My grandpa was a local medicine
man. He was the earliest untrained psychologist who expanded my understanding
of human nature beyond classroom education. A man of few words, grandpa
punctuated his rare utterances with aku
bu iro (wealth attracts enmity), a reference to his wealthy
clientele who were rumored to be ndi ogwu
ego.
He was the first person from
whom I heard that Nwata kpaa nku karia
ibe ya, a si na o kpatara ya n'ajo ohia (when a child brings home more
firewood than his peers, he will be accused of fetching them from the evil
forest). Looking back, I can clearly see the connection of this proverb to the ogwu ego phenomenon in
Igboland.
If you are an Igbo adult, you
know what the concept of ogwu ego is; it defies a precise definition simply because
it is supposedly located in the realm of metaphysics or the supernatural.
If you appear to have more money
than your peers and they are not clued into the secret source of your money,
you are in danger of being branded onye ogwu ego. If you and your brothers are
in the same type of business but you appear to excel over and beyond them, you
are likely onye ogwu ego. If your townsmen and women are backward due to their
laziness but you succeed by dint of hard work and industry, it is likely that
very soon you will have become onye ogwu ego to some of them.
If you are uneducated, or have no visible means of income, and yet seem to live in the lap of luxury and stupendous wealth, oh yes, i gworo ogwu ego. If you happen to be rich, even with a legitimate and open business concern, and you make the mistake of being seen in the company of native doctors performing rituals, you are a certified ogwu ego man. If somebody heard from somebody who heard from his distant friend that you, the rich boy, were seen in the company of one known ogwu ego man from that other town beyond the river, that is conclusive evidence that outs you as onye ogwu ego too.
The ogwu ego concept is a lazy but
handy belief that provides folks with an easy explanation for many difficult and
not-so-difficult puzzles. It helps your lazy brother explain why he is not as
rich as his siblings; it helps your poor townspeople explain why their own
forays into businesses failed while yours succeeded; it helps your jealous
friends and neighbors cut you to a negative size without even trying hard. It
is a pacifier that soothes the minds of some who are poor, or lazy, or
disgruntled, or confused, or uneducated, or just straightforwardly mad so that
they won't have to explain why they themselves have not become rich too.
A more recent and cancerous extension
of the ogwu ego allegations, especially among the poor, is the concept of
"tying up" other people's progress. Again, this is a little difficult
to define. But, in its general usage, the concept is formed around the belief
that the rich man, whose relatives are poor, somehow obtained his wealth by
using ogwu ego to tie up the progress of the poor relatives. Somehow, he, the
rich, mysteriously collects the progress (money) that would have come to his
poor relatives. That's why his relatives are poor.
All over Igboland today, there are
modern-day evangelists, seers, and prophets who, for a fee, go round to
villages giving poor people readings on who "tied up" their progress,
which is usually their closest rich relative. I am from one of those villages
and I cannot begin to tell you the untold misery these so-called prophets have
unleashed among already miserable folks and their rich family members.
Grandpa gave people ogwu ego all right.
But, as you will see below, he was just a master psychologist who simply
motivated people to go out and work harder in their various occupations while,
in their heads, the clients thought he gave them something supernatural. A
combination of belief in the ‘medicine' and hard work very often fulfilled the
prophesy of abundant wealth.
I saw him prescribe ‘medicine' for his
clients, which included lawyers and doctors, and government officials. There
were, of course, the usual local men and women who refused to go to hospitals
and instead blamed all their ailments and illnesses on curses and evil spirits
which, in their minds, only a cheap local medicine man, like grandpa, could
cure.
Grandpa's most prominent
personalities came at odd hours in the night to avoid being seen by their
friends. A typical session with grandpa would involve a married woman who
complained that each time she argued with her husband, he would beat her; she
wanted ‘something' to stop her husband from continuing to beat her. A typical ‘medicine'
from grandpa for such beleaguered woman was a bottle of liquid with an
instruction to fill her mouth with it on every occasion that she felt the urge
to argue with her husband and to retain the liquid in her mouth for as long as
her husband was angry and shouting at her until he calmed down. It was only
when I grew up that I figured out that the battered woman prescription (as we
called it) always worked only because a mouth full of water cannot argue.
The clients who came for ogwu ego
‘medicine' were the most challenging. Locked out of the sessions, my brother
and I, six and seven years old, would lean against the cracked door to the ‘medicine'
room listening. While he chanted some gibberish, grandpa would ask such client
"Did you say that you are a trader?" And when he answered, he would
ask how many shops he had, how many hours and days he spent at his shop, how
many of his customers he knew on a first name basis and so on. Grandpa would
warn the client to increase his working hours, increase the number of shops,
increase this and increase that.
Finally he would say "This
medicine will work only if you do what I tell you. Did you hear me? You will be
rich but you must follow my instructions. Increase, increase, increase …"
I knew right there and then why the Igbo say that Ochie dibia chuo aja, o di ka enyere ya
ndi mmuo n'aka (When a seasoned native doctor makes a
sacrifice, it is as if the sacrifice is hand-delivered to the spirits).
As the Igbo say, anaghi ekpude afo ime aka (a
pregnancy cannot be concealed with bare hands), and so the word went out that
grandpa was an authentic ogwu ego medicine man because his ‘ogwu ego' medicine
worked for his clients. That was good news for grandpa who maintained his
posture as a potent medicine man for, after all, ebube dibia no na nkirika okpu ya (the strength,
aura, glory, of the native doctor lies in his tattered hat).
Today, everywhere in Igboland, in every
town and village, you will hear rumors, innuendoes, and gossip, that so and so
is onye ogwu ego.
It is a disease that infects only the rich. The poor are not affected because osimiri anaghi eri onye o hughi
ukwu ya anya (the sea does not drown a person whose legs it
has never seen).
And so the rich find that they are
alone, that aku bu iro and
that, painfully, Nwata kpaa nku karia
ibe ya, a si na o kpatara ya n'ajo ohia.
We need to think differently for the
sake of the family.
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