festered in my heart as I watched her eyes narrow and
then widen, her face open and then stitch together in wrinkles. Recalling
some of the history I had learned in school, I began thinking of our
people's first contacts with Europeans: Mungo Park and Richard Lander, Major
Clapperton and William Baikie, Mary Slessor and the Church Missionary
Society. And of course, Lord Hogarth, Governor General and famous conqueror
and pacifier of the emirs and sultans of the North, otherwise also known as
the creator of our modern state. He it was who promulgated the idea
that there ought to be uniformity among the various regions of the country,
and therefore since the people of the northern provinces had chiefs, the
intractable and difficult-to-govern tribes of the southeast ought to have
Warrant Chiefs appointed for them, and since the northerners paid a head
tax, the people of south ought to do the same. Furthermore, Lord Hogarth
argued forcefully, unless native treasuries were established, and these
chiefs learned how to collect and spend money, how could they ever learn to
govern themselves in a modern, scientific way?
But to tax them,
Hogarth said, you first have to count them.
And who became
chiefs? According to Nne-nne, mostly people who had theft or another form
of dishonesty in their nature, but whose dishonest inclinations had been
kept in check by the rigid traditions of society. Such people welcomed the
White man and his liberties. And after they became chiefs, they stole in
broad daylight and called what they did by other names. They saw left and
called it right, and saw right and called it left. People like our own
present chief, Orji, who was often rumored to have been once a cohort or a
fence for Harmattan, the most notorious thief our area had ever seen.
Harmattan was the one who used to boast that the reason people locked their
houses was mosquitoes, not him, as he could get into any house he desired.
Yet Orji became a chief.
For the White man,
Nne-nne said, "outstanding" seemed to have meant "tall." All the Warrant
Chiefs were tall young men who stood like banana trees growing luxuriantly
in an old cesspit, huge stems and broad leaves, but no fruit. Elders and
men of real substance tended to be quiet and coy. Scrawny, not brawny. At
the amala assembly, they spoke last not first, softly and not loudly,
and their special talent was the ability to weave a consensus among those
present, to link the past with the present and the present with the future.
Warriors warred but tended to die young, exhorters and harranguers sooner or
later lost their voices, but deliberators were like the slow drizzle that
watered the farm much more thoroughly than the sudden but short-lived
cloudburst, for only through akatiko did the well-preserved snake
become iwi agwo.
Our people had no
chiefs before the White man came. The White man could not abide such
"disorder." He made a treaty with one group, and then a few miles down the
road he had to reach a new agreement with the next village, because that
village did not consider itself bound by whatever had been agreed to by the
other. Our people, the White man said, were "ungovernable." They had no
natural rulers. So he appointed chiefs to represent the people to him and
him to the people. Thereafter, he could say: "Your chiefs agreed to sell
half the land you own for nothing. Your chiefs have agreed that you should
pay a new tax. Your chiefs have agreed that the women and the goats and the
sheep should all be counted, so everything in the district will be counted.
See here? Here are their thumbprints. That's how they signed the
agreement."
The District
Officer, D.O., or District Commissioner, as he was sometimes called, visited
the town once a month, sometimes once every two months. One was never quite
sure why the D.O. came when he came sometimes there was a circular
announcing his coming, sometimes none. All anybody was told was that our
people were members of the British Empire, that we belonged to the King of
England and his representatives, such as the Resident and the Governor. So,
as soon as the circular arrived that the D.O. was coming, the village went
into a flurry of activity to prepare. The women had to weed and sweep the
okasaa, where the town would meet him. Every member of ndom
alu-alu, the sodality of married women, had to reach under her hens and
find two or three fresh eggs for the White man. Then men usually
contributed money to buy a ram. White men didn't eat goat.
The D.O. always
came in the morning, before the sun had become too harsh. The chiefs
arrived on their bicycles, wearing big striped jumpers and yellow
chieftaincy caps.
"Uru-prisi,
Uru-prisi, Uru-prisi," the White
Man said.
"The D.O. says he
is not pleased with you," the ntaprinta translated to the assembly.
"Uru-prisi.
Uru-prisi. Uru-prisi," the White
man said.
"The White man
says he is very pleased with you," the interpreter said.
Every time the D.O.
came, the people were told what pleased or did not please him as though
the whole town was now living like a child or a slave, whose purpose in life
was to please or avoid displeasing a parent or master.
As soon as the D.O.
left, the chiefs took over. Even though everyone had listened to the same
message from the White man, the chiefs could make of it whatever they
wanted, because they often claimed that the D.O. had given them special
instructions during a private meeting.
The Women's War
started because the men did not start a war when they were counted and tax
was imposed on their heads. The mbichiri-ezi, or elder, in every
compound became a tax collector. The kotimas, as enforcers,
terrorized everyone. "Hoo-sai your tax re-sheet?"
"Wogu, you have
ten adult men in your compound. At seven shillings a head, you owe the
Government three pounds ten."
"Nwaigwe, we
counted twenty-one front doors in your compound. That means seven adult
men. That's four pounds nine shillings. Where's the money?"
