Being Gifted with Buttocks and not Knowing How to Sit Down

By

Obododimma Oha

Some Igbo proverbs can be very expressive and amusing, and I suspect that this applies to proverbs in many other languages that can be found in Nigeria, especially the Volta-Niger family where Igbo is currently classified. Proverbs are amusing to us, partly because we apply our real-life human situations to the context they literally contain and because of what we find ridiculous in them. One such proverb in Igbo that we can find quite amusing is the saying attributed to the dog: Nkịta sị na ndi nwere ike amaghị anọ ọdụ (The dog says that those who have buttocks do not know how to sit down). So, the dog has been watching us! I thought that it is merely squatting as a “long-throat” as we wrestle with the bony part of the meat! So, the thoughts of that dog can be verbalized; in other words, somebody in the room knows what it is thinking? Also, so the dog speaks our own language but something in its barking makes the deciphering difficult! Dog trainers and vet doctors should hear these!

I wonder why the sage chose to put these human thoughts and human words into the mouth of the barking dog. What more, making the bloody squatting animal a satirist of human behaviour. Who knows whether the dog has applied to USAAfricaDialogue to become a member! Then, it can also watch the shapes of our tongues and the colours of our teeth. In fact, one has to be careful, for (not Big Brother) that dog, that mongrel, that poodle, that bulldog, the terrier... may be watching out for one’s posts!

Animals speak for animals. That is normal. Only when animals speaking for animals and like animals is a strategy of entrapment. The dinta (or ode in Yoruba) knows that very well. Sometimes he pretends to be an animal by imitating the sounds associated with the animal and easily deceives its mates. The get closer, thinking the sound is from a friend, not knowing it is from the worst enemy. Then, BANG! And the mumu animal is down and out. Its life is over among enemies that pretend to be friends. Its journey in the jungle is over.

Some would classify proverbs of this nature attributed to an animal under wellerism, or a statement which contains a known proverb or quotation, a fresh use, and an utterer, which of course adds to its humour and strangeness. So, using those criteria, let us just accept the classification tentatively. The point remains that the lower is positioned to teach the higher, which is perfectly in line with the idea that those who are gifted with buttocks do not know how to sit down!

But why is it so? Is the dog right? Does this apply to individuals as well as large groups like countries. Is the conclusion of the squatting down valid or is the dog merely jealous? Is it not in the province of irony that those that have buttocks do not know how to sit down?

Given that buttocks are for sitting down, whatever “sitting down” means. Given that the dog, literally speaking, is in the fictive situation saying so after comparing itself with those who have buttocks. But the dog has buttocks. Except that animal is denying it, seeing the presence of a tail it wags often as the absence of buttocks. In that case, it sees the tail as a disadvantage, as a symbol of lack! No wonder it prefers to squat here and there.

Igbo culture uses it and its logic as a paradigm for appreciating wise use of resources, or what one is gifted with. It is clearly shown that those who have an advantage ironically turn it to a disadvantage sadly. Are some individuals not misusing (or not using) opportunities? Are some people that subscribe to USAAfricaDialogue actually reading others and do they learn from this virtual classroom? Do they really use the opportunities (fellowships, conferences, workshops, etc) for academic growth or do they stockpile them like any other social media luggage?

No; don’t talk about some shithole countries. It could be very obvious that they misuse resources, and worse still, hardly care about human resources. Oh; why shouldn’t millions be slaughtered or rendered homeless? Are these countries not greatly overpopulated? Is it not better to slaughter the populations as a way of reducing the populations? After all, a country is not its citizens; it is just the map.

Dear dog, keep squatting and learning human language. Keep criticizing the absurd human behaviour. Every observer needs to squat, not sit!

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.

Sculptures and the Idea of Lifelessness

By

Obododimma Oha

There is something about sculptures: they tend to suggest the idea of lifelessness. If this is a confession of a phobia, well, let it be. For your information, I started having that impression right from childhood. Faces of masks that people wore in secular masquerading, which were popularly called “okporompi” in my part of Igboland, scared me for they resembled human faces; in other words, they were projects of mimicry, of resemblance and analogy in the visual mode. But apart from this, there was that morbid resemblance between the lifeless human face of the mask and the face of the person lying in state. I was frightened by lifelessness in them and this dread was extended to sculptures of human figures (you know death is frightening!). In fact, an uncle had a wooden form, called “nwagoro oyibo” and it always frightened me, in spite of the oyibo attached to it. To meet Nwagoro oyibo in my dream was terrible. I always made sure I woke up, but, of course, I held the person sleeping next to me tightly.

Don’t think that I was the first to draw attention between the iconic visual image and lifelessness. The thinker, Michel Foucault, was there before me. He was interested in photography and saw the still-life capturing of the image by the camera as similar to death. The image is a transformation and trans-fixity into deathly or deathsome lifelessness! At the time the person takes a pose for a photograph or is adjusted  by a photographer to have a particular pose, the transformation has taken over: the living is becoming the dead!

