Unam Ikot

 

By

Obododimma Oha

The Ekpo masquerade (sometimes wrongly referred to as "Ekpo Calabar") popular among the Ibibio and Efik of South-Eastern Nigeria is metaphorised as "Unam ikot" (Wild or bush animal). It adopts this apparently offensive metaphorisation and visually redesigns itself to reflect that "wildness" by acting wild and sporting some leaves in the mouth. In other words, it is supposed to be eating these leaves in the bush. But let it hear anyone call it "Unam ikot" and it would teach that person a lesson, unless it is in happy spirits. So, "Unam ikot" when Ekpo" is not within earshot or when one is ready to run. The name ordinarily can be used in insulting someone, just like saying "bushman." But insult is not for Ekpo. And whatever it chooses to call itself is its business! 

Unam Ikot! 

But let us try to placate with other soothing praises. So, Unam the most powerful. Unam the killer of killers. The darkness that moves about in the day. Unam the night and the day. Unam Ikot whose wildness is beyond measure. Unam who makes the wild tame. Unam Ikot! 

I have already pointed out that Ekpo masquerade visually constructs itself as wild. Let us expatiate. It is not normal. It is not human. It belongs to the wild, the wildest of the wild. Then, look at darkened, sooth-stained body. And the awful smell. And the crazy behavior. If these are not enough to construct the abnormal, then the sound added to them would help. The guttural, animal noise issuing out. Does that not frighten you? So, you have the heart? It is Unam Ikot echoing! 

On the road: Unam Ikot is terrible. Sooth-stained body and wildness of twigs and unearthly sound and aggressive swagger. In the bush, Unam Ikot is even the king. Speaking and smelling and eating and moving like the bush. The bush understands that language and steers clear. Sorry, then, for the uninformed road. Unam Ikot rules here and there. 

If you meet Unam Ikot, that Great One may be talking, but don't think it's soliloquizing or phoning someone you cannot see. It may be talking to you or to the road. Listen well and you would realize the addressee. 

Ah, Unam Ikot is carrying and throwing so many rusted cutlasses at passerby. So, Unam Ikot is your terrorist, forest-dweller and manufacturer of fear? But these rusted cutlasses cut through false stereotypes about fear and living in fear.

First, Unam Ikot is not even happy that it has been forced to throw cutlasses. The cutlass is not its usual weapon. It prefers to carry a small bow with arrows. Say you know how to fly without perching and it will show you that it can shoot without missing. 

Anyway, you should know this. Unam Ikot is only staging the fight, only acting. But it is helpful to discern when it is acting and it is living the act. Otherwise, someone can get really injured. 

When they say that Ekpo rules the road, you want to go and try? Maybe to show that you are special. Ekpo rules the road especially when it is special! 

Those that refer to Ekpo as "Ekpo Calabar" are probably preparing to run or asking the masked one to throw rusty cutlasses at them. They are unlucky if Ekpo decides to use bow and arrows. Ekpo owns everywhere. It is a rusty head that does not know this. 

Now, this "Ekpo Calabar" offensive label. It true that that Ekpo can be found in Calabar metropolis but is not the only place that Ekpo emerges and rules the road. It is good to say that Calabar is one place that Ekpo swaggers. What of Ikot Ekpene? What of Oron? What of some parts of Igbo land? A rusty cutlass for anyone who ignores this. You are Unam Ikot! Indeed, the territory is vast and it is only for Ekpo to delimit it. 

He has taken all the insulting remarks on your behalf. Ekpo is "Unam Ikot" on your behalf and bears all your groaning, your anger, and your pains. Ekpo bears all your sounds and smells. Ekpo is your other you that has been suppressed and oppressed. Ekpo is you carrying rusted cutlasses and throwing them at insults. 

Now, who is following Ekpo and collecting for it? That masked being does not need to be followed, does not need supporters. 

Someone is also looking at Ekpo steadily in the eye! Is that how to enjoy the performance? It is that kind of inquisitive looking that caused the monkey to get a shot in the eye.  Looking is a mortal habit and should be done with caution, otherwise otherwise! When you look at Ekpo's eyes, don't you see blood dripping in place of tears? 

Looking for narratives in narrative would not let one enjoy the performance. It is better to look and shift gaze. The performance moves, flows, when you allow yourself to flow. 

Now, Ekpo leads the way. Now, Ekpo is leading and I am just following. It is not easy. Not easy running. Not easy following. One has to run to catch up with space in-between. One has to run to be with. If Ekpo follows and one is running, trouble. One would be forced to run to one's death. So, let Ekpo not command me to start running. It is not easy, honestly. 

Ekpo is the symbol. Ekpo is the meaning. Ekpo is the road to the road. Ekpo is the bush to the bush. Ekpo will not give up easily. 

A Holy Day of Obligation

By

Obododimma Oha

Today is Sunday

And the Sun is rejoicing

A holy day of obligation

Don't cook any breakfast, lunch  or supper

Don't go splitting fuel-wood at all

The axe may cut your foot

And you would fossil eternally

On the moon, a lesson for others

Today is Sunday

For you to die of hunger for Heaven

And do nothing else but watch films about Rapture

Not to think of sweeping your compound

A snake that is disturbed

And wants to prove its presence with a bite

Can postpone its anger

Because it is Sun's day

When the Dog Wants to Get Lost

By

Obododimma Oha

When the dog wants

To get lost, it doesn't listen

To hear the call of its owner

It prefers

To run far into the bush

And away from commonsense

When the dog

Runs wild, checking every anus, 

How can it remember home

Or the dead lizard kept for it?