If anyone in his
compound did not pay, the mbichiri-ezi was liable to pay or go to
jail, unless he handed over the culprit. So whether they paid or did not
pay, whether the mbichiri-ezi went to jail or handed over one of his
younger relatives, everyone was unhappy at tax time. Men pawned their farm
implements or their wives' beads and even committed the taboo of selling
their pregnant animals to raise money to pay their taxes.
The War started
because that was the third or fourth bad year in a row for everyone, a year
of hardship during which palm trees bore little fruit, and the fruit they
bore produced little oil, and at the market the oil fetched next to
nothing. A villager had to pound six pots of palm nuts to get one good tin
of oil. And then when his wife carried the oil to the market the buyers
pouted at it. Two years before, the agents had begun testing the oil.
A woman trudged
to the depot with two heavy calabashes of palm oil on her head in a sagging
basket. The oil trader put a bit of her oil in a tube and warmed it over a
fire. Then he added drops of liquid to it and shook it until it turned
yellow. Then from another tube he added drops of another liquid and kept
adding and shaking until the contents of the first tube were red again.
Then he peered at the marks on the calibrated tube and announced to the
woman that her oil had failed.
"What do you
mean?" the woman inquired. "No good," the man said.
"What do you mean
'No good?'
"Just as I said.
It is no good. I will not buy it.
"What is wrong?"
"It failed the
test. I do not buy anything that is not S.P.O. Your oil is Grade Three." He
puts up three fingers. "Even if you give to me for free, I will not take
it. What did you put in it?"
"Well, I will not
give it to you for free.
"Your own palaver,
lady. I would not take it no how." With that, the man walked off to attend
to another, more agreeable customer.
"Help me pick up
this load, if you please," the woman now said, defeat and disgust written
all over her face, Rolling her top wrapper once again into a carrying pad,
she placed it on top of her head in readiness for receiving the load.
"After I finish
what I am doing," the oil trader replied.
Helpless, the
woman waited patiently until the oil trader or someone else was ready to
help her hoist her load, and then she would start trudging to another
oiler's depot. Miles and hours later, if she was lucky, she found a buyer
willing to pay her half of what a calabash of oil was selling for only a
year before. "And if you do not accept , the oil buyer haughtily told her,
"you can leave the calabashes in your house and soldier ants will consume
both them and you!"
Chineke ekwela
ihie ojo-o! [God forbid the evil
thing!)
Things were really
bad. Money was six cowries a head, twenty heads of cowries to a manila,
twenty manilas to one shilling, and a shilling bought next to nothing. A
length of Ukwa cloth cost five shillings, a digit of stock-fish
two-and-six. Soap was nowhere to be found, and people went back to making
soap the old way, burning the stalk of a palm head and kneading the ash with
potash. Even yams and cassava were blighted on the farms. At harvest time,
a farmer pulled up a yam, and a horde of termites came up with it. A woman
pulled up a stalk of cassava and what she found at the other end was not
fat, dark tubers but rough fibrous roots. Immersed in water to ferment,
most of that cassava became puffy and floated on top of the water, its skin
soft, its core hard, all of it useless.
The War started
because the Government assumed that since the men had been counted without
much incident, there should be even less incident counting the women.
The War started
because the women felt united in a way the men could not all any woman
needed to know in order to join was that women were at war with the
Government. For example, on the day Nne-nne joined, she had been returning
from the farm with a basket of cassava roots perched on her head and a few
sticks of firewood cradled in her arm when she was accosted by a throng of
women, who threw away her basket and her cassava and pilloried her with
questions:
"Are you not a
woman?
"Do you not have a
monthly cycle?"
"Have you never
endured the aches of pregnancy and the pangs of labor and childbirth?"
"So you have
little children? Do you think the rest of us are barren?"
"Do you want Ndom
to be counted like goats and chickens and a tax imposed on our heads?"
"Have you not
heard that Ndom is at war?"
During the War,
the soldiers kept looking for ringleaders, the queens of the termite hills.
If these could be found and squelched, they thought, the movement would come
to an end. During the trials that came afterward, the Residents and
District Officers kept looking for ringleaders. Maybe Oyoyo, the harlot
woman at Agalaba Uzo at whose house the women had congregated a month before
maybe she was a ringleader. She lived in the township, was the consort of
several important people, including the police inspector and two important
Lebanese and Potokiri traders, as well as the proprietor of more than
one bar. Or maybe Ugbala was a ringleader. She had the carriage of a
leader. The other women deferred to her, called her Daa and other
titles of respect, and hung around her as if her company were a privilege.
At the sessions of the Commission of Inquiry, she was an eloquent and
fearless speaker.
But in truth Ndom
had no leaders. Every woman was led by her own intimate knowledge of their
common grief and sense of injustice, by what Nne-nne called Woman's Grief.
One by one and all together, they seemed to have known about this grief from
the time they were little girl infants suckling milk from their mothers'
breasts. They knew about it from the lullabies their older sisters sang in
order to quiet and rock them to sleep on hot, lonely afternoons, while their
mothers were at the farms:
Little sister, little sister, please stop
crying
Lest I throw
some sand in your eyes!
Remember the
time Grandmother went to prison in the sky
And set the sky
on fire!
Ndom set the sky
on fire! Drew down lightning from the sky and set the earth on fire!