In Nigeria, this lifelessness is coming back to frighten me in Rochas Okorocha’s commissioning of sculptors to sculpt his friends in government. First, he commissioned the sculpting of Jacob Zuma, a later discredited president of South Africa. Why Jacob Zuma? Some people were wondering. What has he or his government done for Imo State? But as destiny would have it, Zuma was removed in South Africa and coincidentally, his statue was pushed down in Owerri, Imo State, as if being forced out of government was a kind of death signified by the fall of the statue. See Figure Three below. 

Figure One: Sculpture of Jacob Zuma. (Source: Facebook wall of Dada Babatunde Seun)

Zuma was disgraced out of office in South Africa, a symbolic fall for the sculpture too, I repeat!

 With the exit of Zuma, Okorocha was not yet done with sculptures, and particularly the sculptures of the controversial. The sculpting of Muhammadu Buhari and the  planned commissioning of the statue at a time Buhari’s government is accused by Nigeria’s South-East of being unkind to it and discriminatory, is only very provocative, even insulting. See Figure Two below.

Muhammadu Buhari's sculpture to be commissioned. (Source: Facebook wall of Franklin's Chinedu)

Let us hope the sculpture, which has also made my phobia for  the scuplted image become updated and epidemic, would not be violently pushed down and smashed when Rochas leaves office and when Buhari follows.

Humans register their inevitable mortality and lifelessness in sculptures. Or, to put it differently, sculptures are good narratives of our mortality. There is time for everything, says Qoheleth’s Rhythm. There is time to narrate mortality in sculptures and there is time to see the mortality of both the sculpture and the sculpted. There is a time for sculptures to stand erect and time for sculptures to take a plunge, a Zuma plunge.

Figure Three: The symbolic plunge of Zuma's sculpture. (Source: Facebook wall of Adebayo Olusola)

I like lifelessness of sculptures, although it frightens me that the boundary between the living and the dead, as narrated by them, is slim. Sculptures tell us about lifelessness, now and after. Sculptures indicate that death is our nearest neighbour, always.

Photographers: Historians or Creative Artists?

By

Obododimma Oha

Sometime ago, I updated my Facebook wall and indicated what was “on (my) mind” as whether Facebook was fast-turning into an electronic album where, if we buy a new Christmas costume, we want the whole world to see it and commend us. It was not only the costume that was the only focus of attention in that update (although it would seem so). The focus was also on the author of the image, the photographer. The need to focus on the image-maker came up a while ago as I was reading up Facebook updates and saw one that featured the representation of photographers as “historians.” Yes; we are familiar with that. We could think of photographers as telling stories in the visual mode. They are not just there to mimick the images seen by the mediator, the lens. Haven’t some of them left their mounted cameras before to adjust your neck, this position or that? That flying attire or this background? Surely, they are intervening in the way the lens would see what it sees and for the camera to record or tell part of the story.  That intervention is a choice, a  creative selection from options.

So, you cannot climb over the photographer to view the image. In fact, the photographer joins the camera in telling the story, but the photographer is also part of the story. The agents of the making of the story are also part of the story. Remove the photographer and the story changes!

Yes, the photographer matters in the way a photograph tells the story. Sometimes, some photographers enter the act of image-making fully, even creating an impression that they are the ones giving the image as it is. Do you blame them? That is maximum involvement. In fact, I like watching them act, whether they are armed with the ubiquitous Android phones or JVC or some of those cameras that make you wonder whether the shot is a real shot and a bullet would come flying  or a rockect is launched at the target. Stop terrorizing me, camera makers, and confusing shot with shot!

Well, let us return to a safer zone and talk about photographers as historians and creative artistry. I have said that the photographers are agents of story-telling that are interestingly part of the story. How can one be writing a novel and yet be a character in it? Amazing, but there are such stylistic twists. Technology is even further providing a very “problematic” twist through photoshopping software which extends the creativity brought in by the photo story-teller. The photoshop further brings in the flexibility of iconicity of the image, so that reality and truth are greatly undermined. What you see is just a matter of possibility, not certainty; the image is worth a thousand words but that is practically an image created by you. It reminds one about creation itself. We also try to recreate ourselves and our world. We are not satisfied with the way things are, or everything existing is just a raw material. We can adjust it, at least  a bit and have a different reality. So, photoshopping is a philosophy, a philosophy of the images. And creation is about images of images (not just a simple matter of turning a photograph into a hand-drawn representation, asking technology to move backwards a bit).

