obododimma

Multi-authorship of a poem is such a great thrill, especially when carried out by poets from diverse cultural backgrounds and languages, and particularly when it happens at the spur of the moment. The poem becomes many-in-one, represents challenging conversations, and stimulates a form of thinking that is immediately spirited for a global presence of the many localizations. The Italian artist & curator, Caterina Davinio, made it possible by convening an e-poetry festival mediated by Skype, where the following poets performed their poems on webcam: 

Stefano Donno (Lecce, Italia), Vincenzo Bagnoli (Bologna, Italia), Ruth Lepson (USA), Phoebe Giannisi (Grecia), Obododimma Oha (Nigeria), Nicole Mauro (USA), Mirona Magearu (USA), Matteo Fantuzzi (Bologna, Italia), Massimo Mori (Firenze, Italia), Lamberto Pignotti (Roma, Italia), Italo Testa (Parigi, Francia), Gabriele Montagano (Napoli, Italia), Francesco Muzzioli (Roma,Italia), David Seaman (USA), Craig Saper (USA), Avi Rosen (Israel), Annamaria Ferramosca (Roma,Italia), Alfonso Siracusa (Siracusa, Italia), Cristina Vignocchi (Sant'Andrea Pelago / Modena, Italia), Joseph Young (UK), Liliana Ugolini (Firenze, Italia), Denis Belley (Canada), Philip Meersman (Olanda), Mariapia Quintavalla (Milano), Elif Sezen (Australia), Mario Lunetta (Roma, Italia). 

While waiting for the virtual performances to be wrapped up, the poets assembled started chatting. I suggested that we try writing a poem collectively and this was immediately accepted. Ruth Lepson provided the opening line and the rest of us joined. A poem thus emerged, collectively written. For want of a title, I suggested "Virtual Venice, a multiverse." Here below is the poem made of many voices:

Virtual Venice

(a multiverse)

 

[6:50:32 AM] Ruth Lepson: obododimma waits by the backdrop

[6:50:53 AM] Obododimma: and thinking this here was there

[6:51:13 AM] David Seaman: David had his backdrop all planned then lost a signal and had to move to the bedroom!

[6:51:14 AM] Obododimma: venice an eye away from a glance

[6:51:24 AM] Ruth Lepson: yet this here was never there

[6:51:35 AM] Obododimma: where Gianni* sits watching

[6:51:43 AM] David Seaman: Let's all go to Venezia

[6:51:49 AM] Ruth Lepson: toodling and oogling

[6:52:06 AM] Philip Meersman: nor is it here, aca, aqui, what does it matter it holds the water just below base

[6:52:22 AM] Craig Saper: his plans for a poetry reading machine

[6:52:28 AM] Obododimma: thought venice was venus so nice to oblongs

[6:52:29 AM] Craig Saper: lost in the mail

[6:52:33 AM] Ruth Lepson: je veux ecrire tous les gens

[6:52:53 AM] Ruth Lepson: lost in time

[6:53:06 AM] Philip Meersman: tous les gens perdu

[6:53:15 AM] Philip Meersman: venu de nous ecouter

[6:53:16 AM] Ruth Lepson: certainement

[6:53:31 AM] Obododimma: venice is and was ocean seed,

[6:53:43 AM] Philip Meersman: mais l'eau est trop vague

[6:53:44 AM] Ruth Lepson: eek it

[6:53:56 AM] Ruth Lepson: sinks

[6:54:10 AM] Obododimma: virtual venice walks your vision

[6:54:14 AM] Philip Meersman: Atlantis will have a neighbour

[6:54:24 AM] Craig Saper: gianni gives a knowing Cheschire cat's smile

[6:54:38 AM] Obododimma: ruth, obododimma, craig, eva, caterina** catering techs

[6:55:01 AM] Craig Saper: Eye's on the Half Shell

[6:55:26 AM] Obododimma: so many mutual hands will write readies of craigs

[6:55:29 AM] Ruth Lepson: I can't eat squid any more now I know they're so intelligent

[6:55:43 AM] Obododimma: into second lives, numerate,

[6:55:48 AM] Ruth Lepson: evdience of intelligence everywhere

[6:56:32 AM] Ruth Lepson: TV show about atlatnis turns up more evidence

[6:56:33 AM] Philip Meersman: give me a second life so I can eat the squid again to use the ink writing words with my fingertips

[6:56:35 AM] David Seaman: I have the same squid issue, and octopus, so delicious our brain-mates

[6:56:59 AM] Ruth Lepson: right on, seaman & saper

[6:57:04 AM] Obododimma: now, words become the last thrills of waiting arts

[6:57:21 AM] Obododimma: chat-upon-chat,

[6:57:30 AM] David Seaman: Last time I was in Venice I had pasta with squid in its ink. The spaghetti wrote a poem with it

[6:57:47 AM] Ruth Lepson: when I was in venice I was mesmerized

[6:57:51 AM] Obododimma: let poems begin to write poets

[6:57:51 AM] Eva Dabara: tingling at my fingertips yet so vague

[6:58:14 AM] Ruth Lepson: eva is so female

[6:58:23 AM] Obododimma: begin to try other lives

[6:58:33 AM] Ruth Lepson: try on try on

[6:58:38 AM] Eva Dabara: thanks Ruth, I try not to be SO female

[6:58:49 AM] Ruth Lepson: i mean in a good way

[6:58:53 AM] Obododimma: from the tail of tel-aviv to drumming ibadans

[6:59:15 AM] Obododimma: or new mexicoes mixed in the mist

[6:59:16 AM] Ruth Lepson: tales of tel-aviv telescoped

[6:59:42 AM] Philip Meersman: poems write poets creating names and games to untangle the pasta letters in the mama-mia soup

[6:59:53 AM] Ruth Lepson: octavio paz said once poets were bards then they were ambassadors now they are professors

[7:00:01 AM] Obododimma: when screaming texts test their missiles

[7:00:01 AM] Craig Saper: almost completely forgotten now

[7:00:12 AM] Obododimma: where, when, how

[7:00:19 AM] Ruth Lepson: almost completely

[7:00:29 AM] Obododimma: could the earth unveil it virginity?

[7:00:47 AM] Ruth Lepson: it could but it won't we are so bad

[7:01:04 AM] Eva Dabara: whose talking about missiles? We have them in abundance here in Israel. It's a real THREAT buddy...

[7:01:11 AM] Obododimma: poetry will

[7:01:20 AM] Obododimma: because it could

[7:01:39 AM] Obododimma: from this tech to that tech

[7:02:00 AM] Obododimma: visions of voiced distances

[7:02:07 AM] Craig Saper: eerily prophetic

[7:02:09 AM] Philip Meersman: words wave over the www whilst veiled ideas wander around to find evidence of virginity on the earth so to

[7:02:25 AM] Eva Dabara: words are like chewing gum - you can never really digest them

[7:02:49 AM] Ruth Lepson: she said, It's not a treat. It's just gum.

[7:03:00 AM] Obododimma: can this song ever, stop, eva?

[7:03:18 AM] Ruth Lepson: evaevaevaevaevaevaeva

[7:03:36 AM] Obododimma: can this stop leave its tops for another under?

