[The following is an extract from my unpublished social biography of a blind beggar. - Biko]
After the speech of thunder, after the fire of lightning, and after the earth had bled itself wet with the rain of tear drops; the cocks, the hens, and the chicks continued their curious search for food. Although their feathers were roughened by the storm, though their feet chilled from the coldness of the earth, they clawed and pecked. A decayed feather was better than a decayed belly, they seemed to be chuckling.
It was still drizzling when they set out, hand in hand and step by step like a couple of lovers. Willy, the young guide, was Ashaki's younger brother born to his mother's second husband. Ashaki always wondered why his mother married an Aro man called Nwokoro to whom he was born. And when his father died, she married yet another Aro man called Okoro. He believed that this was the work of destiny even though he knew that the name Okoro is so common among the Igbo that the Yoruba call them, Okoro people.
Ashaki and Willy were about the same height, nearly six feet. They had the same athletic body build of their slim fit mother. But Ashaki was dark in complexion, taking after his father, while Willy was fair-complexioned like their father and mother. The civil storm that blinded Ashaki also fell their father, Mr. Okoro, like a tree to be eaten by termites and fire. It was on one of the early air raids on Awgu when the bombs were mocked as being made of potsherds and broken bottles, capable of only killing chicken and tearing the shirts of men. Their father was not even scratched by the bomb. He slipped on human excrement as he ran for cover in the bush and crashed his heavy bulk unto the ground, dying of a heart attack. Ashaki regretted that he would not watch him do the Abiliba dance at Christmas during which they dressed like warriors with sharpened matchets and carrying a large board on which sat sculptures of human heads supposedly caught by the head-hunters.
Willy carried a small keg of palm wine in his right hand and held John's right with his left. They went through the back door even though they could have gone through the main road. That would have been easier and straight forward. But it would have been more conspicuous whereas they wanted to be discreet as Christians would be on a visit to the shrine.
As they walked, their feet pressed neatly into the breasts of the wet earth, causing milky water to ooze out from her swollen nipples to wash their soles clean before percolating once again, leaving their prints of the ground and leaving her milky marks on their ten toes. Their footprints soon met more footprints of varying sizes and varying directions. Like people, the footprints headed in varying directions with varying resources. Most were bare like theirs, a few were the hoof-like marks of shoes and a few were amoeba-like slipper prints. Some were large but most were tiny. Footprints crushed footprints and got crushed by footprints. But the indelible ones, mostly on the edges of the path, slapped the face of the earth as if permanently.
"Shakisman!" a voice called from a palm wine shed near the path.
"Igwebuike, how is the day?" Ashaki asked without asking who it was.
"Wet. What is it that brings you out in this cold?"
"Just to see my mother's brother at Olocha."
"Is it why Willy is carrying a calabash? Your mother's brother should buy you wine."
"This is for something," Willy assured him.
"Well, come and drive away the cold with us before you continue."
"Thank you," Ashaki said, "but we have to hurry."
"May it go well," Igwebuike prayed.
"It will go well, thank you."
The day was becoming brighter and warmer. Ashaki knew this from the merry songs of the birds and from the beads of sweat forming on the tip of his nose. He swept his right hand across his face and dried the moisture on his buttocks. At the same time, Willy tugged at his left hand and stopped.
"What is it?"
"It is the wine."
"Oh, I did not know that you were drunk," Ashaki joked.
"It is only my hand."
"Let me help carry it."
"Do not worry, it is now in my left hand," Willy informed him and crossed to the other side to hold Ashaki's left hand with his right. They walked on, step by step. And as they went farther, they met fewer and fewer footsteps and people. When they branched into the path that led to Omala stream from the house of Okoo, theirs became the first prints on the path. Few people would need to go and fetch water on a wet day like that. It was not so warm along that path because the overarching branches that shaded it still tap-tapped on the wet earth with tear drops, making the ground a bit slippery.
