In a myth told by the
Igbo people of Nigeria, men once decided to send a messenger to ask Chukwu, the
supreme god, if the dead could be permitted to come back to life. As their
messenger, they chose a dog. But the dog delayed, and a toad, which had been
eavesdropping, reached Chukwu first. Wanting to punish man, the toad reversed
the request, and told Chukwu that after death men did not want to return to the
world. The god said that he would do as they wished, and when the dog arrived
with the true message he refused to change his mind. Thus, men may be born
again, but only in a different form.
The Nigerian novelist Chinua
Achebe recounts this myth, which exists in hundreds of versions throughout
Africa, in one of his essays. Sometimes, Achebe writes, the messenger is a
chameleon, a lizard, or another animal; sometimes the message is altered accidentally
rather than maliciously. But the structure remains the same: men ask for
immortality and the god is willing to grant it, but something goes wrong and
the gift is lost forever. “It is as though the ancestors who made language and
knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of
interfering with its purpose!” Achebe writes. “For when language is seriously
interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth . . . horrors can descend
again on mankind.”
