The New Gong

By Dulue Mbachu

For long I had wondered why every name my grandfather gave his children bore a tinge of melancholy. I got an answer only when I asked.

By then I was in my 50s, my father had passed on and my question went to his half-brother named Mmadukaejiaka (a statement which roughly translates as “You’re greater because of the people you have.” It’s often abbreviated to Maduka (people matter more), and he was approaching 80 at the time of my inquiry.

He told me it was because of a series of sad incidents that happened in the past. Mbachu’s father had lost five of his brothers, leaving him the sole survivor. Each had gone on mbhia diwe, the healer’s journey, and never returned. They all vanished while on separate trips and nothing was ever heard of them again. The grief that befell the family as a result of these serial misfortunes has lasted for generations, reflecting in the names Mbachu gave his children.

I’ll explain a little bit about the healer’s journey here. We come from a kinsgroup that were, and still are, professional healers and herbalists specializing in the treatment of mental illness and other psychic interventions. They were given to long trips that formed a necessary part of their training and practice. The idea was that you don’t learn by standing still, you have to move about to be exposed to new ideas and new challenges to improve and hone your skills. This often entailed journeys during which they became so engaged that they were ethically required to stay for years to attain vital healing objectives before going home. They always went home with new ideas, new accomplishments, even new wiles but always more wizened.

It was part of the ethics of eje alo, going and coming. I remember my grandfather spoke an Igbo dialect that nobody else spoke in the family or our village. I understand he acquired the tongue during such a prolonged sojourn in some distant parts among the Aro, and it was a sign of class to speak in such a tongue.

His own grandfather, the albino, went on his own journey as a young man and stayed away for so long that his relatives concluded he was either dead or would never return. They took his share of his father, Ezeakpo’s estate. When the albino made a sudden reappearance (according to legend he fell from the sky on ropes), they wouldn’t relinquish the land that was due to him in his father’s obi. He had to go to another part of town to acquire land. And that’s why until today, ours is the only family in the kinsgroup living outside the original cluster inhabited by the Umuezediukwa kindred in Achina.

But then, five of the albino’s own six sons went on such trips and never returned, suggesting that something forcibly held them back. The blow to the entire family can only be imagined. There are still no answers to date.

To have a better understanding of what happened, I have tried to work out the timeline of this family history to, first of all, put it in some perspective. By my calculations, Mbachu would’ve been born in the last quarter of the 19th century, anytime from the 1880s, possibly a little earlier. That would place his father and missing uncles somewhere in the 1830s-50s, and their father, the albino, in the early part of the 19th century. That would then take the lineage to his father, Ezeakpo, who led his part of the Ezediukwa kindred from neighbouring Akpo to become part of Achina. This was probably in the 1770s and 1780s. Since that splinter, the Ezediukwa kindred has existed in both Akpo and Achina till today.

Ezeakpo himself had left the place he was named for because of a certain unease he felt among his kindred, Maduka said. In those days, under the social turmoil engendered by the demand for slaves to work the plantations in the Americas, some strongmen in Igbo communities would often swoop on the weak, the disadvantaged, or the outnumbered, such as lone sons, to sell them off to the Aro to inherit their estate. The Aro held a priestly monopoly of the trade built around the Ebino Ukpabi deity. 

Indeed, with the slave trade came the reign of strong men now celebrated under the prevailing Aro hegemony. This replaced the esteem previously reserved for people of integrity who upheld nsọ ala, respect for the earth, that were celebrated under the preceding Nri epoch. It was a seismic ethical shift, and as the Igbo say, when an evil deed is allowed to stand for one year, it becomes part of the culture.

It was in that state of ethical fluidity and the attendant feeling of vulnerability that Ezeakpo decided to relocate to neighbouring Achina. There, according to Maduka, he made a bargain that he would plant the ritual ozo tree, to which he had custodianship, among them. This deal, I was told, now made it unnecessary for Achina ozo title holders to make their first market outings in Akpo as used to be the case.