Daughters
learned of Woman's Grief from their mothers. Married women confirmed it for
one another as they toiled together on the farms, stooping to hoe cassava
ridges or to pull tubers from the ground, or when they knelt and then bent
low with hanging breasts to blow their tired breaths at a fire that refused
to catch on wet wood, or trudged from the river with heavy water pots on
their heads and sick babies on their backs. They were conscious of Grief as
they pounded fufu for their husbands' suppers or kneaded their
testicles to arouse reluctant passions. They knew of it as they squatted to
deliver their babies. They knew of it in themselves and they recognized it
in one another. A woman knows what every woman knows! That was the
meaning of Nwanyi Ibem, My Fellow Woman, by which they addressed one
another during the War.
Insane!
Irrational!
Mass hysteria,
like the spirit-induced madness that possesses some of them during some of
the juju festivals!
A sudden overflow
of premenstrual or postpartum hormones!
Spontaneous
combustion!
These were some of
the expressions used by the D.O. and the Engineer in describing the war
after it was over. But for Ndom, it had been simply war, total war, as
inevitable and compelling as a hiccup or belch or the urge to vomit, with
every woman a warrior and every village and every town a battleground, as
they attacked whatever was part of the Government in their own town or
village.
"Ala hentu!"
Nne-nne said, continuing to
describe the events at the beginning of the war in terms that made me think
of random currents, electric arcs, Van de Graaff machines, and lightning
bolts.
Ikputu-Ala, where
the first flames of the War were kindled, was ruled by Chief Njoku Alaribe,
an excellent example of the type of leader we nowadays call His Master's
Voice. Onuru vuru, anugh zia of a chief, Alaribe was a perfect echo
for his masters. As soon as the D.O. said, "Count," he sent a
counter into the villages under his jurisdiction. The counter that started
the trouble was one Sam-el, a village agent for the C.M.S. Church at Ezi-Ama,
who taught Sunday school and church hymns and sat in the shade of the
umbrella tree in front of his house on hot afternoons spelling-reading his
way through the Bible and lusting after every wife who passed by. Let
anyone in the village marry a new wife, and in a few days Sam-el was bound
to waylay her on her way to the farm or the stream. "Why don't you come to
morning prayer?" he would say, "so I can put your name in the roll book."
Every year, the women's festival songs featured Sam-el.
And who was the
first person Sam-el wanted to count? Akpa-Ego Ozurumba, whose name was
seeped in irony, for, contrary to her name, there had been little good
fortune for her in the husband she married. By good sense, Nne-Nne said,
she should have been left in peace to continue hoeing the tough row that her
chi had laid out in front of her. Akpa-Ego was kneeling over a large
vat of palm mash, kneading and pressing out the oil, when Sam-el arrived.
Her breasts hung heavy; a good observer would have noticed that her turgid,
blue nipples meant that she was pregnant, if the observer happened not to
notice the bulge of her belly.
Notebook in hand,
Sam-el began to query Akpa-Ego:
What is
your name?
How many children
do you have?
Do you own any
goats or sheep?
How many chickens
in your chicken coop?
The answer Akpa-Ego gave Sam-el was most
fitting. She asked: "Has your mother been counted?"
Sam-el took great umbrage at this and
began to humbug the poor woman, who was still in a kneeling position
and had sweat crawling down her face and the small of her back. After a few
more moments Akpa-Ego rose to her feet to face Sam-el, and the two began
exchanging insults. Full of importance and high officialdom, Sam-el warned
Akpa-Ego of the severe consequences that would befall her if she did not
cooperate with the instructions she had been given and answer all questions
put to her. He traced the line of authority from himself to the King of
England. Who was she, an illiterate village woman, to set herself against
the King of England?
Sam-el
emphasized important points in his harangue by waving his pen in front of
Akpa-Ego's face. At one point, she became so frustrated with this that she
reached back into the vat and smeared him with a handful of palm mash. In
turn, he slapped her. They tangled, and Akpa-Ego was knocked to the ground.
On hearing of
what had happened, Ndom ritually turned an angry shoulder at this aru,
this abomination that had occurred, a pregnant woman knocked down by a
man who wanted to record how many chickens there were in her chicken coop.
If Akpa-Ego's husband had been alive, if he had been the type of husband to
whom a wife could run teary-eyed and say, "Husband, defend your wife's
honor," Ndom might have left it to him to avenge her. But Akpa-Ego was a
widow of a few months, a pregnant widow trying to squeeze out a living from
palm mash that belonged to someone else's husband, a special widow because
of the way she had become a widow. Her husband, Ozurumba, had hanged
himself two months before because the women of Ezi-Ama sat on him for
mercilessly beating her. Akpa-Ego, therefore, was already a ward of Ndom.
"Ihe!"
Ndom said about what Sam-el had done to
Akpa-Ego. "Kama ji sii, nku gwuu!" What had happened to Akpa-Ego
should not happen to any woman. Her grievance was the grievance of all
women. Her fight was the fight of all women.
Ndom heaved. The women of
Ezi-Ama and all of Ikputu Ala said War! The women of Onu Miri sent a
delegation to Ezi-Ama to find out what had happened. When they found out,
they said War! The women of Usotuma and Agalaba Uzo picked up the echo and
repeated it. The women of Nsulu, Ntigha, Nvosi, Ama-Achara, Afara, Mbutu,
Okporo Ahaba, and Eberi said War! Beyond the river, the women of Okpuala,
Ahiara, Ulakwu, Owere, and all of Ohuhu said War! Ibibi women said War! The
women of Okirika, Mboni, Opopo, and all the Salt Water towns said War!