[7:04:06 AM] Ruth Lepson: ani shohachti col haavrit sha ani yodait (I have have forgotten all the hebrew I once knew)

[7:04:19 AM] Obododimma: the roots of ruths in my truth

[7:04:31 AM] Obododimma: will being a flowering

[7:04:35 AM] Ruth Lepson: ruth rode in my new car

[7:04:39 AM] Ruth Lepson: in the seat beside me

[7:04:45 AM] Ruth Lepson: we hit a bump at 65

[7:04:49 AM] Ruth Lepson: and rode on ruthlessly

[7:04:55 AM] Obododimma: next --text-ex

[7:05:10 AM] Ruth Lepson: next, please.

[7:05:17 AM] Ruth Lepson: text, please.

[7:05:21 AM] Ruth Lepson: ex, please.

[7:05:29 AM] Obododimma: ease, please

[7:05:39 AM] Eva Dabara: ex please

[7:05:41 AM] Obododimma: tease the words of the worlds

[7:05:54 AM] Obododimma: x-tents

[7:06:02 AM] Ruth Lepson: where is craig?

[7:06:04 AM] Obododimma: of nomadic words

[7:06:27 AM] Obododimma: hiding in second life

[7:06:29 AM] Craig Saper: beep beep

[7:06:36 AM] Ruth Lepson: haha

[7:07:00 AM] Obododimma: :D www (yawn) www

[7:07:01 AM] Philip Meersman: just read without hearing sound myself

[7:07:27 AM] Ruth Lepson: pumpkin faces abound on the ground

[7:07:32 AM] Philip Meersman: like a fish in a bowl swimming being watched seeing lips move but no sound

M] Eva Dabara: da

 

--

*Ruth Lepson’s cat, drinking milk and watching TV, as reported by Lepson in an earlier chat.

**Some participants in the e-poetry festival

 

 "Until now I always felt a stranger in this town, and that I'd no concern with you people. But now that I've seen what I have seen, I know that I belong here whether I want it or not. This business is everybody's business."

from The Plague by Albert Camus

(Poetic Works on Health & Illness in Human Experience)

The body as a text or network of texts - as a sign, a signified or a signifier, as a myth - articulated and performed by the self , the I, or by instinct, and read variously by the other, the I, the we, the subject, or the object, achieves complexity especially when set in illness and health narratives. The languages of the body in such contexts, as configured in cultural works, especially through a poetic insight, would be undoubtedly useful in trying to understand how health related to the vegetal, animal or human world is art and/or science, or how possible contaminations between science and art can transfer to scientific art, or artistic science by considering psychology and sociology as sciences of the behavior respectively of the single and of the many, religion and philosophy as sciences of the mind or of the metaphysical, medicine and biology as manifest sciences of the body.

Poetic works that feature, interrogate, or probe health/illness representations in culture and society are hereby invited for publication on the Poets’ Corner. The editors, Obododimma Oha and Anny Ballardini, are particularly interested in artwork that presents illness and health in unusual but inspiring modes with the aim of shedding light on the nature of both. Unusual and intuitive readings should become tools to dismantle the spiraling maelstrom of malady or to forge a consciousness to enlighten the human being in the acceptance of what is if and whenever change or improvement is impossible. Poetry should rise to the height of medical science as an assistant, an advisor, or as the healer, be it at a physical or metaphysical level.

Welcome are works that seek to present poetic languages of the mentally challenged, the aphasic, the traumatized, the schizophrenic, as well as any kind of disease, be it infectious like AIDS, or “generational” like cancer, be it connected with what is usually seen as a seasonal minor collapse like viral influenza, or with accidents that change the lives of the victims.

The present contextualization could broaden to include the idea of a nation as a single community, a constitutional body characterized by illnesses or healthy states. It could also visualize, and still not be limited to, various economic systems with their dangerous trends/breaths sweeping away hopes or bringing in new ambitious projects, be them healthy or ill. The same history of art or literary criticism could be reviewed under the lens of variables that determine the health or the illness of the category. 

Visual artwork, poems, poetic fiction, poetic nonfiction, and photographs to be submitted for consideration should go beyond the traditional mimetic to narrate distortions, out-of-the-body experiences, virtual thrills and/or gratuitous hallucinations.  

Visual works and photographs are to be saved in JPEG format; texts, which should not have rigid formatting, in Word. All submissions should be emailed to the editors anny.ballardini@gmail.com and obodooha@gmail.com by December 1, 2009 with "Health & Illness" in the Subject line.

by
Obododimma Oha 

Government is just a kid, his father says.

I cast a casual glance at the boy sitting on the engine of the groaning bus that is making its tortured way through a winding road with several potholes that bared their teeth to the approaching thread-worn tires. Just a kid. The hot engine is roasting his arse, as if to punish him for not being old enough to earn the right to occupy a full seat on the bus. Does he like it? I don’t think so. I could see him twisting and shifting, but he cannot complain. Yes, he has to earn the right to complain too. Kids don’t complain, although they can bleat.

Here in this ancient town with rusted memory children are not qualified to occupy full seats at public gatherings, in churches, on buses. It is the custom that younger people surrender their seats to elderly ones, as a mark of respect. It is normally seen as unusual for adults to stand when children occupy seats at public places. Occupying a seat when others stand is thus a mark of some superiority, of power over the other. The one who seats is sitting on the other; the one who stands understands his or her subordination to the other and accepts it. Even in churches; yes, even in churches. The church warden would walk up to the child that is occupying a seat and with boiling rage pull him or her up. Hey you, comot!. Abi you no see dat baba or mama decked in asoke and beads and bathed in expensive perfume? You no get respect? You fit give one hundred Naira? When e reach offertory time now, you go collect dirty five Naira note from ya  mama and go dropam for di  offertory box. How much blessing you think say dat fit get for you? Sometime sef I dey think you yeye children dey pocket di money and just dip ya yeye empty hand into di offertory box. Oya, disappear! And so the child is chased away from the presence of the Lord to allow the adults the opportunity to talk more seriously with God about things they have done and things they have failed to do. And God is watching. God the elderly, with a long white beard. God the elder for elders.

Where then is the God of children? In those days, our village used to celebrate a feast called obi umuaka (literally, the heart of a child), which involved rituals of return to, and honouring of, the innocence of childhood. We made images of children in clay, decorated them, and heaped gifts on them. We wished for a return to childhood, to have its purity once again. More than being just a celebration of innocence, we made vows to love and care for children with all our hearts. We asked Chukwu-abia-amuma to not only give us children but also to give us the hearts to love them.

But those where the days, as we are told now, when we where in the state of childhood, cultural childhood. Those where the days when we thought and reasoned like children, we are now told. We have left those cultural practices behind in order to become the people of the culture of adulthood, and seem to want to forget childhood and innocence forever.

 That’s one reason the child has no seat in the adulterated spaces in our hearts.

On the public buses in this town with rusted memory, children may occupy seats meant for adults, but their parents don’t always like this. Imagine paying the same fare for the child as for the adult, they grumble.   Doesn’t that mean that children are now equal to adults? Well, one solution devised to prevent such an upgrading of the child from hurting the adult ego in this ancient town with rusty roofs and rusting lives is to make children sit on top of one another on the same seat on the same bus. Even if there are five children of the same parent traveling, they have to sit on one another. Five children times one (seat) are equal to one! Why is that conductor complaining?  No mind am jare! Olosi. Alakori! Na im get this bus? Abi di bus dey complain? And so the politics of space learns to recognize age as one of its important variables in this ancient town with rusted memory…

 To have Government occupy a full seat meant for adults is to spoil him, reasons his father. Kids should not be spoilt with such luxury.  Oh, the world has changed. When Government’s father was a kid, was he not always going to school on foot? A distance of 10 kilometers! And he always had to fetch water from the stream, fetch fodder for goats, sweep the compound… and still get to school before the morning assembly. Let Government have the opportunity to learn.

