(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.