Ndom would not be
counted. How many bees are there in a bee-hive? they asked. How many ants
in an anthill? How many drops of rain in a rainstorm? How many drops of
water in the mighty Imo River?
Ndom said:
British Empire, come and get us! White man, come and get us from your
England. Come and get us from your Rest House. Come with your big guns and Munchi soldiers and shoot us. You do not have enough bullets to shoot all
of us. You do not have enough prisons to hold all of us. Then after you
shoot us, shoot your mother. After you imprison us, imprison your mother.
We are Ndom! Undivided! Umbilical cord tied to umbilical cord. Vaginas
that whelped the whole human race. Breasts that suckled it and hands that
comforted and nurtured it. If we lock our thighs together, the world comes
to an end!
Ala hentu!
(End
of Chapter 2)
Note: (Chapter 8 ends the first part of
the novel and brings the main part of the narrative by Nne-Nne to a close.
From this point onward, Ajuzia, the grandson, is the main narrator).
8
Ebube!
WHEN I WAS TEN YEARS OLD and in Standard Three, my teacher, Mr. Ukah, was a
tall, erect-standing, and handsome young man. Usually a fullback on the
teachers' soccer team, he had the reputation of being so strong that he
could kick a wet, size-five ball from goal to goal. Mr. Ukah was so strong
that the headmaster forbade him to kick penalty shots, after one of his
shots broke the arm of our school's goalkeeper. Anyway, as the story was
later told to me (I was not in school the Friday afternoon when it
happened), Mr. Ukah had a confrontation with an old man named Nwa-Agwu as
our class was clearing a piece of land adjacent to our school in preparation
for making a school farm. The people of Nwa-Agwu's compound often had
confrontations with our school, because they claimed the school constantly
encroached on their land.
"Off my land!"
Mr. Nwa-Agwu said, shaking his tasseled oti fly whisk at the boys.
The fearful students promptly complied.
"Back to your
work!" Mr. Ukah shouted at the students, when he returned from getting a
drink of water and learned of what had happened.
And so the battle began between Nwa-Agwu and Mr. Ukah.
The highlight
came when Mr. Ukah, who had been speaking in Igbo all the while, used the
English expression, "Imagine the likeness!" For some reason, Nwa-Agwu heard
only the word imagine. For some reason, his mind seized on it and
translated it to the Igbo word, ima-ji-ji-ji. Mr. Nwa-Agwu thought
Mr. Ukah was commanding him to shake and quake!"
"Nwata-kiri
ogbede, isi nna gi maa ji-ji-ji? Eeh? Eeh? Lekwa-nu ji-ji-ji!"[Young
man, are you asking your father to shake and quake? Eh? Eh? Well, here's
shake and quake for you!]
Nwa-Agwu, as the
story was told to me by several classmates, recited some strange
incantations and then flung a handful of sand at Mr. Ukah.
According to my
classmates who saw it, Mr. Ukah fell down and was overtaken by chills. The
headmaster and two other teachers had to come and help him up from the
ground and escort him to his quarters. I know that when I returned to
school on Monday, Mr. Ukah was not there and did not return to school for
that whole week. His whole body, we were told, was covered with rashes,
from the sand Nwa-Agwu had flung at him.
That was ebube,
and Nwa-Agwu had it.
Koon-Tiri had
ebube. Koon-Tiri, who pinned Fada Getz, the R. C. M. priest at
Agalaba Uzo, as he was saying Mass, and the priest could not recite the
words he was supposed to say at Consecration, but kept repeating Hoc est
enim . . . Hoc est enim . . . Hoc est enim . . . like a
scratched record.
Ebube!
Amuma-ogwu!
Man pass man!
Spirit pass
spirit!
And the way
Koon-Tiri died was ebube! A bolt of lightning tore through the roof
of his house, reaching into the innermost room, where he had a shrine and
was at that very moment invoking spirits. He was burned and blackened
beyond recognition.
Ebube!
In the
confrontation with Pharaoh, Moses threw down his staff and made a snake.
Ebube!
Pharaoh's
magician threw down his staff and made a snake.
Ebube!
Moses' snake swallowed
Pharaoh's snake.
Ebube pass ebube!
Ebube,
the
aura of power, the all-enshrouding force you feel around the shrine of a
powerful juju, a force that causes your scalp to crawl and your skin to be
covered with goose pimples.
The power of a
curse put on you by the old clay-pot trader, whom you caused to stumble and
break all her pots, a curse so powerful and unshakable that it followed you
everywhere, in every incarnation, and you could not hide from it, not in an
anthill nor in a rabbit hole, unless you never ever ate anything cooked in a
pot. That was why your mother warned you and pulled at her ears again and
again as she warned you never to repeat what heedless children often
thought was a clever saying: "Ogwu akpola onye ite!" [The old pot
trader has stumbled on a twig!)
A leopard in a crouch, about to leap on a prey, a python about to strike.
The power to transfix and paralyze prey with a powerful stare all power of
body and spirit singularly focused on the piercing point of the eyes, while
the victim stands helpless and hopeless, knowing that all thought of escape
is futile.