And what’s this talk about going to school with shoes on? Is he going for a party?

At the next bus stop, the bus makes a temporary stop for some passengers to disembark. Several hawkers rush in, struggling to get the passengers to buy their wares. Buns. Biscuits. Bread. Confectionery. Government looks hungrily at a woman hawking buns, what the children prefer to call make-me-well. Hot buns! Hot buns! Buy hot buns! She screams, trying to push her tray through the window to let the passengers see how tantalizing the bakes are. One passenger cannot resist it and buys a twenty-Naira worth. He is munching away fast. Government is looking at him, involuntarily licking his lips and swallowing his own invisible chew. His eyes make repeated journeys from the man’s fingers to the man’s mouth. Government looks at his father. His father returns the look, but what Government finds there is a harsh statement of rebuke. Greedy goat, his father’s eyes say. And so Government folds back in fear and suppressed anger. In his pocket, he still has the five Naira note given to him by his mother. That is for his lunch. Five Naira rice, no meat, to be bought from Mama Rice at Ukwu-mango at lunchtime. Five Naira rice wrapped in ute leaves.  He dares not use it now to buy make-me-well, not when his father is here! Government swallows hard. Inside, he is crying. I can swear for that. He is, and I can hear a thousand griefs explode in his young soul. He is crying, but must not let his face betray him, never.  He has learnt from experience that crying is not a language adults like his father understand. Crying doesn’t quite make it; it rather breaks it.

Government’s father and mother always say kids must not carry bellies without carrying commonsense. When the family is at table, the adults eat bigger chunks of meat and the kids watch the struggles in their adult mouths and throats and pray for the time when they would be old enough to eat so much meat. So much meat, yes, so much meat. The inside of an adult must really smell strongly of meat from sacrifices, Christmas goats and chicken…. So much meat for one to begin to smell of meat! Government hopes that when he’s grown up, he would eat a whole cow leg alone, to compensate for all the meat he has been denied in childhood. Government father always reminds him of the saying of their elders that children don’t smell of meat, rather they smell like plates of fufu. So, Government and his siblings always have to be content with filling their tummies with balls and balls of fufu. At the end, their mother bites out small pieces of meat and gives them to eat. And the children look forward to the time they would be able to divide the meat with their teeth. The one who divides meat with his or her teeth at least is rewards with the sweet taste and pieces of the meet left in the mouth.

Government’s father and mother always say kids don’t smell of meat, and Government does not like this. Why do kids not smell of meat, why? Is meat an adult thing? Is meat an adult? Government cannot find the answers and hopes to find the courage to ask his father one day.

Anyway, Government and other kids whose parents tell that kids don’t smell of meat have devised other means of making up the diet: they hunt for lizards, rats, grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars, and other unfortunate creatures that cannot escape from their raids. They catch these creatures and roast them in fires made outside their mother’s kitchens. Sometimes their mothers allow them to roast their catch in the main fireplace where food is prepared for the family. Government’s father does not bother about this; in fact, implicitly he approves of the kids hunting and eating those creatures for he believes it gives them an idea and some education about what it means to fend for oneself.

At the next bus stop, Government and his father alight, the bottom of the boy’s pants stained with grease. Government is relieved. I could read it from the look on his face. The veins that emerged on his face when he was wriggling and twisting because of the hot engine have now relaxed beneath the skin on his face, and he can even afford to whistle to the song of Musical Youth issuing from the radio on the bus…

The youths of today

The youths of today

We’re under heavy heavy malady

We’re under heavy heavy malady

 His father, to my surprise, hands me over his schoolbag and asks him to run across to the other side of the road, where his school is located. The boy collects his schoolbag and heads across the road, barely managing to hang the bag on his back. A speeding car misses him by inches. People scream and curse the driver of the car. Government’s father rains invectives on the driver too. I look him up and down, and merely shake my head. I have learnt from experience not to buy over someone else’s trouble. Last time I wanted to act as the only good fellow around, I ended up with a police case on my hands and was thoroughly messed up.

The best thing is for me to learn not to deny my children the joy of childhood.

Well, if Government is just a kid, his father must be a goat, my worried mind tells me as I walk down the pathway behind the pupils. 

by Obododimma Oha

 

The highway to Hell seems to be a helmet story.

Whenever I look at a helmet, I see an invitation to the narrative of mortality. The helmet is designed to protect the head, indeed the human skull, from being broken. When the skull breaks, its contents are spilled; life is spilled. Human beings fear this possibility and so have designed the helmet to prevent, or at least reduce the damage attendant to, the spilling of the contents of the skull. Soldiers, miners, engineers, bikers … all who are engaged in edgework know how important it is for them to preserve the contents of their skulls beyond duty and beyond fun.

Helmets thus tell us about risk-taking. They call our attention to danger and the need to be safe from it. They say to us, “Look, don’t spill the contents of your skull.”

But Hell has no fury like an appointment not kept. Hellmates would not let helmets and laws about wearing helmets keep them from their appointment with Hell. Hellmates and helmets don’t worship together.

Hellmates don’t care about helmets and the possibility of the contents of their skulls being spilled. Ordinarily, one carrying out a task that endangers the skull does not need to wait to be reminded about the necessity of a helmet for the head. It is indeed amazing that a law has to be enacted to compel riders of motorcycles to use helmets, or for such riders of motorcycles to wait to be arrested, cautioned, or fined for not wearing crash helmets. It speaks loudly about the level of recklessness that has crept into the given society.

Hellmates don’t like wearing helmets when they ride motorcycles because hell is beckoning them and they must keep the appointment. Hellmates on motorcycles try to devise tricks to deceive law-enforcement officers, or dodge where a road check is being carried out on bike riders. Why? Simply this: they don’t want anyone or anything to prevent them from going to see their mates already in Hell.

Is it about money? One hellmate would quickly tell you he or she hasn’t got the money to buy a crash helmet. The economy is in a bad shape and so he or she has to think about his or her stomach first before thinking of the skull and its contents. Another hellmate would devise this techno-trick: get a calabash, cut it into two, paint one half (red or black), pass a strap through opposite sides of the circumference, and hang it on your head. That’s speed technology or techno-hell! After all, the country has been thinking and talking about out-taiwaning Taiwan and out-shining China. Why shouldn’t that also be actualized in hellmate technology?

Another hellmate would say, “Ah, it’s just a ceremony,” and merely hangs a helmet on his or her bike, only to place it on the head when approaching a police or Road Safety check-point. After passing the law, he or she returns the helmet to the groaning bike and forgets why and when and who.

Yet, a wiser hellmate would carry his entire family on the motorcycle and only manage to get one tokunbo helmet for self. He is armed already with a powerful logic: each member of the family on the bike depends on his head, and as the head of his family, he has to wear the helmet. After all, unease lies the head that wears the helmet. The head has to ride back and forth, come rain or shine, to get some Naira, which is shared between the unsympathetic market and hellmate police officers at the checkpoint.