By way of a footnote, oral tradition has it that Amesi, Akpo and Achina (in that order) were three brothers of the same father. Indeed, in the Amaiyi cultural area of Aguata local government in Anambra state, they’re the only three communities that speak an identical dialect. Part of the oral tradition also traces Achina origin to somewhere in the Okigwe escarpment known as Achina Ibu, suggesting some additional, if not original, migration. 

Other neighbouring towns such as Umuchu, Uga, Ogboji, Nkpologwu and others speak slight variations of the same dialect, though the difference is not noticeable to an outsider. Even some, such as Umuchu and Uga, have more than one dialect, but all built on the same closely related basics.

The trade in humans had stuck around long enough to be accepted and tolerated. It was a business dominated by Aro(chukwu) slave traders and their Ibibio, Efik and Ijaw neighbours. The latter had access to the sea and knew of the European traders and their great need for human cargo. They responded with a supply chain partly built on raids and partly disguised as a spiritual enterprise of the Ebino Ukpabi deity, otherwise known as the Long Juju of Arochukwu. It was an alliance that ravaged Igboland and beyond.

Over a period of about 400 years running from the late 15th century, the demand for African human cargo by European nations for use as slave labour in the sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, created a state of perpetual insecurity in my part of the world. Mercenary headhunters hired by the Aro, marauded the land, triggering far-reaching social turmoil and forced movements. Ironically, many of those caught up in the instability had no idea they were experiencing the ripples of a triangular trade that had developed between Europe, Africa and the Americas. In vain they made supplications to the gods of the universe to save them from the mindless greed that fuelled the trade.

The  Aro and their mercenaries from Ohafia, Abam and environs, who deployed across the southeastern rainforests much like the kidnappers of today, preyed heavily on my area. They were better armed with weapons (muskets) acquired from their European trading allies and subjugated nearby communities as colonies. Their outpost in our district was at Arondizuogu, with smaller ones at places like Ajalli (Ujari), Ndikelionwu, Ndiowu, Onne and others. All were relatively a short walking distance from Achina. Aro traders with their captives were given safe passage through these chains of outposts on their way to the coast.

Forced physical migrations and relocations were, of course, not the only consequences of the trade in humans. The emergence of the osu (the outcasts) and the ohu (the slave) were among the forced outcomes, a fact I only learned recently thanks to my maternal cousin, Victor. Under that order, people who ran to various deities for protection from the prevailing injustice and brutality of the era were turned into outcasts, stigmatized and never to be forgiven for threatening the existing quasi-religious slaving enterprise. 

There was already a class system among the Igbo that elevated the individual based on personal attainments and accomplishments. Thus, if you were an excellent farmer or trader or warrior, you were given distinction as a title holder and admitted to the nze n’ozo, and accorded all the rights and privileges therein. Similarly, women became lolo and could wear ivory anklets as a mark of distinction. So, what later followed in the creation of outcasts and slaves was more of an aberration that encouraged the commoditization of humans.

Often, when we talk about pre colonial Africa, we are fixated on the state of the continent towards the end of the 19th century, such as that portrayed by Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart. The Africa of the 19th century is the left over of a continent ravaged by 400 years of incessant slave raids that targeted and depleted its prime male and female population, relentlessly harassed its communities, and created a permanent state of siege. For four centuries little or no development could take place in such circumstances as people struggled just to escape capture and stay alive. My maternal grandfather (also born in the late 19th century) told us of how their parents had to hide them away from home in tree hollows in order to go to the farm or market lest they were taken by the marauders. 

In Igboland the Nri epoch and the period of the Aro hegemony represent two distinct periods that substantially illustrate the state of affairs in Igboland before and after contact with Europe. While this is specific to the Igbo area, it could also broadly apply to most of Africa in terms of changed trajectories following contact with Europe. 

The Nri system emanated essentially from the agricultural revolution that must’ve swept Igboland and much of West Africa at some point, leading to the emergence of large settled communities and the building of sophisticated cultures. The success of this revolution, which left West Africa thickly populated, accounted for the reverence accorded the earth among the Igbo as a source of sustenance. 