Ebube!
Ehihi!
Ekike!
The unseen force of Eke Ngbawa and Ngwu, which seized selected people from
the towns of Umu-Akpara and Ovungwu during their respective juju festivals.
That force reached near and far, high and low, to seize those it had
selected. It made no difference whether they were young or old, rich or
poor, male or female, high on an eagle's nest or deep in a rabbit's hole.
The spirit always found its people and possessed them.
In the well-known
folktale, the contest between the powerful dibia and the wood nymph
was ebube versus ebube.
Ebube
was what deserted
Chief Nwakpuda the day he stood on the railway track at Afara and held up
his charmed cow-tail whisk in the face of an on-rushing train. "Tah!"
Nwakpuda said. "No one, not even the White man's train, can pass by my
compound without paying homage and tribute!" The train blew its whistle and
blew it again, but Chief Nwakpuda stood fast, with his hand aloft. The
train scattered his meat along the track all the way to Ovim.
Ebube pass ebube!
The White man had
ebube. He was cantankerous, irascible, and inscrutable. And
powerful! Agwu of the worst kind. Mean, ill-tempered, and apt to
take offense at the slightest provocation and to inflict the most painful
retribution for the smallest offense. Gburu bara uru, gburu bara okpukpu!
[a double-edged knife!) Gbakuru nwoke, gbakuru nwanyi! [stinging
centipede!] There were not many of them, and the few there were seemed
personally weak and sickly, but together they now haunted the land like
vindictive ghosts in khaki shorts and pith helmets, carrying guns that spat
deadly fire. All types of guns, pistols, and riva-rivas, big
repeat-fire guns, poison canisters. The White man was poison. He had
captured the thunderbolts of Amadioha in metal shells and flung them here
and there and everywhere, not minding whom or what he killed. Knocking down
houses, uprooting trees, or just making frightful booms and digging huge
holes in the ground and spreading poison fumes.
The White man
made and broke laws as he went along, shook hands to treaties he had no
intention of keeping, violated oaths the same day, week, or month that he
swore them. He was not bound by any code or deterred by any taboo. And
whatever spirit or god he swore by never seemed to take him to task for
violating his oath. If you extended your hand to the White man you could
never be sure whether he would shake it or put handcuffs on it.
Word was that one
of the early White traders in our area, a sort of pro tem
consul who explored the hinterland from the coast, had the colonial office
send him several hundred treaty forms. With these he went about signing
friendship treaties with all the towns he traveled through. The area was
backward, he said, and there were no chiefs or natural rulers. No village
or town paid homage to another, so every few miles a new town and a new
treaty. Bewildered elders made their marks or pressed their thumbprints on
these treaties, taking the White man's word for what he said. Later they
found out that they had signed away land or autonomy or whatever the sole
interpreter of the written oracle said. Yes, the White man was the only
known priest to his own oracle. In fact, he was both the priest and the
oracle.
"Is this not your
mark here?"
"Yes. "
"Is this
not your thumbprint here?"
"Yes, it
is."
"Well, this
document says that all of this land, hereunder named and described: . . .
has been affeofed and deeded over to the Crown by the assembled elders and
village heads of . . . It is all here, in black and white. We have no
choice but to enforce the terms of this treaty.
Boom!
Boom! Boom!
Ala hentu! Hentu!
Ikpe amagh eze!
Ogwu akpogh nkita!
Any village or town that displeased the Government was declared a
"disaffected area." A disaffected area came under the Peace Preservation
Ordinance. And if a disaffected area did anything that could be construed
as "misbehavior," the Collective Punishment Ordinance immediately took
effect. Villages were burned down, growing crops were uprooted, animals
were shot, barns were destroyed as punishment and to make a show of force
and meanness, to show the people how vengeful and ruthless the Government
could be.
The White man was
ihie nadigh otu neme ya [something about which nothing can be
done]. The people ran to their seers and their gods, but the seers had no
answers and the gods seemed powerless. The White man was immune to the
vengeance of both Ihi Njoku, the farm god, and Amadioha, the god of
thunder. He broke their taboos at whim, and did things that no villager
could dare to do and expect to live for more than a season, but nothing
happened to him.
The men fought
the White man however they could with spears, but a spear could only be
hurled so far. They fought with machetes, but a machete was good only
against another machete and could only be used at arm's length. The men
fought with the best weapon they had, the flintlock gun, stuffed with three
or four fingers of gunpowder, bits of metal, or old ball bearings from their
bicycles. These guns made huge booms and big clouds of smoke but could
hardly kill a rabbit or a squirrel. One shot, and then they had to be
reloaded. Their powders sometimes became damp; their ignition caps
sometimes failed to spark.
The White man's guns fired surely, and they fired
again and again.
The men fought
bravely but the White man fought with stratagems and ruses, lures and
ambushes. The people of Ahiara were lured to an open marketplace for what
they thought would be a peace conference, then mowed down with Lewis guns.
At the coast, King Jaja was lured onboard a ship for what was supposed to be
a conference. The ship lifted anchor and took him to Akra and ultimately to
exile in the West Indies.