Is helmet the check or the check for a hellmate? Both, maybe.

Helmets have become re-imagined as transport to elsewhere. Someone somewhere, a dedicated hellmate, invents a story about how such-and-such commercial motorcycle operator gives a helmet to someone who wants his services, and that someone, sufficiently clairvoyant, refuses to wear the helmet and tells the bike rider to wear it instead. The bike rider refuses; that someone raises an alarm and people gather and pass a judgment that the rider must wear the helmet as a proof of his being a non-ritualist. The biker puts on the helmet and disappears. “No, not Nollywood”, a free reader at the newspaper stand argues, swearing by his late father’s grave.

Another variant: the commercial bike rider gives the client the helmet and bystanders are watching. The client puts the helmet on and immediately turns to a tuber of yam. Bystanders raise an alarm and rush at the bike rider. They beat him into a pulp, Lagos-mob-style, and call the police. And the police, not trained to fight crime in the realms of spirituality and superstition, ask the tuber of yam, “Are you a human being or a tuber of yam? If one plants you can you germinate? If one cooks you and pounds you, would you cooperate with egusi soup?”

So, the fear spreads, from hellmate to hellmate.

So, the helmet story turns the hellmate into a movie star.

He opens his eyes and finds the contents of his skull at the feet of a giant vulture.

And the melting roads of hellonearth pass through his memory to the limitless void....

Obododimma Oha and Anny Ballardini are pleased to announce the new Anthology on the Poets’ Corner:

While the He/art Pants: Poetic Responses to the 2008 American Elections. We wish to thank all the contributors who have made it possible, and invite you to read and spread the good news.

 

 Nna anyi egbo o! Nna anyi egbo o! ^!That is an alert, a warning, normally sounded by spectators to an mmanwu (understood by the Igbo as “masked spirit”, but often wrongly translated as “masquerade”) that is chasing someone who has run through a space where an egbo, a ritual gate (as I would translate it roughly) has been mounted. A clear case of using discourse to save both the Patient and the Agent from trouble at the same time, the egbo call enters into an ancient Igbo mechanism for conflict management. And in this case, a culturally shared system of representation provides the possibility of disarming the assailant and also offers solace to the one in danger. In fact, very often, individuals who are being chased by the mmanwu would look out for such cultural location of refuge, based on the presupposition that the mmanwu can read spatiality and know where to halt its aggression. An mmanwu that passes through an egbo with the front has spiritually destroyed itself, which is why all mmanwu (the type treated as ancestral spirits) must turn and enter an egbo with the back, at the same time bowing. An mmanwu would normally not chase somebody through an egbo, but if infuriated and has to continue the chase, it has to enter with the back.   Naturally, the mmanwu does the chasing; the individual person does the running².

Formed from the root morpheme “gbo” (which means “prevent”, “forestall”, and “separate” – as in the case of separating two people that are fighting), egbo semiotically offers us an insight into the indigenous Igbo philosophy on the discursive dimension to conflict and conflict management. The sign, thus, is presented as not just a site of conflict, but a tool and mechanism for managing it.  The egbo is a construction in the Igbo culture to stop evil, to save a helpless victim, to control the invading force (even if that force is culturally endowed with some authority, as in the case of the mmanwu), to reassure citizens about their protection in the society (i.e. that the cultural order also has made provision for their security needs, just as it has granted the power of interpellation and control to the mmanwu). This is interesting because it tends to reveal that even the elevated ancestral system is also under the cultural order and not above it. Even the mmanwu, as powerful as it is as police officer, ancestor, etc, is not above the law. In fact, it is being told that it cannot be above the system that has created and installed it.

 The egbo thus is a special portal that is protective and defensive. Similar in shape to a goal post (without the net), it is constructed with the trunks of perennial plants (preferably the ogirisi) for the posts, and another trunk (sometimes bamboo stems) connecting the two posts. This connective trunk is wrapped with ritual leaves – akoro, izizi, and okpoto. These ritual leaves/plants are believed to have the power to resist evil forces: often akoro and izizi are used in ritually dissociating oneself with evil and in cleansing, as for instance when an animal that is the totem of a deity has being accidentally killed or harmed³. The ritual leaves are therefore a strong presence in the egbo semiotic. Sometimes, too, the okpoto stem is merely placed across the entrance to the homestead or across the road⁴, to serve the same purpose of signifying “STOP” to evil.

The Igbo, in placing the egbo at the entrance of a homestead, demonstrate awareness that human beings do not just have security needs, but that such security needs might be spiritual, or that physical security problems that people have may have spiritual backgrounds or dimensions. They believe that the spiritual and the physical worlds of the human being are constantly engaged in interactions, and that to ignore the spiritual side is to move about blindly.

 Egbo may be for a family or for a community. The family egbo is placed at the entrance to the homestead, while the community egbo is placed at the entry points to the community (the roads that lead to the community). This type of egbo narrates a collective search for security in the community. One’s personal spiritual security is located in the spiritual security of one’s community, which is why if an individual commits an aru (abomination), such a person is understood as having caused spiritual disharmony both within the self and the community and must set things right by performing the required atonement (at-one-ment, playfully put) and cleansing ritual. In such a case, the individual is also perceived as an entrance to the whole community and needs to be guarded spiritually. Through one individual, evil could enter the whole community, an analogical relation to the Biblical Fall of Adam and Eve. I would, in this regard, draw attention to how woman, in Igbo philosophy, is perceived as an important kind of egbo that needs to guard the self properly. The very fact that a woman gives birth to another human being suggests her being a kind of gate through which the community is populated. The human being she brings into the community also has a spiritual selfhood, in fact begins as a spirit and manifests in the flesh through conception. And conception in Igbo thought is a decision to come and live in a given family and given community. Sometimes, such a decision is made to punish, or in atonement for misdeeds of former life, which is one reason behind the ogbanje phenomenon. A woman that does not guard herself well (both sexually and morally), may end up being the source through which an evil force would be born into the family. This also applies to men, since women are not the only actors in this human-spirit traffic. As a well-dedicated egbo, the individual watches out to ward off unwanted spiritual guests in the family and community.

 As the mobile egbo of the community, the individual is given the responsibility of defending and protecting the community from spiritual corruption. And this is sometimes made clearer in the igba ndu (covenant) in which members of the community or group vow not to allow evil to come to their fellow community members, or plan evil against them. That was one way the Igbo traditional religious system prevented conflicts in the community, for every participant in the igba ndu would not want to place personal wellbeing at risk through violating the covenant.   

 It is just not enough to construct and put up an egbo; the person that puts it up has invariably subscribed to uprightness, to not being an agent of evil, for to be otherwise is to cancel out the symbolic statement being made through the egbo, and indeed to render the egbo powerless. It is to say that one cannot hold a faith and deny its power by doing what is contrary to what that faith represents. To put up an egbo and still go on to live an immoral life, or to plan to harm others, is to weaken one’s spiritual security greatly, for the person who puts up the egbo would no longer know how vulnerable he is! Indeed, given the nature of the human being, some people do put up their egbo, with elaborate rituals and decorations, yet habour evil, or plan evil against others; in other words, putting up the egbo becomes a mere deception strategy. But in such cases, the egbo turns from being a source of protection and defence to being a curse and an invitation to evil.

