‘I shall pay
ego nato
,’ said Matefi.
‘I have told you the price is
ego nese
.’
‘I think
ego nato
suits it well; it’s only a tiny basket.’ She picked up the basket to show that it was small. Ojinika seemed to have forgotten all about her and was engrossed in arranging her okro in little lots on the mat.
‘What do you say?’
‘Put that basket down at once!’ Then she changed her tone and sneered. ‘You want to take it for nothing. You wait till the yams are ruined and come and buy a basket of cassava for eighteen cowries.’
Matefi was not the kind of person another woman could tie into her lappa and carry away. She gave Ojinika more than she got – told her the bride-price they paid for her mother. But when she got home she began to think about the hostility that was visibly encircling them all in Ezeulu’s compound. Something told her that someone was going to pay a big price for it and she was afraid.
‘Go and call me Obika,’ she told her daughter, Ojiugo.
She was preparing some cocoyams for thickening soup when Obika came in and sat on the bare floor with his back on the wooden post in the middle of the entrance. He wore a very thin strip of cloth which was passed between the legs and between the buttocks and wound around the waist. He sat down heavily like a tired man. His mother went on with her work of dressing the cocoyams.
‘Ojiugo says you called me.’
‘Yes.’ She went on with what she was doing.
‘To watch you prepare cocoyams?’
She went on with her work.
‘What is it?’
‘I want you to go and talk to your father.’
‘About what?’
‘About what? About his… Are you a stranger in Umuaro? Do you not see the trouble that is coming?’
‘What do you expect him to do? To disobey Ulu?’
‘I knew you would not listen to me.’ She managed to hang all her sorrows and disappointments on those words.
‘How can I listen to you when you join outsiders in urging your husband to put his head in a cooking pot?’
‘Sometimes I want to agree with those who say the man has caught his mother’s madness,’ said Ogbuefi Ofoka. ‘When he came back from Okperi I went to his house and he talked like a sane man. I reminded him of his saying that a man must dance the dance prevailing in his time and told him that we had come – too late – to accept its wisdom. But today he would rather see the six villages ruined than eat two yams.’
‘I have had the same thoughts myself,’ said Akuebue who was visiting his in-law. ‘I know Ezeulu better than most people. He is a proud man and the most stubborn person you know is only his messenger; but he would not falsify the decision of Ulu. If he did it Ulu would not spare him to begin with. So, I don’t know.’
‘I have not said that Ezeulu is telling a lie with the name of Ulu or that he is not. What we told him was to go and eat the yams and we would take the consequences. But he would not do it. Why? Because the six villages allowed the white man to take him away. That is the reason. He has been trying to see how he could punish Umuaro and now he has the chance. The house he has been planning to pull down has caught fire and saved him the labour.’
‘I do not doubt that he has had a grievance for a long time, but I do not think it goes as deep as this. Remember he has his own yam-fields like the rest of us…’
‘That was what he told us. But, my friend, when a man as proud as this wants to fight he does not care if his own head rolls as well in the conflict. And besides he forgot to mention that whether our harvest is ruined or not we would still take one yam each to Ulu.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Let me tell you one thing. A priest like Ezeulu leads a god to ruin himself. It has happened before.’
‘Or perhaps a god like Ulu leads a priest to ruin himself.’
There was one man who saw the mounting crisis in Umuaro as a blessing and an opportunity sent by God. His name was John Jaja Goodcountry, Catechist of St Mark’s C.M.S. Church, Umuaro. His home was in the Niger Delta which had been in contact with Europe and the world for hundreds of years. Although he had been in Umuaro only a year he could show as much progress in his church and school as many other teachers and pastors would have been proud to record after five or more years. His catechumen class had grown from a mere fourteen to nearly thirty – mostly young men and boys who also went to school. There had been one baptism in St Mark’s Church itself and three in the parish church at Okperi. Altogether Mr Goodcountry’s young church presented nine candidates for these occasions. He had not been able to field any candidates for confirmation, but that was hardly surprising in a new church among some of the most difficult people in the Ibo country.