Photographers tell their stories visually, but that is not the end of the story. When the framed photograph gets home, the wife or whoever cares would pick it up, ask it to be part of the visual story on the walls. She has the story all worked out in her head. She knows the positions for the photo (you could say the plot of her story) and the company some would have to keep. Some photographs could be placed nearer others to maintain a rigid visual syntax. Some images may even be iterated, thanks to more photographs coming in from weddings and other social occasions in a country like Nigeria. Don’t ask me how the numerous commercial photographers know their targets! Anyway, do not attempt to tamper with the way she has planned and executed her visual story. You could be taking a great and grave risk. She has told her story and she is also part of the story; on a page that is the parlour.

She is a visual historian (the same way you have the oral historian in the raconteur), but she is also a creative artist. She has creative plans, the photographer too. In fact, she is only following in the footsteps of the photographer in the image-making project. But this essay is not about her; she is only a proxy and related things somehow matter to us. The photographer, the major figure she represents, is the focus. I want to join my Facebook friend in recognising this figure as a historian, but provide an extension: that visual historian is also a creative artist!

Recognising the Simple Jesus in a Modern Attire

By

Obododimma Oha

 Figure One: A popular artist's impression of Jesus Christ. Source: biographyonline.net

It is obvious that some leaders of Christian churches have started confusing the form with the substance, a represenation with the real thing. Images of personalities like Jesus that we see are just artists’ impressions; they are twice removed from reality, just as some accounts that we have in the Holy Bible were first oral traditional narratives told by people (from mouth to mouth), each teller adding salt and pepper here and there to make the telling sweeter. Have we just forgotten that images of Jesus Christ we see are the impressions by artists who felt that the white face they represented looked like it? What if Jesus had been black or blackened (from all his wanderings and travels)? Would his universal adoration have been the same? Well, let us leave that to theologians to chew and quarrel and fight. But what is central to this article is the depiction of the dressing of Jesus, just as he chose to come in human form, eating like humans do, drinking, going to toilet, urinating, sleeping, waking, etc. Being in human form was why he even died on the cross. And the one we hardly think about: he had a skin like us and so his number one covering was human skin!

Figure Two: Another popular image of Jesus Christ. Source: amazon.com

In the time of Jesus Christ, of course there was no photography (not to talk of photoshoppping software). There were only sculptors and some leaders like Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, Nigeria, who would want to commission the sculpting of important personages, as he did once upon a time for Jacob Zuma of South Africa. If Jesus lived in the time of Okorocha, perhaps a sculpture of him would have been erected to grace the Imo State capital and tell the heroic story of his miracles of several exotic cars and numerous investments. A sculpture was a chief means of telling the story of an important person like Jesus Christ, a real historical figure, even though there were scriveners and griots who used language aesthetically to narrate him and his deeds.

What develops out of this? In our  new hero-worship, we forget the humanity of Jesus and that he liked it. Also, his dressing was not permanent. Jesus wore what each artist gave him, but in reality his dressing was in conformity with his time. He wore the Semitic long gown, yes. Sandals, of course. Maybe he would have worn Cortina shoes if he had been a child going to school in my time; caned by his teachers if he was naughty sometimes.

Yes; he would not always wear that recognisable Semitic long gown and sometimes appear bare-footed. His hair style, too. Maybe as my school mate he would wear “brush head” but if a modern child he may choose to wear one of these shaggy hairstyles and have his ears wired, listening to his favourite rabbi or popular musician playing religious hip-hop. He could even see the General Overseer of the temple once in a while.

But, if he chooses to shift from a semiotic stereotype of him, maybe wearing these, or tattered jeans pants, T-shirt, and baseball cap, I am sorry for him when he wants to enter the temple, not to talk of going near the altar when the archbishop or General Overseer is celebrating, maybe taking the microphone and announcing himself as “Jesus Christ!” Won’t the ushers quickly grab him and he could be seen as a terrorist waiting to strike? Do you blame them? Think of the Sri Lanka church bombing!

Figure Three: A Very Modern Jesus. Source: funnyjunk.com

Do you see why and how visual representations of Jesus Christ have to be permanent or stereotyped, even if they are artists’ impressions, far from reality? Was it not how the mermaid (momiwata) in Nigerian worship turned out to be a pretty Indian woman in Nigeria in those days and as a religious fraudster received all the encomium and sacrifices? That of Jesus is particularly disturbing becuse the top echelon of Christianity already intoxicated by power and Roman procedures of worship brought into Christianity would not recognise him as their leader if he chooses to come simple, modified in any way by our age, and not ready to respect constituted authority again! It is even the leadership of the church that would crucify him themselves, not the Roman soldiers.

Human beings have courageously used human language in signifying God and his actions. We have to think of God through what we can understand. In a similar way, they have to represent Jesus in the ways that suit them, but forget that he is free to put on something different but fashionable, i.e. in conformity with the present time.

Figure Four: A Black Jesus Christ.Source: ghostprintgallery.com

Figure Five: Jesus Christ the Spiderman. a modern Jesus. Source: pinterest.com