With the massive Christianization of the Igbo society, only very few egbos are constructed by the remaining adherents of Igbo traditional religions. This means that the community egbo is collapsing or has virtually collapsed, and the collapse means disharmony and vulnerability of the community. It means that the egbos now present in the lives of the members of the community speak divergently and are already conflict-oriented. One finds situations where the substitute egbos currently present in Igbo communities do not just clash in their forms and meanings, but tend to destroy sense of community.

 Another consequence is that the nnukwu mmanwu (the big masked spirits) (as rich and important people are metaphorically referred to in the contemporary Igbo society) no longer watch out or listen to warning calls about the presence of some egbos. Of course, some of these nnukwu mmanwu seek spiritual security, sometimes engaging in secret human sacrifice in the hope of obtaining this security. But what they obtain is not an egbo that protects and defends against evil. In fact, what they obtain is not an egbo at all.  What they obtain is a curse for their families and communities.

It is important that we begin to think, as individuals and members of our communities, how we can benefit from the ancient idea of the Igbo egbo, and learn how to manage ourselves as authentic egbos  that could protect our communities, and prevent forms of behavoiur that endanger our existence. One unfortunate thing about our embrace of modernity and Western frameworks of thought is that we cannot reconcile them with relationships and values in our local communities. Unfortunately, too, we tend to disregard indigenous systems of thought, which we could revise and apply in some fruitful ways to our contemporary needs. As we have seen in this essay, the Igbo egbo provides an insight -- it is indeed a paradigm -- for conflict prevention, ethics and self-management, as well as community engineering.

 

Notes

¹Nna anyi egbo o! means: “Our Father (look out) (there is) an egbo”. The masquerade is addressed in the familial term as “father” because it is seen as the presence of the dead ancestor. It is also a term invested with affection and respect, which shows how the masked spirit is accepted in the culture, even if it enacts violence. Often the violence is seen as a means of correcting and teaching an erring “child” a lesson.

 ²It would be an abomination to stand up to the mmanwu as the presence of the ancestors. Unfortunately, one of the ways through which early (and even modern) Christian converts in Igbo societies (have) tried to demonstrate their strong Christian convictions was/has been to resist the mmanwu, to fight, or abuse the mmanwu, which is symbolically referred to as itikwe isi mmuo or ikpo ntum. Considered a big crime, it is what Enoch actualizes in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, which forces the Mother Spirit to emerge --- something that rarely happens -- to roam the night and mourn her murdered son. And all the mmanwu throughout the land (one of them called "Ekwensu" came from Uli), according to Achebe, to teach the Christians a lesson. We find a similar representation of confrontation with the mmanwu in Pete Edochie's film on St Tansi, called, Avenge Me, Iwene My Son. The saint is portrayed in the film as physically confronting the local mmanwu that were preventing his parishoners from moving about freely to attend to their Christian religious obligations. Both priest and ancestral spirit --- each costumed according to the variety of his spirituality (the priest in priestly vestment and the masquerade in smoked raffia skirt) engage in what looked like a wrestling match. Of course, from another perspective, one could see the wrestling as not just being physical but also spiritual, with the Priest Saint no longer satisfied with the doctrine of turning the other cheek, but opting for spiritual violence against the traditional religious system. 

³ In Uli clan, anyone in the traditional religion who sees a dead eke the royal python (maybe run over by a vehicle), would symbolically absolve self from blame (or dissociate self from the aru) by plucking some akoro and izizi, rubbing it across the eyes and whispering his or her innocence to the goddess whose totem is the snake. To leave the scene with showing some deep feelings of commiseration, or to rejoice at the fate of the eke, is believed to arouse the wrath of the goddess. 

⁴The egbo is not constructed by just anybody. It is often done by the traditional priest or an ozo-titled person and dedicated by them too. This is because the ozo-tilted man is seen as a holy person in the Igbo culture. The same perception applies to the priest, even though this reverence has been abused greatly in modern times. Further, women do not tie or dedicate the egbo; it is a purely masculine affair. This may have to do with the predominant patriarchal nature of the society and the assumption that the man is the spiritual gate-keeper in the community and the family. But even if women do not tie or dedicate the egbo, they nevertheless have and do perform other important spiritual roles in the community.

 

Flashlight*
 
 
name the juncture where your flock stops --- abattoir
 
name the scrub brush where your nose stops --- the petals of a flower sent by a

                                                                             secret lover
 
name the potion where your eggplant stops --- an argument cooked by a

                                                                            neighbour's dog when you peep in
 
name the ice where your beaning stops ------ the silence of the rooster in the

                                                                         State House
 
name the flomax where your pulling stops ---- when your interests read minus one
 
name the tumbler where your thong stops ---- the feeling going stale
 
name the twaddle where your voting stops----  the open mouth of the pair of shoes

                                                                            you wore to the first variety show
 
name the syntax where your flutter stops ----- the stammer of the gate-keeper

                                                                            when  s/he sees your beard
 
name the pistol where your thinking stops ---- oh no, Miami joystick
 
name the torture where your cabbage stops  ---- having the cake you cannot eat
 
name the tendon where your larynx stops ----- a promise to buy you a walking

                                                                             stick before your retirement!
 
name the bondo where your forking stops ----- the last lines of a poem not yet written
 
name the lather where your flashlight stops ---- when a lover goes away with a

                                                                              rodeo man

(Obododimma, boldly answering John Bennett's riddles. Bennett's original poem is in normal font; mine in bold)

 

--------------------------

Note

*John Bennett wrote the poem “Flashlight” and I responded, inserting my voice within his, my meanings inhabiting his, continuing his, in bold font. My response cannot be without his poem, cannot have meaning without his. A complement, it begins only where Bennett's poem speaks.

Is your son just a kid

When you are not a goat?

Is your kid

Just learning how to bleat

When you are teaching him

How to talk?

Is your kid’s bleating

Impossible to clone

When his future

Is only three raps away

From dumbness?

 

When he learns to talk again

Will he not teach you this:

Children are humans

In search of a better language of love

 

  

 

--- Obododimma Oha

 

 

 

 

13th verse re-
Versed come into
            came
because Tenses become
           very tense
after climbing to the 13th floor of an idea

from where they stare at the stairs made of words

Each floor, each narrative

                  Plastered with conversations

                        Tortured by goings & comings, goings of comings

And what dreams that bob or sob after this prufrock 

 

12^th verse, re-

Calls the requiem

Re-

Cites colours of thought

                        Flying

Between many unseens

                        Some living in the questions,

You could never ask

                        Forgetting the answers

 

11^th verse re-

Treats the sick-same

One after one

                    Binaries

Of Janus looking

                    Behind, before, within

               siamesed

 

elevens even, a step ascending also descends

into many undecipherables

 

10^th verse re-

Stores stolen moments hanging

                 Above speech & appetite

Au revoirs of missed serenades

As you drink the jazz

As you chew the challenge

                        Of late afternoons

 

Not long your shoes will choose

Between kissing pebbles & re-

                           Collecting the affections of the sand

 

 

9^th verse re-

Commends what demands

                        A little fragile future

Cannot but stay & tremble, weary

Perhaps maybe however in case

You step on hellos that passed this way

Of course perhaps somehow maybe

                        A little confidence tortures

 