They soon turned off the well-trodden path to the stream and walked South Westward through a path that meandered between cocoyam farms. The large cocoyam leaves were wet and the stalks grunted as the two brothers brushed them aside to pass. They turned again after about two hundred meters. This time, they walked towards the West and suddenly came upon the main road. Willy looked to the left and to the right and seeing no vehicle in sight, tugged at Ashaki's hand and they crossed. They walked up a steep stony slope and came upon the stone building with smoke rising from its aluminium roof. As they went closer, a grey haired man who was almost bent double with age came out. His light complexioned skin was extravagantly wrinkled. But he managed to move his bony frame around, supporting his weight on a tall bamboo stick. Peering through the foggy mist with amazing clarity, he called out;
"Are these not my sister's children?"
"The priest who prays for life, we follow you."
"You follow a good path. But I no longer looked out for your eyes in this rain."
"That is how my things are. The day I go hunting, antelopes grow wings and fly. If I had not ordered this waterless wine from the tapper, I would not have bothered to come again today."
"Well, let us go and call down the do-gooder. I do not know whether he will be ready to accept any drink in this cold."
He climbed down three steps that led to his door and led the way down the slope they had come up from. As they went at his slow pace, he asked after their mother whom he always called his sister. They were only distant cousins in fact but no matter how distant the relations of people were, they knew one another as children of one mother or children of one father, Umunne or Umunna.
As they crossed the main road again and headed into the bush path, Santa, the crippled shoe maker who lived on the side of the road saw them and called out;
"Shakisman!"
"Santa, the child of the world."
"Are you going to church?"
"You have seen."
"The one who prays for life I follow you!"
"You follow a good path," the priest replied and they went past. Ashaki was amused that nothing could be hidden in that village. Someone was always bound to find out who was doing what with whom and soon the gossip would be spiced and salted from mouth to mouth. There was nothing to be ashamed of in being seen with his mother's brother even if he happened to be a high priest. The only problem was that his family is highly regarded in the local catholic community and their younger brother, Moses, was being supported by Father T. Buckley who was paying for him to train as an electrician, having been unable to resume schooling after the war. Every member of the family must support Moses by being committed to the church but everyone understood Ashaki's predicament.
Without being told that the market was in a stampede, Ashaki stopped and bent down to fold his trousers above his knees. Willy just stood there and wondered whether Ashaki actually needed a guide. He did not wish to tell him that they had reached the bank of Omala because he felt that he would know anyway. If Ashaki could tell people by their voices, why could he not tell the stream by her boisterous laughter and drumming after the storm and by the sweaty fragrance of the armpits of the rocks that danced to her music?
They stepped into the ancestral guardian stream after the old man, urging each other to take care. The currents rushed at their feet, trying to sweep them away with the flood. They washed their hands, their feet and their face in the stream and Ashaki recalled the omugwo outing rites that used to bring him and his playmates to that place.
There, they would wait on the bank for the mother of the twenty-eight day old baby to step into the stream first and wash off the days of omugwo. This ritualistic bath did not take much time because the proud mother merely poured water on her camwood and indigo-painted body, taking care not to wet her newly plaited hair. As soon as that was over, Ashaki recalled, he and his age mates would plunge into the stream to bathe and play and wage wars with water. Then they would be persuaded to come out from the stream and paint stockings, spectacles, and wrist watches on their naked bodies, using the nzu or white clay with which the young mother also paints the breadfruit tree on the bank, praying that she may be as fruitful as the breadfruit. Then the party would set out for home in a single file with the happy mother in front, bearing the new wash basin filled with water which would be fed to the "good guest" in order that he or she may speak the tongue of the ancestors with ease. Anticipating the usual steaming bowls of food waiting at home, the kids songs like;
"Omaala -o!"
"Eghe - ghe e!"
"Omala, the child of Eka!"
"Eghe - ghe e!"
"See whom we entrust to you!"
"Eghe -ghe e!"
"If you kill, kill."
"Eghe - ghe e!"
"If you spare, spare!"
"Rghe - ghe e!"
They climbed back onto the slippery bank, using their toes to grip the slimy clay. Then they walked down another narrow path with the entrancing aroma of burning herbs and yet there was neither fire nor smoke. The path was strikingly well swept with roots growing out here and there to rope across it like constricting pythons. Squirrels up in the trees called out to their lovers.
"Are these matchets and matchets alone!" Willy exclaimed as they came upon the mighty iroko tree the trunk of which was bearing numerous rusting cutlasses.
"What did I tell you!" Ashaki asked rhetorically.
