The Rain That Beat the Eagle: An Ironical Twist in Igbo Discourse

By

Obododimma Oha

As we well know, ironies spring an element of surprise on us! We would be expecting something to happen, but its opposite, complete opposite, happens. Life is full of such surprises. But  my attention in this short essay is how this ironical twist that comes with a surprise is encoded in Igbo proverbial discourse  and used to articulate experiences. I have woven the discussion around the eagle, much revered for nobility in Igbo discourse. This is because the eagle is symbolic and the idea of the rain beating a bird and making it both bad-looking and miserable is a very graphic one we can be familiar with. In fact, in Igbo discourse generally, the rain beating a bird is a pitiable narrative often used to evoke pathos and to attribute altruism to its helper, as in the Igbo proverb, ọkụkọ anaghị echezọ onye kworo ya ọdụ n’udummiri (The domestic fowl will always be grateful to the person that removes its tail feathers in the rainy season). The logic behind such gratitude is that the tail feathers easily get wet and make the bird uncomfortable, its movement awkward. Removing them entirely, just like prunning a tree, is some act of love. Of course, the feathers would grow back later. In this regard, one would like to see how Igbo discourse represents the eagle drenched by the rain.

In fact, being beaten by the rain is not always a good experience. It can even be used as a figurative expression to evoke pity for the victim. Little wonder Chinua Achebe, in one of his essays, writes about the need for Africans to know where “the rain” started beating them. That was an idiom borrowed from Igbo discourse. Of course, we know Achebe and his discursive celebration of Igbo culture!  He was, in fact, talking about the need for consciousness, or, as my late father would also put it, nkita m na-egburu ngwere asabehị anya (The puppy for which I am killing and storing lizards is yet to open its eyes). When the puppy opens its eyes or comes to awareness, its redemption would begin. Thus, mistreated people should know where and how this mistreatment started. Anyone wishing to keep them under subservience would not want them to ask where the rain started beating them. Didn’t we see this strategic use of ignorance in the relationship between slave owners in America and Africans enslaved? The slaves were prevented from learning to read and read so that they would not find something out in the books and interrogate their masters. Not even the reading of the Bible, the holy book, was allowed. For the enslaver, it is better and safer to keep the enslaved ignorant. Once the enslaved comes to awareness and could ask question, enslavement is over! Didn’t we see that happen in America?

The proverbial angle. Proverbs are often treated as wise ans tested sayings, although some by encoding fallacies and negative sentiments, suggest themselves as suspect. But, in spite of that, the encoding of the rain beating the eagle and making it more beautiful in a proverb is one way of appealing for its acceptance as a something springing forth from deep thought. Isn’t the fact that its springs forth from deep thinking a mystification and therefore even more revered?

The Igbo proverb that is somewhat central to this ironical twist says: mmiri mara ugo, achaala ugo ahụ (The rain that drenched the eagle has made it even more beautiful than before). Is that not surprising? But we were expecting the eagle to catch cold or to die of cold! Who would climb those heights of its lofty perch to remove its tail feathers or light the fire for it?

It is surprising, too, that, instead of making the eagle look awkward, it rather makes it look more beautiful. Rather than being a mere adulation, the irony invites us to look more closely at life and notice that it is a project. Each soul is a project. Our being here or meeting here is part of the project. Every project has a plan.You see, it is risky, very risky, to subvert this project, especially when one has no power over it.

Allow the eagle to play its eagleness. It is the project. Don’t try to baboon it! At your own risk.

The rain that beat the eagle is not only an ironical twist that shows that we are not in control, it also tells us that we may be assisting what we think we are opposing. That is also an irony. What we don’t like is the eagleness of the eagle; that means we are opposed to the project called the eagle. That is risky. We should be lucky if we are only reformatted so that we can be functional. Terrible if the program is entirely  erased!

Of Servers and Other Expensive Shithole Jokes

By

Obododimma Oha

What is this nonsense talk about INEC not having servers? With all the millions of Naira they are paid? Wallahi, I am losing my patience. So, they cannot see all these girls moving up and down jobless and ask them to be servers foo foo, eba, moi moi, or whatever they want to eat there, kwo?Wallahi, they are doing nonsense!  I listened to that advice by Mustapha. I regret it now. I would have gone ahead to employ those girls from my village selling kunu myself. They are ready to work as servers. General servers, even at the meeting of the service chiefs.

Now, you tell me that INEC has no server. That is both impossible and irresponsible. So, that INEC man does not know that sometimes, there may be the need to serve tea, bournvita (my favourite), foo-foo, and fried rice? Unpardonable! I am going to drop him fast fast. What nonsense! He has disgraced me before the whole world. No server. Imagine! So, he will tell the world that we are too poor to get servers? Wallahi, I feel like stabbing him! And stabbing the mother that bore him. Nonsense! Imagine, no server. A whole election paid for and he said everything was going on well, that he had everything under control. Under control, indeed. Now, no single server!

