Ajofia Nnewi: Onye Na-Ezi Uzo

 

Ajofia Nnewi: Onye Na-Ezi Uzo

Things Fall Apart: The Stories Nwoye Loves

"Okonkwo was inwardly pleased at his son's development, and he knew it was due to Ikemefuna. He wanted Nwoye to grow into a tough young man capable of ruling his father's household when he was dead and gone to join the ancestors. ...
          "So Okonkwo encouraged the boys to sit with him in his obi, and he told them stories of the land -- masculine stories of violence and bloodshed. Nwoye knew that it was right to be masculine and to be violent, but somehow he still preferred the stories that his mother used to tell, and which she no doubt still told her younger children -- stories of tortoise and his wily way, and of the bird eneke-nti-oba who challenged the whole world to a wrestling contest and was finally thrown by the cat. He remembered the story she often told of the quarrel between Earth and Sky long ago, and how Sky withheld rain for seven years, until crops withered and the dead could not be buried because the hoes broke on the stony Earth. At last Vulture was sent to plead with Sky, and to soften his heart with a song of the suffering of the sons of men. Whenever Nwoye's mother sang this song he felt carried away to the distant scene in the sky where Vulture, Earth's emissary, sang for mercy. At last Sky was moved to pity, and he gave to Vulture rain wrapped in leaves of cocoyam. But as he flew home his long talon pierced the leaves and the rain fell as it had never fallen before. And so heavily did it rain on Vulture that he did not return to deliver his message but flew to a distant land, from where he had espied a fire. And when he got there he found it was a man making a sacrifice. He warmed himself in the fire and ate the entrails.
          "That was the kind of story that Nwoye loved. But he now knew that they were for foolish women and children, and he knew that his father wanted him to be a man. And so he feigned that he no longer cared for women's stories. And when he did this he saw that his father was pleased, and no longer rebuked him or beat him."

Chinua Achebe, 1958 [2010], 39-40

Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy)

Of Nigerian-Americans and Wake-Keep

(By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo) - Walter’s Wake-keep

In the Boston metropolitan area is a Liberian who loved to attend Nigerian parties. (Let us call him Walter, because we have no permission to use his real name.) He loved Nigerian music, jollof rice, pepper soup, Shoki dance and watching Nigerians spray dollar bills like snow flakes at these parties. Trust Nigerians in America, they come up with every reason to throw a party - child dedication, wedding anniversary, birthday, graduation, send-off, wake-keep, etc. 

Every party is special but none is as special as a wake-keep. If you rent a hall to celebrate your 50th birthday or 25th wedding anniversary, or even your child's 5th birthday, or your child’s dedication in church, the general feeling is that you have the money to spare. People will still come, enjoy, and may even give you gifts, but it is mostly not seen as obligatory. But when it is a wake-keep, the party from conception to execution is aimed at raising money to assist the bereaved to go home and attend the funeral of the dead. The MC makes that clear every ten minutes of the event. And since people are expected to "drop something," organizers make sure that there are a lot of food and drinks to justify the things people will "drop".

          Another feature of these wake-keep, other than the fact that most of those for whom the events are held had never been to America, is that there is an unwritten understanding between the organizers and the attendees that whatever the attendee gives is documented, noted and permanently preserved for the time when it would be necessary to return the favor. In Igbo community, they even have a proverb that backs it up. It says: whatever a man gives to another man is a loan waiting to be repaid.

An Apple A Day Keeps Our Dollars Away

(By Ogaga Ifowodo) - An Apple A Day Keeps Our Dollars Away

Can’t recall now when the Apple became the official fruit of Nigeria, announcing its newly begotten status along every main road and at every street corner, stacked one on top of the other in green or red pyramids in trays or on the importation cartons, taking the pride of place in the produce section of every supermarket. The Apple has also staked its claim to our appetite in the more traditional open markets, as I learnt the other day driving past and seeing an apple stand somewhere, it seemed, between the meat and fish stalls at Utako Market in Abuja! A reminder, I suppose, to shoppers not to forget to get their natural vitamins and anti-oxidants which, presumably, only the Apple can supply, along with their proteins. 

When the apple, a temperate region fruit, began to rule our tropical palates? My guess is the late eighties. Shortly after the Gospel of No-Alternative-to-SAP according to military dictator General Ibrahim Babangida and his finance minister, Olu Falae, had led to capitulation to the IMF/World Bank. The result was that trade liberalisation and the removal of tariffs, not to mention devaluation of the naira (we are still talking about that today) and cessation of social or human capital spending—in other words, all commonsense measures to protect the domestic economy and the people—came to govern, like an implacable god, every national economic policy. The goal was clear enough to the imperialist designers of those “conditionalities” and to anyone not willfully blinded to the truth: to make dependent economies, the postcolonial ones especially, facing acute shortage of foreign exchange to service their debts, become even more dependent by being forced to import just about everything when their national currencies become so weakened they render local industries comatose and unable to compete with the manufacturing giants of Europe, North America and Asia.