8^th verse re-

Quests positions, oppositions

                        To two zeroes copulating

Messages in the byways, this hand & this hand

                                         These limits to a fusion

Ranked

 

 

 

7^th versa re-

Members how odds become even

Just one sign before derridas

                        Reading the unwritten

For the closed books & open screens

For the drowsy theories & playful comments

 

Wishing

 

6^th verse re

Creates the maybes of nines standing head-down

                                                Like little voyeurs

Playing after the hidden known

A yoke here, a joke there

About what the sight tells the sound

 

Temptingly

 

5^th verse re-

Cords the accord between

                                    Foresight & hindsight

To wait as the fruits of reason refuse to drop

From our harvest of laughter

 

Echoing

 

4^th verse re-

Turns that leg crossed over desire

                                    Closest to leaving

This active geometry at vague angles

That roused reproach

 

Calling

 

3^rd verse re-

Imagines split eights and kissing zeroes

Meta, more forces

Congregating closest to landing

 

2^nd verse re-

Lives the twists & turns of meeting & parting

                                            In streams of light

Which flow this strangely

Which run from nerve to nerve

 

Hymning

 

1^st verse re-

Touches a stroke of the binary, lonely

Will always want another

 

To write your reading

 

 

 

 

--- Obododimma Oha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               

I made an excursion to the cemetery at Windhoek Central yesterday. I did not initially plan to visit the cemetery; my aim was to take a walk and to find a very lonely place where I could sit and read Jerry Jay Carroll's Top Dog, a fascinating novel about Mr. Ingersol, an American businessman, who falls into a coma and finds that he has been changed into a dog by a wizard so that he would assist the forces of the Dark One  to defeat the forces of the Bright Giver. Well, my search for a lonely place where I could read this bizarre story led me to that final resting place of many who had walked the streets of Windhoek before I did. It was perhaps a coincidence, but it eventually acquired some significance for me as I stood in that lonely place, with a novel about life beyond this life in my hand. Instead of sitting down and reading Top Dog, I moved from tombstone to tombstone reading epitaphs that, in very tearful ways, narrated the experience of loss, memorialized the deceased in tenors of heroism, and sculpted the values and visions of consolation in life-after-life.  I started wondering whether those whose epitaphs I read had the same kind of experience narrated by Ingersol. Were they bad enough to be considered worthy candidates who would assist the forces of darkness to win their war over the Bright Giver? Ingersol, in the story, is chosen because he is considered sufficiently mean and morally debased as a businessman, but unfortunately Mogwert, the powers working within the ranks of the Dark One, consider him a poor specimen. They do not think he is bad enough to assist in fighting the Bright Giver and destroying the works of the Bright Giver (which included Ingersol himself, incidentally), and so send him on trial to the Balwar, a place of no-return where the Dark One and the Bright Giver had a fight in elan time. I gradually found a better climate of mind to read Top Dog and to reflect on death and dying as a journey to the unknown, to uncertainty, as well as the endless struggle between good and evil, darkness and light.

This morning, I learned from a post on POETICS listserv that David Foster Wallace was found dead in his house on Friday 12 September 2008. I was terribly shocked. And my mind immediately went back to the excursion I made to the cemetery yesterday and the reflection on epitaphs and modes of exeunt and the Bright Giver and the Dark One... and the question of being recruited against one's wish to destroy oneself! What could have led David Foster Wallace to take his own life, to leave his dear family, his dear colleagues, his highly celebrated works, his wonderful career, to hang himself? How could he have submitted to the desire to destroy himself, a rare genius created by the Bright Giver? 

That David Foster Wallace hanged himself? Shocking! I think this is the lived side of his story in Infinite Jest. Fiction, I think, has won. I don't know what fact is going to do. All the sentences sentence us to transitions beyond the medium of the message. Footnotes and footmarks: unwritten signs and hanging conclusions.

Albert Camus was probably right in stating that suicide is "one truly philosophical problem...." All the reasons that are often offered to explain why people take their lives --- their lives as their own possession which they could deal with as they like; their lives as being worthless, disappointing, unbearable, their being unprepared to subject their lives to shame; etc --- are indeed mere starting points to the inquiry on suicide and its significance as means of making the journey out of the flesh. 


I am thinking about the ropes of suicidal exit...

Ropes that tie up our breath & steal our speech.
Ropes of wrath or reason?
Ropes that numb our feelings.
Ropes that try to strangle literature.
Ropes of signs we can't decipher.
Ropes, knotting the future, releasing the past.

Ropes...

--- Obododimma Oha

 
hurry, the storm holds a cane
ready to flog

every thing that waits in its way,

every thing that says “I aint scared!”

 

the storm rages forth & rages against

every land that rebelled against the waters long long ago

 

in the boiling rage

in the growl & swelling devilry

the storm hurries

to pull down to wreck every nest

to tear out the fast-beating heart of the stranded bird

 

racing back, racing forth

to build its fury to gather its speed

the storm hurries to cane to maim to drag to kill to scatter

gathers scatters, gathers to scatter

now the next & the next next

 

it rails against the reason

of those wanting to wait

it frowns at towns beyond its reach

it swears to return to stun to spread more misery around

 

hurry now, hurry now, moans the gale

the storm holds a horrible cane

And strips our courage bare in its violent rage.

 

--- Obododimma Oha

 

 

 

 

 

My pay slip arrives, bringing my sorrows

The little piece of paper shatters my peace

It comes, speaking

About taxes that task my confidence

About bills higher than my hire

About bouts with whereabouts & what to show for it

 

The little piece of paper comes

To remind me

About money I’ve already spent without touching it

 

Who takes my money

Never cares to take my cares

And makes me wonder if ‘spending’

Could be spelled without a sentencing ‘s’

And a policing ‘p’.

 

 

-- Obododimma Oha

Silence is used in doing many things in interactions with other people. Generally, we remain silent so as to hear what the other is saying, for where two people that are conversing are talking at the same time, none of them really hears the other well. We remain silent to allow the other to speak, to respect turn-taking, and so maintain orderliness in our interaction.

Other reasons for keeping silent in discourse are:
*Reflecting on an idea, and wanting to be able to make the right choices (in speech and action)
*Studying the other interactants or the situation
*Withdrawing into oneself, out of annoyance
*Making the other suffer psychologically (as in spousal and lover's quarrels)
*Making the other uncomfortable, i.e. making the other worry about what the self feels, or is likely to do
*Suggesting the self as being a more civilized and patient person
*Indicating that one has nothing to say, or does not want to say anything
*Indicating preference for contemplative life, as in the case of monks
*Suggesting respect for the other
*Indicating fear of the other (i.e. an indication of timidity)
*Avoiding saying what would put one in trouble, or
*Withholding information (often done by people  who do not want to cooperate when they are being interrogated by law enforcement officers)
*Showing disrespect (in some cultures)

Keeping silent thus is a kind of "language" that communicates our unverbalized feelings and inclinations. It plays a very important role in the way we, or our roles, are perceived in the interaction. Thus it is sometimes encouraged as a means of constructing a respectable personality, which is why Proverbs 17:28 says: "Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is thought to be wise".