The progress of St Mark’s came about in a somewhat unusual way. Mr Goodcountry with his background of the Niger Delta Pastorate which could already count native martyrs like Joshua Hart to its credit was not prepared to compromise with the heathen over such things as sacred animals. Within weeks of his sojourn in Umuaro he was ready for a little war against the royal python in the same spirit as his own people had fought and conquered the sacred iguana. Unfortunately he came up against a local stumbling block in Moses Unachukwu, the most important Christian in Umuaro.
From the beginning Mr Goodcountry had taken exception to Unachukwu’s know-all airs which the last catechist, Mr Molokwu, had done nothing to curb. Goodcountry had seen elsewhere how easy it was for a half-educated and half-converted Christian to mislead a whole congregation when the pastor or catechist was weak; so he wanted to establish his leadership from the very beginning. His intention was not originally to antagonize Unachukwu more than was necessary for making his point; after all he was a strong pillar in the church and could not be easily replaced. But Unachukwu did not give Mr Goodcountry a chance; he challenged him openly on the question of the python and so deserved the public rebuke and humiliation he got.
Having made his point Mr Goodcountry was prepared to forget the whole thing. He had no idea what kind of person he was dealing with. Unachukwu got a clerk in Okperi to write a petition on behalf of the priest of Idemili to the Bishop on the Niger. Although it was called a petition it was more of a threat. It warned the bishop that unless his followers in Umuaro left the royal python alone they would regret the day they ever set foot on the soil of the clan. Being the work of one of the knowledgeable clerks on Government Hill the petition made allusions to such potent words as law and order and the King’s peace.
The bishop had just had a very serious situation in another part of his diocese on this same matter of the python. A young, energetic ordinand had led his people on a shrine-burning adventure and had killed a python in the process, whereupon the villagers had chased out all the Christians among them and burnt their houses. Things might have got out of hand had the Administration not stepped in with troops for a show of force. After this incident the Lieutenant- Governor had written a sharp letter to the bishop to apply the reins on his boys.
For this reason, but also because he did not himself approve of such excess of zeal, the bishop had written a firm letter to Goodcountry. He had also replied to Ezidemili’s petition assuring him that the catechist would not interfere with the python but at the same time praying that the day would not be far when the priest and all his people would turn away from the worship of snakes and idols to the true religion.
This letter from the big, white priest far away reinforced the view which had been gaining ground that the best way to deal with the white man was to have a few people like Moses Unachukwu around who knew what the white man knew. As a result many people – some of them very important – began to send their children to school. Even Nwaka sent a son – the one who seemed least likely among his children to become a good farmer.
Mr Goodcountry not knowing the full story of the deviousness of the heathen mind behind the growth of his school and church put it down to his effective evangelization which, in a way, it was – a vindication of his work against his bishop’s policy of appeasement. He wrote a report on the amazing success of the Gospel in Umuaro for the
West African Church Magazine
, although, as was the custom in such reports, he allowed the credit to go to the Holy Spirit.
Now Mr Goodcountry saw in the present crisis over the New Yam Feast an opportunity for fruitful intervention. He had planned his church’s harvest service for the second Sunday in November the proceeds from which would go into the fund for building a place of worship more worthy of God and of Umuaro. His plan was quite simple. The New Yam Feast was the attempt of the misguided heathen to show gratitude to God, the giver of all good things. This was God’s hour to save them from their error which was now threatening to ruin them. They must be told that if they made their thank-offering to God they could harvest their crops without fear of Ulu.
‘So we can tell our heathen brethren to bring their one yam to church instead of giving it to Ulu?’ asked a new member of Good-country’s church committee.
‘That is what I say. But not just one yam. Let them bring as many as they wish according to the benefits they received this year from Almighty God. And not only yams, any crop whatsoever or livestock or money. Anything.’
The man who had asked the question did not seem satisfied. He kept scratching his head.
‘Do you still not understand?’
