Igbo Hospitality: Kola Nut and White Clay

Bowl of kola nut; source: www.oraukwu.com

“Kola nut, oji (Cola acuminata), and white chalk, nzu, are two of the most frequently used and

culturally important substances in the Igbo world, and both figure prominently in initial hospitality ceremonies crucial to the success of any social or ritual undertaking.

Both substances are regarded as having ritual power, are sacrifices, and function as facilitators of communication between men and between men and their gods. The two substances are different but each is indispensible, and it is difficult to imagine Igbo like without them.

The cultural preeminence of kola nut and chalk has inspired the Igbo to devise special containers for their ceremonial presentation. While these serving dishes are optional and not always artistically elaborated, the substances are mandatory.

‘Kola hospitality’ is the formalized offering, sharing, and eating of kola nut which blesses any proceeding and its participants. Especially in ritual situations, but in many social ones, the formalities also often include the passing of a lump [or fine grains] of chalk used to mark the ground and/or certain parts of the body as a means of indicating one’s serious participation.

Nzu, lumps of white clay; source: omg.modernghana.com

These actions are explicit acts of purification and are performed under he scrutiny of one’s ancestorsChukwu/Chineke to man and/or figured in the creation of the earth. Jeffreys, for example, speaking of the coronation of an Eze Nri, says ‘…he must recreate the world by getting his odudu [a lump of white clay] from the river bed’ (1935: 348).
and other deities invoked in the prayers recited during the ceremony. Kola and chalk were both primordial gifts of

And a common maxim is, ‘He who brings kola brings life,’ Onye wetara oji wetara ndu. The uses or configurations of both kola and chalk address central ideas in aesthetics, numerology, and spiritual thought.

Implicit in the saying just cited is the idea that without kola, life would not exist, and its countless uses reinforce such an idea. In the morning, for example, a man will address his ikenga, ancestors, and household shrines and activate them by spitting kola upon them. The same act empowers an ofo and ‘wakes up’ tutelary gods prior to subsequent sacrifices. Oaths are bound with kola in an act known as “eating kola of earth,’ ita oji ani, and disputes are settled under its influence.

Four-lobed kola nuts, when discovered in the sharing ceremony, confer special dignity and power on the occasion since four is ‘completeness’ and most propitious number in Igbo thought. Also especially potent and auspicious is the breaking of ‘eagles’ kola,’ oji ugo, which is nearly white-colored—both the eagle and whiteness being apotheoses in the socioaesthetic value system…

Chalk is, above all, whiteness, purity, beauty, and sanctity. Things are painted with white chalk to make them shine and glow, important aspects of aesthetic valuation that are tantamount to spiritual and moral purity. Chalk is rubbed on a pregnant woman’s abdomen, for example, and later on the newborn child to make this most important of the gods’ gifts radiant and thus to celebrate its arrival.

Many shrines are piled high with cones of white chalk given as sacrificial offerings, and even more than kola, chalk has mythical and medicinal properties, which make it an almost constant ingredient in healing and life-affirming medications.

Okwa oji; source: michaelbackmanltd.com

Kola and chalk containers are often housed among the equipment of family… and community shrines where they seem to take on a certain sanctity by association, even if they are not necessarily sacred vessels in and of themselves. Artistically embellished containers also lend dignity o any ceremony, reflecting the wealth and good taste of the person responsible. A hierarchy of such serving dishes exists, from the simple and plain to elaborated examples….

The finest kola bowls or platters, okwa oji, are those with central lidded cavity in which condiments (such as [alligator pepper and] pepper mashed with peanuts) are placed. In profile these lids often resemble opkosi, as Boston has pointed out, thereby implying an ancestral presence…. This visual resemblance, however, may be fortuitous rather than intentional. These bowls are carved in heavy (male) woods and normally have geometric ornamentation, especially on their outer rims and the removable pepper-lid. Some have human heads… and, more rarely, full figures and animals integrated into the lid….

We do not find these representations deeply symbolic but, rather, manifestations of the relative affluence of the bowls’ owners. This idea is extended to such mundane items as bottle or calabash stoppers, a group of which were collected by Jeffreys in the Awka region in the 1930s…

Elaborate kola bowls are most common among eastern and northeastern Igbo, who are doubtless the inventors of the type. Many fine containers originating among the Ezza, Izzi, Bende, and Okigwe peoples, however, have found their way into other Igbo areas by trade. Such bowls are rarely encountered among the peoples of the northwest, who seem to prefer simpler plates with relatively little artistic embellishment.

Okwa nzu; source; jonesarchives.siu.edu

Chalk dishes, okwa nzu, are generally smaller than most kola servers; many are plates embellished
with geometric carvings, sometimes with four internal divisions…. More elaborate examples from the eastern region normally have a bowl and an anthropomorphized handle and thus an overall spoon-like shape.

Most commonly the representation is a single female head… full figures… are rarely encountered. Informants in Abiriba and Ohafia, where fine chalk dishes are concentrated, suggested somewhat vague ancestral association for the heads and figures. Nonetheless we believe their presence is primarily decorative, again most significant as an indicator of taste.

Although kola and chalk serving containers are not very important works in the larger corpus of Igbo arts, fine examples point up man’s need to surround himself with fine objects in daily and ritual life.”

Herbert M. Cole and Chike C. Aniakor (1984: 62-63), Igbo arts: Community and cosmos