"What will people do when there is no more space on the trunk where a human hand can reach to stick sacrificial blades?" Willy asked.
"Then they will try the roots of the iroko," Ashaki suggested.
"That is what they are doing to the large root up to the point it went underground. Will the iroko not die from so many blades?"
"Are you the one keeping it alive?" Nwagu, the priest, asked.
"See me on the ground," Willy begged, sensing that the priest found his questions irritating.
"Rise!" Nwagu forgave him even before he pretended to be about throwing himself on the ground.
The big root that Willy referred to went underground at a point where the ground was crowned with a forest of feathers of different colours. But because most of the feathers were white and because they were stuck to the ground around a small stone, they looked like the white hairs of the priest and the small stone looked like his balding head. Beside the bald stone and its bushy crown of feathers was a growing ant hill of colanuts broken and offered to the Itoba, the oracle, over time.
Behind all these, the rest of the shrine was hidden from inquisitive eyes with a fence of palm fronts and a piece of cloth which curtained the inner shrine. The whole place looked well swept in spite of the rain and the leaves that fell with it. Yet the aging priest insisted on sweeping it again. Willy offered to save his bent back from breaking but the old man refused any help and did his sweeping by himself.
After that, the priest sat on one of the ancient stones where his father's father and his father had sat before him. Ashaki and Willy sat on two of the line of stones which had felt the buttocks of many needy clients of Itoba. Nwagu took his time stuffing his nostrils with snuff, the wealth that makes the owner weep. He blew his nose and dried his tears. Then he stretched his hands towards Ashaki whom Willy nudged and he instinctively held out two shillings. Nwagu made contact with his palm and took the coins.
"How about you, are you not making inquiries too?"
Willy shook his head saying, "I only came to accompany him."
Nwagu chanted Ashaki's real name, John, as he drew patterns on the bald head of the stone with white clay. He also muttered Willy's names with similar incantations while drawing similar lines on the stone. Then the priest brought out a piece of kola nut and broke it, throwing the whole lot on the rising anthill of broken nuts. He took the small keg of palm wine that Willy brought and poured a cup which he emptied in front of the bald stone, saying prayers to the do-gooder.
After this, the priest swept aside the curtain and crept through the crevices of the fence of palm fronts. As he did so, he briefly revealed a patch of earth, a bit roundish, covered with small clay pots that must have been stuck to them ages ago.
"Kpi gone gone! Kpi gone gone!" Nwagu started invoking the oracle with praises and further incantations made more ominous by the gong he was beating. Suddenly, the branches overhead started shivering as if under the impact of gale-force wind. As the branches shook with fear,
Gbim! The sound of the fall of a heavy object behind the fence.
"Gbam! my sons!" spoke the oracle as if through the nose.
"Our father!" came the chorus by Ashaki and Willy.
"Wilifredi, son of Okoro, the Aro man and son of our daughter." Itoba called.
"I am greeting o!" Willy answered.
"Yes, my son," continued Itoba, "Johnu, the son of Nwokoro and the daughter of Ama, the daughter of Okolie Ocha!" Itoba addressed Ashaki.
"My father o!" Ashaki saluted the oracle.
"Great the land, child of the old man, for me."
"Ali, child of the old man, we greet you o!"
"Gbam! my sons. Is it well with you?"
"If the belly of the cock is full, he will not walk in the rain," Ashaki answered.
"Yes my son. The termite will fly high and fly low but it will still fall for the toad. Did you do what I asked you to do before you went on that journey?"
Silence. Silence louder than thunder and timid like a teenage lover caught in the act.
"He is asking if you did what you were asked to do in the past. If you did so, say yes, if you did not, say no." The human voice of the priest was a relief from the nasal talk of the oracle which sounded like what is heard from fairies in stories told under moonlight.
"Yes, my son!" Itoba endorsed Nwagu's explanation.
"My father," Ashaki started, "If you bite me, do not bite too hard. I bought the cock and sent it to your priest but before I could get the other ingredients, Awgu fled from the war and the cock ran away."
"To see and refuse to speak is the crime of the old. To hear and refuse to believe is the sin of the youth," veiled admonitions.