When the dog wants to get lost

Its  relatives become outsiders

The road to damnation

Must be completed in its estranged head

When the dog wants to get lost

It gets lost

In itself, and does not listen to sounds

What more sense

The dog prefers to die. 

Come, let's reason

By

Obododimma Oha 

Come, let's reason together

For we are human

And commonsense is free

Come, let's reason together

Not perish together like brainless fellows

And walk the fire we can quench

Come, let's reason

Not treason

Against our future

Come, do not go

Without embracing this idea. 

Nne Ewu and the Art of Chewing the Cud

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.  

Recording the Talk

By

Obododimma Oha

When my late father made it a habit to be paying me a visit in my room, I thought that he was inconveniencing me. That old man always came when it was most inconvenient, particularly when I was enjoying my sleep. In the afternoon? How could I be sleeping in the afternoon? Was I sick? These  were among his queries if it was  in the afternoon, but he  came mostly at night, when many people were asleep and everywhere  was quite. He preferred the night, for he asserted  that: “Ufu na egbeleke bụ n’ehihie, mana iruro bụ n’anyasị” (roughly translated as  “Playing and gallivanting are for  the daytime, but a serious discussion requiring counselling is for the night.” You see, so he was coming regularly to counsel me, but I did not realise it then. Since he was always awake in the night (so it seemed to me), I thought that he meant to punish me and force to stay awake with him! So, I had no choice but carry my cross. I realized later that he guessed this wrong thinking of mine and it pained him, and I was included in the frustration that he sometimes voiced out: "Nkịta m na-egburu ngwere asabeghị anya" ("The puppies for which I am killing lizards have not yet opened their eyes."

When I was an undergraduate at the university, it just entered my young, noisy head to record some of that seemingly useless talk. At least, I could prevent some future night visits by letting my father know that I could play back the recording and listen to him when I wanted or in my privacy. What a strategy! 

That casual recording was a personal assignment of a sort and you know how one could be highly committed  in such assignments. I quickly bought some empty cassettes and set out for our village. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived and quickly swung into action. I told him that I needed to record the story of his life and luckily, he cooperated. We started and I did not mind all the local noises that were intruding. I recorded all.

 Today, when I play the files, those noises even provide some naturalness to the whole thing.

Many years later, after his death, when I was playing the files to the hearing of my siblings, some almost wept on hearing the voice of the man who owned the homestead and had been buried. Who would not go to pieces on being given a shock like this? 

When I did the recording, I did not know that I was serving the future and helping paternal presence to speak beyond death. Ufu na egbeleke became immortal. Indeed, the recording was one of the most important things to  take away as a memento from my late father.

This is a clear case of technology helping one to relive experience. I am now able to hear that voice again and to listen to my late father tell his own story. Even where one is unable to invoke memory on the thing narrated, the witness is there and can be invited again and again to tell it all as a witness. 

Does it not show that we have been missing a lot by not trying to save a voice before it is heard no more?

 Some lessons from this effort are noteworthy. First, the more authoritative transmission of experience. Then, there was was some serendipitous training on oral interview on culture, history, and life. Another is an additional articulation of personal story and personal life. Of course, we can think of many others.

Let us take this transmission of experience further. The tragedy of African and other cultures has been described by many commentators as the distortion of African experiences because of orality and the process of documentation. Human memory is also not very reliable, coupled with the fact that each re-teller may try to put in more salt and pepper here and there. And with more salt and pepper, don't we also see a distortion? But with some preservation of originality and authority, this distortion is minimized, if not erased.

Also, the person who recorded the narration has had some training through experiencing. There could have been a previous training on collection of this kind of historical data, which becomes an advantage, but the interviewer indeed has attended a practical session involving the learning of the past and early life of the narrator. The practical is indeed "Practical Oral History and Folklore," if we have to find a name for it.

I am sure many are just waiting to see what I have to say concerning memory as being unreliable and deliberate distortion through the addition of more salt and pepper. On memory: we know that it has to be kept green, has to be preserved. But memory sometimes fails and the narrator may just improvise. Improvisation means that, even though one is trying to make up for an inadequacy, one is really being dishonest in  the performance. Has lying ceased to be a human art? This where that immoral conduct is enjoyed by humans and given some fanciful names!

Whereas this and other ones may suggest that society or audience is gaining, the idea of an attempt at articulating one's life and one's story points towards the narrator gaining more. We are often bombarded with a lot to think about in daily life. So, the interview gave the narrator an opprtunity to put X and Y together, stitch bits of personal experiences together to give us a coherent text. Without the opportunity, he probably would not have the time to write a biography few lettered people would read and learn. 

I have said somewhere before that we sometimes learn from the experiences of other people. That is true and exemplified in this case. Listeners get to think of another way of handling the problems handled by the narrator. Is that not already critical thinking skill? The narrrator's personal experiences while in the village, an apprentice-trader in Cameroon, a plantation worker in Cameroon, as well as struggles over marriage and accidents in Nigeria are important contexts from which we can learn a lot.

A recording tries to save, for us to be able to retrieve later. Thus it is like preventing something from dying, making it live longer than naturally designed. Along this line, is recording not helpful to folklore?

To conclude, I am happy and proud that I did an audio recording of my father before he died many years ago, and wish it had been a video recording! Of course, the advantages of such a recording are enormous but real physical presence is far better. Death could be a devastation and a deprivation. Yet, capturing the little presence of people could be enriching and even more consoling than total absence except a gravestone, photograps marked "RIP" and obituaries from the archive.