Ok, if INEC does not like a particular type of food, can’t they tell me? Or tell one of these emirs to tell me. I won’t refuse. I would have just signed it, even without reading it. Sakasaka! But not to have servers at all is difficult for me to understand, wallahi.

Oh, are you sure that fellow heading INEC is not working for PDP or even Kanu? Wallahi, there is something about that man I don't quite understand. When he says he is coming, you can be sure that he is going! Now I understand. It is terrible to trust people. Especially these book people. Maybe they are laughing at me secretly that I can only afford a WASC certificate, and even looking for it. Maybe he is one of those secretly trying to make me look funny and my government to appear backward. Imagine. Ordinary server. So, they want to use that, too? To laugh at me? A whole me!

Wallahi, this has spoilt my day. It has put me in a bad mood. Even this journey that I have planned to make to London, I may have to cancel it. So, I will get there and all those white girls would remind me that we cannot afford servers back home? Wallahi, I have to cancel it. Am I not the one going? Imagine, when I was just angry over the fact that I have to share fresh London air with that Kanu! To think that he would breathe out and I would breathe in! Or that I would breathe out and he would breathe in!

 The same air! The same London! It is possible that when he dies and I die, we would be buried in the same earth and go to the same spiritworld!

Wallahi, that air and this earth are threatening national security and I have to alert the DSS. Imagine Kanu dead and I, too! What nonsense!

Now INEC is making things worse. Maybe they are secretly working for Kanu. Maybe the weapon he uses is the human being close to me. OK, I am going to settle this server problem once and for all. Now, the whole world would know that INEC has a server. Even servers! The whole world needs to know. Maybe that can correct the bad impression, wallahi.

Please, call those television and radio people. Tell them that I said that INEC has a server. They don’t need to show the picture. Ii is enough to say that INEC has a server. And it is coming from me. That carries some weight. Oh, why didn’t I think of this before. INEC has a server of servers: I am declaring it before the whole world!

Knowability and Unknowability of the Ancestral Spirits in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

By

Obododimma Oha

In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, we are presented by the intervention of mmanwụ the masked spirit of the ancestor, which the author in his dialect of Igbo calls egwugwu, in the settlement of a quarrel involving spouses and indeed the entire community. But in the intervention, other important issues surface. Among them are the idea of the presence of the dead (the slippery community constituted by humans and spirits), the inner religious colonial structure in which spirits dominate and rule perpetually over humans, and the idea of the knowable and the unknowable in philosophy of the culture in which spirits can be present in the world of humans and have the final say in the affairs of humans. The idea of what is knowable and what is considered unknowable in the culture is an interesting one and does engage one’s attention. This essay tries to engage this discourse on knowability which the mmanwụ brings up in the settlement.

When the masked spirit asks: “ụzọwulu’s body, do you know me?” and ụzọwulu, answers: “How can I know you? You are unknowable,” the spirit is trying to test ụzọwulu as a member of the culture who should know what is not knowable and what is not. In other words, it is a kind of riddle, the kind that the Sphinx is likely to ask. In addition, ụzọwulu as probably an initiate of the mmanwụ cult should know its verbal signification presented by the mmanwụ and how to respond. Either way, he is face-to-face with the idea of knowability in his culture and needs to answer appropriately.

In another preceding blog article, I had examined signification as the central thing in Igbo masquerading and its communication. I had pointed out that being an initiate means being fully educated in the signifying practices of mmanwụ and meeting its communicative competence as an insider. The test from the masked spirit was therefore mmanwụ signification at work at the ilo with initiates and noninitiates present.

Achebe in the narrative tries to assist readers by adding that masked spirits in the culture address humans as “body,”hence, “ụzọwulu’s body” as a usage. So, that person deixis should be clear to us and to ụzọwulu. The real problem he must tackle is in the other part of the interrogative act: “...do you KNOW me?” Two things in the problem: the verb “know” and the object “me.” If ụzọwulu can tell or differentiate between this "me" and other “Mes,” he has safely  crossed the bridge. So, the knowability hovers around “me.” Or how can “me” be decoded?  ụzọwulu should know that it is referring to the masked spirit of an ancestor, which cannot be said to be known in the culture, even if he had helped somebody he knows to put on the mask. Achebe even points out that one of the spirits has a springy stride like Okonkwo, such that his closest friends and wives could tell if he is the one. But none says that it is Okonkwo.

In French, a distinction is made between the know of “savoir” (know as see, to be aware of something, to reason out; “connaitre,” or cognitive recognition, to recognize and “faire ” (knowing as being able to distinguish. That divergence in the little French lesson (lecon), should not disturb us! The main issue is that  our fictional friend is challenged to say if he can say everything he can recognize. If he can say everything he recognizes, he has stepped into greater trouble and would have a problem with the spirits, too. His saving grace is denial, this meaningful to the cult members.

Chinua Achebe is doing something there, other than just show us how ancestral spirits get involved in indigenous conflict resolution. Readers of the novel need to look at Achebe’s sub-text on indigenous clandestine semiotics involving ancestral spirits. It is power and identity staged at the slippery site of the sign.