"My father, you may strike your erring child with the right hand and cuddle him with the left. What can I do to restore sight to at least one eye? I beg you, here are my knees on the ground."
"Arise! You will have eyes to see with. But there are things in it."
"I hold my ears, great father!"
"A white ram for a feast for little children. A white cock and a piece of white cloth for me. I go!"
The branches shook again and all was quiet. The priest crept out from the crevices of the fence like a reptile from the cracks in a rock. For a while, they sat silently and when they talked, it was about the rains and how the farms were going to perform. They drank what remained in the little calabash of palm wine and rose to go.
White cock and white cloth and white ram. Bright colours of daylight that peal away the blanket of nightfall. Perhaps there was still hope. After all he had been the guide of Mama Nnukwu, grand mother, from 1949 to 1952 when her sight was poisoned in his boyhood. Did he not accompany her to Port Harcourt when her daughter, Ijeoma, came to take her to see a powerful medicine man? Ashaki remembered clearly how they took a lorry from Awgu to Ndiagbo from where they took a train to Port Harcourt, where Ijeoma lived. From there, they moved to Ikwere and lived for two years during which different concoctions were poured into Mama Nnukwu's eyes, causing her so much pain in vain. Then they returned to Ijeoma's house in Port Harcourt and were preparing to return to Awgu with disappointment when Papa Anajemba, a certain medicine man from Awka appeared. Perhaps he was there to treat somebody else but Mama Nnukwu did not ask questions because she believed that he was sent by God.
He arrived at Ijeoma's house before sunrise after he was consulted. He walked in with his head bowed low as if in thought rather than in shame. He walked with a slight hunch on his back upon which sat a raffia bag blackened with ages of sweat and soothe. Without wasting time, he went into the back yard and selected a spot in one corner. He sat down and dug a little round hole in the red earth. He took the white cock which was tied in the corner and gathered its two claws under one foot as wrestlers in the village would lock the legs of an opponent before throwing him or her. He held the wings with his left hand and used the middle finger of that hand to imprison the head of the cock and stick out its poor little neck to the menacing blade in the right hand. Ashaki watched with keen interest as the medicine man slit open the tender throat with a single soft stroke. The terrified cock struggled for freedom. Too late. Its moans became muffled as its blood messed its whiteness and flowed into the round little hole. Papa Anajemba dropped it and it did its brief macabre dance, flapping its wings and kicking its thighs frantically.
The silent medicine man ignored the now peaceful cock and tied a rope across two short poles. The rope went over the bloody little hole. He asked Ashaki and the other children who had gathered to scale over the rope. Ashaki and company could not be more grateful for a chance to exercise with high jump. They only missed the opportunity of applying the usual childish rule of applying a knock to the head of the person who failed the jump. But even then, that was a dead opportunity they did not miss much because the rope was tied so low that all of them scaled through successfully. Their faces lit with excitement, they hurriedly queued up for another round of jumping. But the silent medicine man waved them aside, refusing them a second round. Then he tied a jioji cloth on four pegs, making a square fence at the center of which was the bloody little hole. He led Mama Nnukwu into the privacy of the fence of cloths.
Ashaki strained every inch of his ear to eavesdrop but he heard nothing until the man came out from the hut and called;
"Ama, the daughter of Okolie Ocha, come out by yourself!"
Ashaki held his breath. Mama Nnukwu appeared from the fence seeing clearly and with the name he called his favourite grand child, on her lips;
"Sunday, my child, run to me!"
Ashaki could not believe his eyes as he sped towards his grand mother and shot like an arrow into her bosom, almost pushing her over. They hugged each other for such a long time and tears of joy filled Mama Nnukwu's eyes, trickled down her cheeks, and dropped on the puzzled face of the boy. Ashaki wondered whether tears were appropriate on such a day, a day that remained one of his happiest days. Mama Nnukwu regained her sight and promised to reward the loyal grand child that guided her through the days of darkness by willing her compound to him.
Ashaki believed that the miracle could happen again. The symbols were the same; white cock and white ram. Awgu was not Port Harcourt but Itoba was even greater than an ordinary medicine man. White ram and white cock, but where was that going to come from? When feeding was such a fight and wrestling for people with full sight, he wondered how a blind man was going to get a white ram.