‘I understand but I was thinking how we could tell them to bring more than one yam. You see, our custom, or rather their custom, is to take just one yam to Ulu.’
Moses Unachukwu, who had since returned to full favour with Goodcountry, saved the day. ‘If Ulu who is a false god can eat one yam the living God who owns the whole world should be entitled to eat more than one.’
So the news spread that anyone who did not want to wait and see all his harvest ruined could take his offering to the god of the Christians who claimed to have power of protection from the anger of Ulu. Such a story at other times might have been treated with laughter. But there was no more laughter left in the people.
Chapter Nineteen
The first serious sufferers from the postponement of the harvest were the family of Ogbuefi Amalu who had died in the rainy season from
aru-mmo
. Amalu was a man of substance and, in normal times, the rites of second burial and funeral feast would have followed two or three days after his death. But it was a bad death which killed a man in the time of famine. Amalu himself knew it and was prepared. Before he died he had called his first son, Aneto, and given him directions for the burial feast.
‘I would have said: Do it a day or two after I have been put into the earth. But this is
ugani
; I cannot ask you to arrange my burial feast with your saliva. I must wait until there are yams again.’ He spoke with great difficulty, struggling with every breath. Aneto was down on both knees beside the bamboo bed and strained to catch the whispers which were barely audible over the noisy breathing coming from the cavity of the sick man’s chest. The many coatings of camwood which had been rubbed on it had caked and cracked like red earth in the dry season. ‘But you must not delay it beyond four moons from my death. And do not forget, I want you to slaughter a bull.’
There was a story told of a young man in another clan who was so pestered by trouble that he decided to consult an oracle. The reason, he was told, was that his dead father wanted him to sacrifice a goat to him. The young man said to the oracle: ‘Ask my father if he left as much as a fowl for me.’ Ogbuefi Amalu was not like that man. Everyone knew he was worth four hundred bulls and that he had not asked his son for more than was justly due.
In anticipation of the New Yam Festival Aneto and his brothers and kinsmen had chosen the day for Amalu’s second burial and announced it to all Umuaro and to all their relations and in-laws in the neighbouring clans.
What were they to do now? Should they persist with their plan and give Amalu a poor man’s burial feast without yams and risk his ire on their heads or should they put it off beyond the time that Amalu had appointed and again risk his anger? The second choice seemed the better and the less dangerous one. But to be quite sure Aneto went to
afa
, to put the alternatives to his father.
When he got to the oracle he found that there were not two alternatives but only one. He dared not ask his father whether he would accept a poor man’s funeral; rather he asked whether he could delay the rites until there were yams in Umuaro. Amalu said no. He had already stood too long in the rain and sun and could not bear it one day longer. A poor man might wander outside for years while his kinsmen scraped their meagre resources together; that was his penalty for lack of success in his life. But a great man who had toiled through two titles must be called indoors by those for whom he had toiled and for whom he left his riches.
Aneto called a kindred meeting and told them what his father had said. No one was surprised. ‘Who would blame Amalu?’ they asked. ‘Has he not stood outside long enough?’ No, the fault was Ezeulu’s. He had seen to it that Amalu’s kinsmen would waste their substance in buying yams from neighbouring clans when their own crop lay locked in the soil. Many of these neighbouring people were already growing fat out of Umuaro’s misfortune. Every Nkwo market they brought new yams to Umuaro and sold them like anklets of ivory. At first only men without title, women and children ate these foreign yams. But as the famine grew more harsh and stringent someone pointed out that there was nothing in the custom of Umuaro forbidding a man of title from eating new yams grown on foreign earth; and in any case who was there when they were dug out to swear that they were new yams? This made people laugh with one side of their face. But if there was any man of title who took this advice and ate these yams he made sure that no one saw him. What many of them did do was to harvest the yams planted around their homestead to feed their wives and children. From ancient usage it had always been possible for a man to dig up a few homestead yams in times of severe famine. But today it was not just a few yams and, what was more, the homestead area crept farther and farther afield as the days passed.