Elders and juju
priests were kidnapped and held at ransom until their kin complied with
whatever the Government was demanding. "You want your elder back? Then
send ten able-bodied young men to work the new Government project for ten
days without pay!"
Given that the
White man could do all of these mean, cruel, unbelievable things and seem to
get away with them, the people could only shake their heads and marvel.
This was ebube of a type they had never seen before.
Ebube kwuru ebube!
In the popular
folktale, the tortoise is supposed to have said to the spider, whom he
observed pulling yards and yards of web out of his belly: "Master Spider, if
after pulling all that stuff out of yourself you are still alive by
next year, I promise I will try pulling stuff out of myself too!"
Impressed, awed, mesmerized by what they had seen the White man do and get
away with, some local men decided to join him the daring ones, those not
connected to the main branches of their respective families, ne'er-do-wells
who had little to lose, those whose innate disposition to evil had been kept
in check by the severity of local taboos all of these found release in the
White man eloped with him and became his acolytes and apprentices, house
boys and nyash-lickers. When the White man lost his way, they showed
him his way. When the rest of the village chose to keep quiet, they spoke
up. When the rest of their towns shook their heads in dissent, they nodded
theirs in assent. Such men, attention seekers as they were, received the
White man's attention. They became middlemen and ultimately,
chiefs. Because they stood out in the silent, sullen crowds that usually
met the White man, he considered them outstanding.
"Wherefore,
urupirisi urupiri'si, urupirisi. . ., the White Man said.
"It has been
decided and decreed," his interpreter, an osu from the tribal
markings on his forehead, announced to the bewildered townspeople, "that
from this day henceforth the following shall be chiefs for the town of
Usotuma . . . For Ikputu-Ala, the chiefs shall be . . . For Uzemba, the
chiefs are . . . And for Amapu the chiefs shall be . . . All of the said
chiefs shall assemble at District Headquarters at Agalaba Uzo on the
twenty-seventh inst. for investiture and receipt of their caps and
staffs of office. As a sign of general concord and in honor of chiefs duly
appointed, let us give three 'Hip-hip hurrahs!' "
"Hip! Hip!
Hip!"
"Hurrah!"
"Hip! Hip!
Hip!
"Hurrah!"
"Hip! Hip!
Hip!"
"Hurrah!"
Villagers and
townspeople, bewildered and befuddled, scratched and shook their heads in
amazement, shut their eyes and opened them again to see if they were
dreaming. When the nightmare did not go away, they began to decide ever so
slowly that what they beheld was real. They talked to one another in low
voices and in slow sentences, searched one another's faces for answers.
"Have you seen what I am seeing?" became the expression with which men
passed one another on the paths of various towns and villages. And the
answer to that question was "What my eyes are seeing my mouth dares not
utter, usually spoken with a slow shaking of the head. It was like
something in a fairytale. The world, as they had always known it, had done
a somersault.
So, chiefs and
clerks and interpreters of all types came into existence, priests and
oracles of the new White god. He spoke to them and they spoke to the rest
of the people. If the people had anything to say to him, they said it
through their chief. There was no other way. The White god was impatient
with complaints. His constant admonition was "Obey before complaining." If
you did not obey, if you thought the whole thing was a preposterous joke,
the White man had strong-armed enforcers to help you change your mind, and
to remember well the lesson they had taught you.
My grandfather
was one of those who learned a lesson. Someone reported him to the police
for distilling eti-eti, out of palm wine, something that many
villagers did, but something that had been declared illegal on a whim by the
White man. My grandfather spent a year in I prison for that crime. The
chief instigator of the plot against my grandfather was a kinsman, our own
local Chief Orji.
Orji, how shall I
describe him and be fair to him? Well, he had a type of ebube that
made him a terror to most of the people of our town. Awesome as well as
awful, Orji stood tall and huge as an iroko tree. In his youth he was an
un-throwable wrestler, as well as a bully who tended to acquire things by
the strong eye and the strong hand, un-deferring to elders and to custom,
apt to do things out of turn. If a goat or cow was slaughtered for a
village festival, for example, men chose their shares of the meat by age
from the oldest to the youngest. But not Orji. He would step up and choose
whatever share he wanted without regard to whoever was supposed to choose
before him. And the rest of the kindred were reduced to shrugging or
pouting and murmuring privately or making nervous jokes about the fact that
for Orji, rules and protocol were not necessarily binding.
Orji was a
nemesis to all his kin, but especially to my grandfather who continually
opposed his roguishness. At one time, all of our people lived in a common
ezi ukwu, or big compound. In time, however, we became too numerous
to be comfortably situated on one spot. Some of the kin moved to other
locations nearby. Custom was that the younger men moved, and the elders
stayed. However, after Orji became chief, he asked the senior man in our
compound, lzhima, to move instead. He, Orji, needed more space to erect a
new zinc house befitting his new status. De-lzhima refused. One of the
results of De-Izhima's refusal is the big bend in the new road just past
Egbelu. Because Orji was then fifth in line among the surviving sons of our
great ancestor, his place in ezi ukwu was to the side and the back of
the compound. However, after the road was bent at his behest, it passed
behind rather than in front of ezi ukwu. Orji at once cut a new lane
from his house to the new road. De-lzhima protested that it was taboo to
have two opposite lanes to the same compound. Orji's answer was "Then let
there be two compounds!" So our ancestral compound was divided into two by a
high mgbidi wall with which Orji separated himself and his wives from
the others. Some months later, when the old road was abandoned for the new
one, ezi ukwu was left facing the past with its back to the new, from
which it was further eclipsed by the height of Orji's wall.
