My
folk live close to the land and animals. Images of plant and animal
life run in my native language like marrow through a bone.
Every
point is driven home wittily with something observed from nature.
“The dog that eats palm fruits (the palm bunch is spiky) will
have no problems stealing eggs,” they would say of a petty
criminal who claims he is incapable of serious crime.
If
an eccentric did or said something that no one else knew about, folk
would say, "Adung mkpere akai akop usem ebok," meaning, “He
who lives close to the jungle understands the gibberish of monkeys.”
Among
folks, the empty calabash is used as a floater. No matter how rough the
sea, an empty calabash cannot go under for long. Folks quickly see in
this a parallel truth, for truth they say, cannot be submerged by the
savage gales of lies.
Similarly,
a child who grows rich and conceited is often warned by the parents
that a yam is never bigger than the knife that peels it. Our yams can
be the size of a human thigh or even bigger, mind you. Another
caution for a vain kid is that no matter how big a lizard gets, it
can never become a gator.
It
took me some careful attention to notice what the folk mean when they
say, “It is deity that swishes flies away from a tailless cow.”
When
the sun is up and that is often for a good half of the year we have
no shortage of the sun, these pesky insects have a field day making
themselves felt as an unforgiving, humming pestilence. They sting,
nettle, and claw away with venom at both humans and animals. They dip
their hairy limbs into food, sores, and anything with odors.
Cows
of course, seem to have a peculiar sort of stink that appeals
inexorably to swarms of flies. A rushing cloud of these repugnant
bugs would swoop on cattle and cover the animals like a blanket. The
heckling, rumbling, buzzing, and sneering of the flies at the earthy
smells of their more powerful victims can be heard from a distance.
The
insects target the ears, nose, rump, and trunk or any other sensitive
parts of the animals, thus making life for them a living misery.
For
a cow in the tropics, it is indeed a pitiable handicap to be
tailless. The observation, therefore that only deity spares the
tailless cow from torture and torment is the folks’ way of
saying deity is mindful of all, especially those with disabilities.
Another
related wit is that flies do not fear the nose of a cow. I first
heard that saying when an uncle returned from overseas. He had made
good and apparently returned with a PhD with agriculture, so the
entire village was in a festive mood.
In
those days, the United States in folk imagination, was not part of
our rock but of another planet orbiting another star. Anyone who went
there and returned was an instant hero and with good reason! For one,
folks believed American women were more powerful than the Sirens.
They used more powerful juju than any concoction our local medicine
men conjured in making love potions.
That
was why, they said, many men who traveled there never returned. Even
if they managed to come back home, the men did so with American women
who clung to them even in the sweltering heat, like burrs to sweater
leggings.
Kinswomen
were jealous saying “the foreign women lacked inhibition.”
Centuries of control by men made the local womenfolk especially so.
While the kinswomen had never jumped even a puddle, it did not matter
to them that these “foreign women” left their home and
crossed the mighty ocean with their sons to live in a world where they
had no relatives to call their own.
They
were hurt the foreigners renamed their sons and called them,
“Darling,” “Sweetheart,” and even “Honey,”
which everybody knew was made by bees. Honey was good for coughs and
other herbal preparations. One smeared with it though, was sure to
attract bugs, so why would anyone go by such a name, they wondered?
As
for darling and sweetheart, folks were just as stumped, for
though the culture had names of affection, these new ones simply
stomped folks in the face. Names among my folks insinuated cultural
values that rooted people to the land or some family history.
If
these new names left the people confused, kisses absolutely shocked
them! These women, they grudged, would be the death of their sons!
They
could understand if mothers sucked the blocked nostrils of babies to
clear their airways for the kids to breathe much more easily when
they came down with colds. But it was a scandal to suck the mouth of
adults — and that publicly, too.
A
man who went overseas and failed to return home or one who returned
with a foreign wife in his arms was considered lost to both his
parents and community. Uncle Nelson did none of these and was an
instant folk hero. To show their respect, folk called him, “Doctor,”
meaning healer, seer, or the medicine man of the clan.
Nothing
he did to get them to call him by name swayed anyone. The only
exception was my skinny, small-statured Aunty Ekairem. She not only
refused to call him Doctor but also Nelson, the new name he got at
school from a European missionary teacher. She insisted on calling
him by the name they grew up with.
Men
vociferously reproached her and throatily dismissed her as a fly who
was not scared fooling with the huge nostrils of a cow!
The
first day at school, my uncle (then a kid) had stepped out and
introduced himself to his teacher as AFONGISOEKPE. Neither the
teacher nor his interpreter could spell that. Confounded, the Briton
simply labelled him Nelson.
So
at school and later at work, he was Nelson, but in the village among
his age mates he went by his native name. The name meant the lion’s
mane. The mane of the lion is the pride of the king of the jungle.
The name was a shorthand for much family history in the course of its
migrations. It was evocative of encounters with lions and courage at
taming jungles and humbling the big cats.
This
legacy and heritage lay the foundation for my uncle’s recent
achievements and the community took collective pride in it. Uncle
Nelson having blazed a trail in education, had become for us the
force that swaths flies from the tailless cow and in our
circumstance, a beacon of light and hope.
Imo Ben Eshiet was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Raised in his village, Uruk Enung, and at
several cities in his country including Nsukka, Enugu, Umuahia, Eket and Calabar, Eshiet is a
detribalized Nigerian. Although he was extensively exposed to Western education right from
childhood in his country where he obtained a PhD in English and Literary Studies from the
University of Calabar, he is well nurtured in African history, politics, culture and traditions.
Imo is currently a teacher in the high priests group in the Summit Ward of the Greensboro North
Carolina Stake.