By
Obododimma Oha
It is all about learning from someone who is very close, somebody who came to the world first or who is believed to have helped in conveying us here. It is about learning through imitation. "Nne ewu na-ata agbụrụ" (When the mother-goat is chewing the cud), a shortened form of the Igbo proverb ("Nne ewu na-ata agbụrụ, ụmụ ya ana-elele"), "When the mother-goat is chewing the cud, its children are watching") is about learning from an immediate experience. Why would her children, her own children, not want to imitate her? Why would they like to be her, not just being like her, to live her immortality? Yet, this proverb is a wise warning. We need to be mindful of the fact that we do and can influence others around us.
A wise masculinist in our village once asked: "A bad wife and bad children, which can be said to be better?' And the response considered correct is: "bad wife." The justification is that a bad wife could, at some point, decide to leave the marriage, but bad children remain behind and answer their father's surname. In that case, the marriage is regrettable but most regrettable is the scar of having BAD children.
It is a terrible thing to leave badness behind. It narrrates its leaver terribly. Otiriakị ekpoghị nchara aha ya dị na nkume. A peron that cracks palm-kernels on a stone and does not remove the shells has left his or her name on the stone.
The offspring of the mother-goat will turn chewing the cud into an art. Are they not supposed to be better at it? Something more than sheer imitation. If the cud is our badness, the offpring has to take badness even higher. In that way, badness would have grown with generations of cud-chewers.
It is not particularly pleasant to be seen chewing the cud. Imagine the picture. And to think that the cud-chewer brought back a careless past and is on it still! Chewing the cud means being stagnated on the unpleasant. Chewing the cud is a bad habit turned to a style.
Mother-goat and its children are united in the experience of chewing the cud. Mother-goat teaches with herself. Her children, her watchers, are also her pupils. Her pupils have only one option: "Do as I do; don't think; don't think for yourselves and hope to become a cud-chewer." Chew the cud on this social media; chew the cud on that social media. Chew the cud on listserv. Chew the cud on Facebook.Chew the cud on WhatsApp. Chew the cud because you are a goat and will be a big goat.
Mother-goat is a great source. And a source that wants to remain a source. It is not because she is transmitting her cud-attitude. Mother-goat would even be happy that all spectators are transmitters of that cud-attitude.
Is this cud-chewing not a wonderful performance? This goat and that goat and those goats are belching and chewing. A performance of the mouth. Cud-chewing deserves to be watched and from various angles. Cud-chewing, testing the sides of the mouth. Cud-chewing showing the participation of molar and premolar.
Yet it is important to be mindful of the nature of the person that we are understudying and learning to chew the cud. Is this mother-goat teaching us nonsense, as Fela said? What is this mother-goat putting into our heads, into our lives?
That means that "nne ewus" should know that they are touching the lives of others and should be very careful in the performance. Who knows tomorrow? Is it not frightening that being entrusted with younger minds, like students and offspring, means that we would be held accountable for what they have been exposed to? Yes; it is frightening, indeed. So, mother-goats chewing the cud, be careful, very.
But it is even criminal to expect the young ones to use the same old style of chewing the cud. Still chewing the cud is bad enough. A new style of chewing the cud may have something exciting we can see. An old performance can be re-invented.
Whether we are chewing the cud in the classroom, Facebook, listserv, venues for collation of election results, Government House, etc, it is important to realize that we can change or perpetuate things. And that is the very dangerous part. Yes, we can help to make or break.
Mother-goats chewing the cud here and there, I advise you to examine it over again and rethink your been known to chew the cud and a trainer of cud chewing.
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