Orji was the type
of person who caught the White man's eye and became Chief. As Chief, he
turned our Native Court into a Justice Store, where he and a cross-eyed
Court Clerk named Enoch asked all comers: "How much justice do you want?
How much justice can you afford? We have justice for five shillings and
justice for five pounds. Which one do you want?"
But then Orji,
too, had one day met his own nemesis, and my heart throbs with excitement
whenever I think that I helped put him and it together. It was none other
than the man who has since become my father-in-law, Stella's father, A. S.
P. Kamanu. Orji was then doing his worst on my grandfather, and as a young
person fresh out of secondary school, I had felt duty bound to strike some
kind of blow. Especially since my grandfather had no other close male
relatives. My cudgel was the A.S.P., my mercenary ototo, who arrived
with two lorry-loads of policemen at the scene where my grandfather was
being tried on a trumped-up charge by my townspeople.
I shall never
forget that day as long as I live: A police Land Rover pulling to a stop at
our okasaa, and three police officers stepping smartly out of it.
Then followed the gray police Mercedes, with official crest and markings.
The tall man who emerged slowly from the Benz with an air of deliberate
authority, the kind of authority that was used to getting compliance without
much physical exertion. Lean and fibrous like a bamboo cane, black as a
Munchi soldier, with tufts of mixed gray hair growing out of his ears, his
cap set at an angle, the creases of his khaki uniform sharper than machetes,
aviator sunglasses for mystery eyes that saw without being seen A. S. P.
Kamanu, Afo-Ojo-o, or Bad-Belly Kamanu as people fearfully called
him, had slowly eased himself out of his car, tucked his staff under one
armpit, and had begun walking forward toward the crowd.
"Ototo!"
I remember
muttering to myself as he arrived, virtually jumping out of my skin. "Nta
Muu-muu!"
Ebube
Orji, meet
ebube Kamanu!
Orji was impressed but not cowed. Anyhow, not until the first lorry-full of
policemen in brightly colored uniforms arrived and was followed immediately
by a second lorry, whose engine backfired as it pulled to a stop and sent
some of the people to flight.
What happened
that day was ebube kwuru ebube in special demonstration. The A.S.P.
and the policemen were on their way to a parade and drill competition with
another police detachment at Agalaba Uzo. The rifles they carried were
empty. Even so, their mere appearance thoroughly confounded Orji and his
schemes.
Ebube!
That was in 1959.
Back in 1929,
Ndom had decided that the best way to fight the seemingly invincible White
man was not with guns or strong talk, but with Ebube Ndom, the
awesomeness of the Solidarity of All Womanhood, the Mother and Nurturer of
all humankind, kneaded together by Mgbara Ala, the Goddess of the Unity of
All Land. Oha Ndom joined the rich woman to the poor, the prostitute to the
virgin, the young girl who had just had her first monthly to the old widow
who could no longer remember when she had had her last. Women in the
prisons. Women on the farms and in the markets. Women on their way to the
well. Women on their way to the bushes to find firewood. The aura of
Womanhood rose from the earth and fell from the sky and covered everything
in a convulsive swirl. Even little girl babies just beginning to crawl, if
they had seen a Government agent, they would have crawled up to him and
bitten him with their first pair of baby teeth. Even the mad woman Tank-Panza-Brockway-Peccata-Mundi
was heaved by its power.
Brockway-Tank-Peccata-Mundi
led a
charge of women against her old enemy, Fada Getz, pastor of the R.C.M.
Church at Agalaba Uzo. This crowd swept past the priest and was about to
torch the church and the rectory, were it not for the intervention of two
nuns and a group of about fifty girls who attended the Holy Rosary Convent
School. The girls, holding hands at the entrances of both buildings, were
led in prayer by the two nuns. After watching them for a while, Brockway
and her retinue turned around and left for the prisons.
On their way to
the prison yard, the group led by Peccata Mundi came upon two warders
returning with a dozen prisoners from a day of work at some Government
project. The prisoners carried hoes, machetes, and axes. The warders
carried only truncheons. Ebube! The two warders, apparently
unaware of what had happened to their colleagues elsewhere, showed no
concern when they saw the throng of women approaching them on the run. They
were Government people protected by the Government's ebube. The same
ebube as kept the prisoners from doing them physical harm or trying
to escape. They had heard that women were rioting in the outlying villages,
but no one was supposed to riot in town, which was Crown Territory. Or so
they thought, until the women lit into them, knocked them to the ground, and
proceeded to tear off their uniforms as trophy, taking time even to unwrap
their lengthy woolen puttees.
"Gbaa nu nfa."
Peccata Mundi
commanded the
warders. "Scram! Your tail is on fire!"
The prisoners
stood, mesmerized, like people confronted by two gods, unsure which one to
worship. The women were on their way; when some of them looked back and saw
the prisoners helping the warders off the ground, they turned back and gave
the prisoners a beating, spat on them, and tore off their scanty prison
uniforms.
Ndom!
Ebube!