Some people tend to believe that it is better to keep quiet than say something that the other dislikes or does not want to hear. Silence in such a case is a strategy for keeping out of trouble. The women's wing of Uli Town Union in Ibadan, Nigeria, think that this practice is rather a form of conspiracy which some of their members could use to protect the interest of some of their erring members. In other words, the union would not allow its members to use the conspiracy of silence to undermine truth and justice in its fold. For them, therefore, silence is not always golden. And what have they done about it? Simply this: they have made a law that whenever an issue is being discussed at their meetings, every member must make a contribution, must speak up, and failing to do so, would pay a fine! Don't speak and pay a fine! Call it compulsory speaking.

Paying a penalty for one's silence could look like an injustice, but this is where group dictatorship again wins by law. Refusing to speak when a discussion is going on and being anxious to speak when one has been fined for not speaking presents an irony. Indeed, those women are very wise and understand that the survival of their group depends largely on the verbal and non-verbal behaviours of their members. A meeting, they believe, cannot achieve anything significant with silence, even though, in some cases, a member could be penalized for speaking, for instance:

*When another member is given the floor and another interrupts, not as a way of raising a point of correction, or out-of-order
*When the chairperson orders a member that is speaking to stop, and the member ignores the order
*When a member makes remarks that amount to an insult of the group, or its chairperson
*When the group wants to observe a moment of silence for a deceased colleague
*When a member wants to derail the meeting through irrelevant comments.

So, being a member of this women's group becomes a training on Communicative Competence (cf.       

http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/commcomp.htm )  and rhetoric of group interaction. Indeed, in being members of groups, we learn Life Skills (cf.http://www.unicef.org/lifeskills/index_whichskills.html)-- more specifically Group Interaction Skills. We learn how to endure the censorship of our rights to speak or not to speak. Ordinarily, everyone has the right to remain silent -- which is normally announced/observed in the Miranda declaration that law enforcement agents make when they place people under arrest (see  
http://www.hmichaelsteinberg.com/yourmirandarights.htm) . But when you surrender your membership to the women's group that I have referred to in this article, your Miranda Silence rule fails to protect you. Your Miranda Silence rule is revised, and it appears to announce that you have no right to remain silent in a group discussion because you are homo loquens, the speaking animal. It tells you that being group-effective and productive means rethinking the uses of silence, and settling for eloquence that builds the group.  It tells you that silence is not  always golden, but sometimes conspiratorial in group interactions.

I think that those who associate femininity with talking need to pay closer attention to how women try to manage their homo loquens to achieve stability and promote fairness in their groups. The case of compulsory speaking I have focused on shows how the group understands its challenges and pursuits, and designs a strategy -- which may appear unusual -- in working towards achieving its goals. It would be interesting to know whether such a strategy would work in a cross-sex group interaction, with or without women in the leadership of such groups.

--- Obododimma Oha

Writers -- and artists generally -- have problems in making their art feed them. Many writers  that live on their writing are poor, very poor. Only few are lucky to win prizes that provide them with enough cash to live the rest of their lives in relative comfort. Many writers, especially poets, just can't  get their works published, and even if they do, the market is simply not there. They have to keep giving out the books (which they published with their money) as complimentary copies! Living on one's art in a world where values have changed simply looks like suicide. It is in the context of this challenge of living on one's art that I remember the traditional flutist, Unoka, who is presented as being so attached to fluting in Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart. In a society where every man tries to distinguish himself through the cultivation of yams, marrying many wives, and taking many titles, Unoka appears to be satisfied with simply sitting in his compound to play his flute.

 

             Plate One: Unoka playing his flute, as visualized in TV adaptation of Things Fall Apart

 

Does his name, "Unoka", not suggest that it is better for him to remain at "home" (with his oja in his mouth) while others are away in their farms with their cutlasses and hoes in their hands?

What does he live by and on and for?

Just his oja ofoogeri that ironically speaks about his weakness and irresponsibility.

His visualization in Plate One above speaks little about a man that is serious about other things.

Just oja ofoogeri.

His posture says that he is:

Consumed by his art;

Fully absorbed in the jazz and poetry and philosophy of the wind instrument;

Talking to the world beyond the world that looks at his inclination with disdain;

Talking through a medium that also talks to him, about him.

His medium his message, his selfhood.

Living by the art of living with art, for art.

Becoming his art.

Plate Two: Okonkwo (left) confronts his father over his attachment to his flute and looks away disdainfully

 

For Unoka's wife and his son, Okonkwo (who has distinguished himself in the clan as a successful farmer and great wrestler), Unoka is a terrible disgrace. The issue here is not that the society does not value art (or does not appreciate the skills of the flutist). Indeed, in the Igbo culture, the flutist is an important performer in the context of wrestling, masquerading, war, etc as he uses his flute to move individuals to greater feats, eulogizing, philosophizing, encouraging.

Plate Three: Unoka defends his oja, reminding his angry wife how she had, as a young girl, fallen in love with him because of his fluting skills

 

            Ask Unoka to be separated from his Oja (or flute), and you spoil his happiness, you destroy a life, indeed you ruin a world he has chosen for himself, against the wishes of friend and family.

Plate Four: A visualization of  the bitterness and hurt reflected on his face, after his wife has upbraided him for living by the flute

 

Perhaps Unoka's cultural and temporal contexts were part of the problem: the Umuofia society does not provide him with enough opportunity to make his fluting skills lead him to success in life.  Do the Igbo people not say that: okwa oja na-eficha imi (literally, the flutist also wipes the nose)? In other words, he deserves some compensation and material support for being an artist. If Unoka were, for instance, to be discovered as a talent and made to play his oja before a modern audience in search of some folkloric fun, he could have become an instant celebrity. Were he to perform as a member of Yanni's jazz orchestra, he would have made a name. But he is located in cultural and historical moment where his fluting means little more what the Igbo refer to as "ofoogeri" (roughly translated as "orientation to irresponsibility", or as "one that makes irresponsible behaviour a way of life). His ofoogeri means that  he is wasting his life and opportunity to succeed in life. In the Igbo judgment, his oja ofoogeri  is a distraction from a pursuit of authentic nwokeness (or masculinity). An ideal nwoke, in the Igbo idea, is not an idler, not one who fiddles away his life and his time, not one who is not bothered about catching up with his peers in industry and material achievement.

It is an irony that an artist like Unoka would spend his energy and time praising other people into success in life, but he himself never becomes successful, even as a flutist. He is just one of the means through which others identify their road to success, through which others affirm for their chi (personal spirit) to affirm also. His is the disgrace from which others define their honour. He would finally become the dead body that is exiled to the evil forest for his community to save the body of the Ala from being defiled. Even while alive, is he not quite an exile within his own community? An exilic condition created by his living by his oja ofoogeri!

Living by the flute makes Unoka an exile, both in life and in death. So sad.

Unoka is not just a character; he is also a theory on art as a profession and  its cultural challenges.

His lines of chalk -- an arithmetic of poverty -- rise into the semiotic of binary failure.

What is the content  of Unoka's happiness, especially when he laughs at his failure to pay off his debts?

Is the life of living by the oja ofoogeri not a performance of one's final exile to the evil forest?

---- Obododimma Oha

An unsafe world undresses us. An unsafe world is a naked world, a vulnerable world. Those that travel in it are forced to submit to being turned inside-out, and those whose job it is to search travelers in an unsafe world appear to be doing so partly as a call of duty, and partly because they enjoy this privilege granted to them by the law to see what people would want to keep hidden.