It was here that Nri priests found their role and created their guild as guardians of the earth, making propitiations whenever the earth was fouled, so that it would continue its benevolence to humankind. By their intervention, these priests sought to ensure harmony between the people and their environment. Through this role they led what seems like a peaceful revolution as their influence spread over a wide area, with connections among the Igala and the Edo.

The sophistication of the Nri period is reflected in the objects excavated in 1957 by the British archaeologist Thurstan Shaw from Igbo Ukwu, (great Igbo) a town a mere three hours walking distance from my hometown. They include 10th century objects made of real bronze (lead,zinc and copper alloys), unlike the latter works of Benin and Ife that are just brass (lead and zinc, without copper), found in what seemed like a royal burial chamber. 

Of course, Achina was firmly under the Nri sphere and its noted dwarfs had a special quarter known as Ugwu Umunwanchi (the dwarf’s hill). For me, the one single object that convinced me the Nri bronze objects were truly indigenous was the face covered with ichi scarification marks. I had once observed my grandfather receive a tall, fair male visitor with similar facial marks once upon a time. They’re more or less extinct nowadays.

The Nri period seems like a high point of Igbo civilization before a rapid decline set in with the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the terror of the slave hunters by the 15th century. The ushering in of the Aro hegemony, deriving from their alliance with neighbours who had access to the sea and their control of access into the Igbo hinterland backed by their revered oracle, marked the start of a period of terror that lasted some four hundred years. It was to damage and alter Igbo society irreversibly.

I have a strong suspicion my missing ancestors were caught up in the trade and trafficked in trans-Atlantic slavery, which, according to the renowned British historian Basil Davidson, was at its peak between the 1490s and the 1850s. Indeed, Achina is only 49 kilometers (30 miles) away from Isieke (Essaka) in the environs of Orlu and Awo-Omama, where Olauda Equiano, the famous Igbo slave and 18th century author, that became part of the anti slavery movement, recalled he was kidnapped as a boy.

The Aro continued the trade for much longer, even until the 1950s. In the early part of the 20th century, Achina had launched a preemptive strike on the neighbouring town of Onne to dislodge Igwegbe Odum, the Aro slave trader, who was setting up camp there, forcing him to retreat to Arondizuogu. The story of the exploits of Odum, who was the father of later Nigerian nationalist politician, K.O. Mbadiwe, was also the subject of the novel Omenuko, the first modern Igbo novel written by his townsman, Pita Nwana, and published in 1933.

Yet, I’m left wondering what could’ve happened to my ancestors and the possible scenarios in which they got missing. What routes could they have taken? Did they go through Calabar or through Bonny? Where did they all end up? Certainly to different destinations, never to be seen again by their loved ones. Maybe one went to the U.S., one to Cuba, one to Jamaica, another Brazil and the other to Haiti. But I  read in a piece by my friend and mentor, Odia Ofeimun, that Benin kings used to seize Igbo herbalists and diviners for keeps in their palace around this period for their valued skills. So, I’ve also wondered if one or two of them ended up among the Edo.

Their loss has weighed on their family for generations. My grandfather expressed this in some of the names he gave. He named his first son Igweanusi (let the multitude not scoff), then in another vein he affirmed the importance of people with Maduka. Then, not to lose sight of his reality, he named another Obiejiakponu (the compound they make fun of), and my father was named at a point of sad reflection on loss: Onwubuemeri (death brings sorrow). Among the daughters were Ukanyionu (no word is too weighty for the mouth), Amauche (who knows the mind) and Ejiaka (you’re never certain), among others.

It’s so hard to quantify what is lost when you lose dear ones: all the would’ve-beens, the lost opportunities, the thwarted destinies, the knowledge, the disruption. These days, when I meet an African from the diaspora, I always wonder to myself if he or she could be a long-lost relative? “Could you be a descendant of my long-lost family members?” I would say silently, to myself, peering at their faces for signs. As Langston Hughes wrote in one of his famous poems: ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers.’ I often think of the droplets and rivulets we contributed.