Ndom was
everywhere, because women were everywhere.
Ebube
poured out of
Ugbala where she was being held in prison. Seized her like Amuma-Muo,
like a fit of delirium brought on by a high fever. Enough to
overpower the warder who was guarding her. "Child," she said to the young
warder, "are you going to be a woman or a dog that wags her tail for an
unknown master? Haah? Haah? You do not answer me? If I ever meet your
mother, I shall tell her she should have taught you better manners. What
town do you come from? Are you an osu or a freeborn? Turn your face
to the side, so I can get a better look at your tribal marks. I see, you
are a freeborn. In that case, my question to you is: Why have they put you
in charge of me? Did they tell you what I did to merit being brought into
this hole? How much are they paying you? You still do not answer? Well, I
will not ask you any more questions. If my hands were free I would slap you
for your cheekiness. Do you know who I am?
Some of the other prisoners chimed in. "Yes, do you know the person they
have asked you to guard? This is Ugbala that you are guarding. Where could
you be from that you have never heard of Ugbala? If your hometown is
anywhere around here, you should have heard her name.
"Take off these things so I can go to the latrine," Ugbala said.
"You do not need
to take them off to go to the latrine," the warder replied.
"And after I
finish, how shall I wipe myself? Or will you wipe your mother? Take these
things off, so I can go to ease myself," Ugbala commanded, her voice rising,
her eyes staring fiercely.
"I cannot take
them off," the warder replied.
"Then call
someone who can order you to take them off."
The warder blew
her whistle. Another, more senior, warder came. The younger warder saluted
and explained the request. The senior warder assented. The handcuffs were
removed from Ugbala's hands. She grabbed the bunch of keys from the young
warder and tossed them to the other prisoners. A scuffle ensued. The two
warders grabbed Ugbala, one on each hand. The other prisoners used the keys
to let themselves out of their cages. Together, the fifteen or so prisoners
overpowered the two warders, but not before they could blow a few emergency
blasts on their whistles.
No matter. The
fifteen erstwhile prisoners were ready for war. They went from gate to gate
trying keys and releasing as many other prisoners as they found. Down a
narrow passageway, on their way to the men's section of the prison, they
came upon two male warders -- older men who had been left behind to man the
prisons, while the others had been seconded to the District Officer's
contingent force. The two were carrying truncheons, but so were two or
three of the younger prisoners, who had picked up these weapons from the
warders they overcame. The two warders blew their whistles and drew their
truncheons. Clearly, they were no match for the women about to confront
them, but they relied on their own aura -- ebube- their manhood, and
their weapons to keep the women at bay.
At first
encounter, the narrowness of the corridor made it difficult for the women to
press their numerical advantage. However, the momentum of their rush sent
the two warders reeling backward, even as they were swinging their
truncheons. They managed to draw a few anguished howls from the women as
the truncheons found their initial marks, but that was it. The women
presently overpowered them, stripped them naked, and sat on them.
Ndom!
Ebube!
Ndom was
unstoppable. They were clubbed but kept coming, were whipped but kept
coming, were dispersed but regrouped and kept coming, knocked down, but
climbed over their fallen comrades and kept coming. Ndom became like the
proverbial Munchi soldiers onuru vuru, anugh zia! they heard "Pick
it up!" but never heard "Put it down!"
In front of the
prison gates, Peccata Mundi's group met and merged with Ugbala's
group. The joint force, each of its members drawing power and resolve from
all the other members, rushed to the daily market. There they asked the few
women they found, "What are you doing here? Trading while Ndom is at war?
Have you not heard that the earth is heaving? Or are you not women?"
Eke Oha market
heaved!
Telegraph poles
all along Asa and Factory roads came down. Groups of three or four women
attacked them in turn, heaving each pole back and forth, back and forth,
until it was loosened around its foundation and finally toppled. The main
post office on the edge of the waterside caught fire.
Approaching the
section of town known as The Factories, the area where the European firms
had their oil and kernel depots, the group met another smaller group,
carrying the corpse of a woman identified as the popular prostitute Oyoyo.
Oyoyo had died in battle, run over by a car driven by Doctor Bradshaw. On
his way to the hospital, the doctor had been confronted by a group of
women. In panic or out of malice he had accelerated his car in the midst of
the crowd that surrounded him. Oyoyo was one of the women who fell under
his wheels.
Ndom saw blood.
Ndom saw red. Hitherto, they had done what they could to avoid the shedding
of blood. But the White man did not hesitate to shed blood. It was at the
junction of Factory Road and Milverton Avenue that this large crowd
confronted a detachment of soldiers from the Fourth Battalion, and it was
here that the earth heaved the most. And the most blood was shed.
Ala
hentu!
The soldiers it was impossible to tell how many of them there were -- were
apparently arriving from somewhere and grouping themselves for battle. The
dust kicked up by the open-back lorries that carried them was still
swirling, and to the far right of their formation, near the chain-link fence
that marked the beginning of the compound of the John Woodrow Trading
Company, a monster lorry painted in diarrhea-green colors was grunting to a
stop and more soldiers were leaping out of it. At the forefront of the
detachment, two rows of men were kneeling or crouching in firing position.
Other rows stood thickly behind the first two, their rifles palmed at an
angle, at the ready.
As the crowd