When I traveled recently from Lagos to Windhoek, I came to this realization that turning passengers and their luggage inside-out may have become a source of thrill for customs officials and airport police. Search and search and re-search and research. And questions about quests and requests for inquests. You are carrying candy, why? what is inside the candy? What are those? Batteries? You cannot carry batteries on you on a plane. And those local beads? where is the receipt that the local illiterate dealer issued to you when you bought them at the craft shop? Ok, are  you sure they are really beads? We must take them first to the lab to find out. Did you say you can't afford to miss your flight? Who says you are cleared to fly? Who gave you the wings?

Now at the screening machine: remove your jacket, let us sniff at it for the backstreet odours. Ah, you still have your shoes on? Remove them and hand them over to the machine; you must walk across the narrow gate bare-footed, for you are standing on Esu's holy ground. Remove your belt, please. Did I hear you say your pants would sag? That is important too; we need to see what moves inside those garments. And did I hear you say I'm scattering the things you packed neatly, that I am creasing the garments you had ironed very well? What do you take me for? Are you teaching me how I go do my job? Well, you go beg me make I search you, I swear! You go beg and beg, sotee you tire!

Search and search and re-search and research about search. I thought seriously about making it a research trip; a research about search. The searcher and the searched undressing my thoughts.
The search for the searcher in the psychology of sadism and meanness.

Search at one point; re-search at another point. Search and research in Lagos; re-search of the searched in Johannesburg. Maybe you were not searched well in Lagos. Maybe some spirits handed back those unwanted things to you in the air as you flew across. We can't trust flying criminals.

Perhaps the best thing to do when one is going to pass through airports to get to one's destination nowadays is not to dress up at all. Instead of removing one's shoes, belt, jacket , etc at several checkpoints, one should just carry those in one's hands and finally dress up when one gets to one's destination. That is even a better way to undress my sweating thoughts.

--- Obododimma Oha

On an Afo market day, some forty-something years ago, I was brought into this world, without my permission. I was not given an opportunity to say whether I wanted to come into this world and where, precisely, I wanted to be born. Surely, the world is an exciting place to be, and so, I have every reason to think that my chi (my personal spirit, according to Igbo traditional belief) reasoned well. One does not wrestle with one's chi and expect to be victorious. One can only affirm, and one's chi would affirm. One does not quarrel with one's chi. To do that is to create disharmony between one's spirit and one's humanity. I, have, therefore, decided not to wrestle with my chi over the matter of my birth, but rather to make some affirmations about how to live it, in which case my chi would also have to give me all the spiritual support.

I was not aware that I had been born when it happened on 23rd June (according to the European calendar). My right to know was not granted immediately. I have had to grow to claim it instead. That I was born on an Afo Market day (according to the Igbo calendar), or on 23rd June, is therefore a matter of quotation. So, when I am asked, "When were you born?" I prefer to say, "23rd June, on an Afo Market day, according to my parents." My parents were both the principal actors and witnesses to the fact that I happened. They conspired with my chi to bring me into this world. And they, too, reasoned well.

I was born at home. This was how my mother saw it happen: she had just returned from the funeral ceremony of one of my father's aunties in a nearby village, when her labour started. Imagine that. She had gone to witness the ceremony of somebody's exit from earthly life, and, few hours later, would be bringing in another soul into this world. One dies, another is born. Going and coming. What an interesting traffic! I suspect that I must have exchanged greetings with that auntie who was returning to the spiritworld, somewhere along the spirit highway. She must have said, "Hey, Old man, take it easy. Your mother is just leaving my funeral and needs to get home before you arrive." My mother got home, and because of my haste, had no opportunity of going to a hospital or maternity home before I rushed out with the umbilical cord around my neck, screaming "Why?! Why?! Why?!" I landed on the banana leaves that my mother quickly cut and spread on the ground before the local birth attendant arrived. My mother! Such a brave woman. She, the woman in labour; she, the birth attendant. My brave and wonderful mother!

My mother told me that she hated taking medication when I was in the womb. She said that she always threw away the capsules and tablets she was given at the ante-natal, and preferred to eat fruits, vegetable, and (surprisingly) to take some gin! well, I don't know how these have affected me, but I have also found that I hate taking capsules and tablets. For me, my food (especially fruits and vegetables) is also my medicine. I suspect that I have, to some extent, inherited some of my mother's ways of eating. It must have started when I was in the womb and depended on her nutrition.

My sage-headed father must have been highly pleased with my birth that he named me "Obododimma", a name, which, depending on the tone-placement, could mean any of the following: "The society that is good"; "The society is good"; "If the society is good". I prefer the third interpretation: if the society is good, it would benefit everyone. The society is not yet good; so I would be lying if I tell others through the name I bear that the society is good. The society is bad, very bad, and I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson that it is against "the manhood (and womanhood) of everyone of its members". We can make society good by having the courage to recognize the badness of society and working to eliminate, or, at least, minimize it. And we must begin with ourselves. Perhaps one way of beginning with ourselves is to tell ourselves that we are the society that is good; in other words, to challenge ourselves to contribute in creating a good society. Yes.

This old man has just been born.
This old man is a baby today.
His blood and his mother's blood mixing
On the banana leaf
This old man asking the same old question:
Why? Why? Why?
He cries his birth
This old man lying on banana leaves....


-- Obododimma Oha 

You are

            Where

You live

 

The smells

            Of your thoughts

The noises

            Of your ideas

 

Where you till and plant

                        The habits that harm the habitat

There will you harvest

                        The dreams that become you

 

You live

            Where

You killed yourself

 

 

--- Obododimma Oha  

There is this joke (in Yoruba) about what a typewriter -- the Imperial type -- is saying when it is at work:

Tani l'o fe je?
Kini l'o fe je?
Waaa, jeun!

Translated into English as:

Who wants to eat?
What does s/he want to eat?
Come and eat!

I like the way the typewriter eats the paper and the ribbon. And, as readers operating in the Old Tech, we eat the stains of the text. The stains of the ribbon stay the text. It is also a journey to meaning, which the typewriter indirectly teaches us. My old Imperial typewriter begins its journey from one end of the textual space to another, singing its work, yes, singing and singing and singing. And the end of the journey is not the end of the song; only a transition: waaaa, jeun!

Old-Tech writers that sing with their typewriters would probably find the soft tap of the computer keyboard a lifeless music. The Old-Tech writer is a kind of musician and probably enjoys the signal that the song of the typewriter sends to the world around -- that this musician of letters is creating sense out of sounds.

New-Tech writers  dispense with song, with music, as part of the writing process. They cook and serve the meanings as a different kind of magic. Indeed, they are carried away by the impression that the witchcraft of making meaning travel through wires and circuit systems is the most engaging mode of consuming the world.

I am, inevitably, a New-Tech writer, following dumbly the curse of the cursor into cyberspace.

--- Obododimma Oha

Because I can’t no more deal him

A blow, no, not even the wrong look, to annoy him

He goes, and I have lost

The chance to roast his ass

 

A bad guy may soil my talk

Then spill my wine

Just when I need him

To show me how to pour a better draught

To drink him down

 

He escapes twice when he dies

So I like him alive

Beside my boiling temper

 

I need the baddest guy ganging around

To claim my sainthood

Otherwise I’m just his evidence

That he’s too good to die

 

--- Obododimma Oha