It’s hard to imagine that things were ever any different.
The white washed hospitals and Christian schools in the afternoon sun opposite
the hut where I’m writing this stand tall and deliberate – almost as if they
belong there.
Just like their buildings, the white men are now scattered
amongst us, preaching their religion and culture to our people. They have grown
so accustomed to us that we sometimes even see white women, hiding underneath
umbrellas and flowing dresses as they shyly look our way and avoid eye contact.
They should know that they have nothing to fear, for their race has
sufficiently broken us.
I remember coming in to my compound after working with the
yams one day, and seeing my son Maduka reading in his hut. This was many years
ago, and reading was still rare. We the Igbo people are a culture founded in
oral tradition – it is the stories a man learns from his mother that makes him
who he is.
Intrigued, I went forward to my boy’s hut to ask him what he
was doing. So enamored was he with his book that he did not hear my footsteps
until I stood in front of him and called his name. Maduka jumped, startled. He
hastily looked up and slammed the book shut, stammering out a hesitant “Yes,
father?”.
“I thought you were going wrestling this evening?”
“Y-yes, but I also had school…”
It was then that I looked down and saw the book he held in
his hands. Sitting regally in his dark palms, the blood red leather bound cover
had ‘The Bible’ inscribed in gold on the cover. I recall picking it up, leafing
through it, and thinking how ironic it was that the words of the white man’s faith were
bound in the colour of our earth.
I looked down at Maduka and I smiled. What else could I do?
I left the hut, and he continued reading happily. His peaceful silhouette lay
against the sun, oblivious of his culture trickling away like palm wine being tapped from a palm tree by a bad tapper.
I have given this much thought, and decided that this is how
the white man has managed to break us apart. He came from within, slowly taking
our brothers and sisters over to his side, creating a shield that our strongest
war medicine could not break – for how could we fight our own people? How can I
tell my son that the white man is wrong, and in this way preach hatred in such a
young soul?
At the start we believed that the missionaries would
eventually be destroyed by the Evil Forest, and so we let him be. But he
survived, and our people began to think that his medicine was stronger
than ours. We say that living fire begets cold, impotent ash. The power and
appeal of his God was too great for Chukwu to stand next to.
And looking back, can I say that I blame my people? The
white man’s God did not make us throw away our twins, he did not make us kill
our sons, he did not make us exile our brothers. In short he was so much easier
to follow – he did not demand animals nor sacrifices, just our thoughts and
prayers.
It is in this ease that I think we allowed ourselves to be
captured – we did not even notice we had forgotten Chukwu and Ani and Agbala
and our ancestors until we saw that the paths to the oracles had become faint. And this
was the worst part – why had our Gods not punished us already? Our neglect went
unheeded, making many of us miserable. If the Gods do the same whether or not
we sacrifice to them or not, then what is the point? At least the white man’s
God protects him from the Evil Forest and does not forget his people.
As our religion changed, so did our customs. The stories we
told our children changed. They heard passages of Moses and Joseph, and turtles
and birds become no more than animals. These children grew up to tell these
stories to their children, and so our entire lives became infected with the
disease of the albino.
Through these decades I had to watch wretchedly this painful cycle everyday as my home and life fell apart.
No comments:
Post a Comment