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Will the Igbo in You Leave You Alone?
By WayoGuy
The Igbo say that nwanyi kweere onye ngworo di, ekwerela ndu mbuli na mbutu (a girl who agrees to marry a cripple has thereby agreed to a life of lifting and lowering). This proverb recently crystallized in my mind when I realized that the saturation of my soul by my Igboness went beyond this life, beyond the day that I die, but continues into the great beyond.
It was in the process of executing my Last Will and Testament that I awakened to the realization that I had become comparable to the girl who married a cripple and that I am, therefore, stuck with the ramifications of my contract. I began to wonder how many other Nigerians of other ethnic extractions, living in self-imposed exiles, have this type of attachment to the physical and spiritual soil of their towns of origin.
I had drafted my Last Will and Testament and, without even consciously recognizing the profundity of my action, inserted in the first page, a clause directing the executor of my estate to bury my body in my hometown in
Nigeria regardless of cost. I woke up to the sagacity of this testamentary instruction when a witness to the Will asked me why I wanted to be buried in my hometown.
I say that I ‘woke up’ because I had not previously considered how difficult it would be for me to explain to an American, a stranger to my culture and my upbringing, why even the thought of being buried anywhere other than my hometown riles me to no end.
I decided to write my Last Will and Testament recently. I was motivated by an automobile accident of a close associate who recently married and, a month later, became a quadriplegic. It scared me that he is no longer able to process his own thoughts or physically care for himself. He and I were always joking about making our Wills. It is now too late for him. But, for me, I was like the proverbial old woman who was forced to stop complaining of old age and start running after the goat the day that the goat carried away her tobacco snuff box.
As I said, it was not the writing of the Will that made me emotional. I had always wanted to write it but kept postponing the idea, waiting for my old age, until it occurred to me that death does not always wait for old age. I did not cry when my beloved grandmother died. I was able to check my emotion when my younger sister died. In fact, over the years I had heard of the early death of some of my close childhood friends and each time I was able to control my emotion. What roused my emotion was the question by the witness which, in turn, pushed to my full consciousness a realization that the Igbo in me went beyond my waking hours; that this Igboness covertly has been directing my actions even when I am not fully aware of it.
I had just completed the Will in the privacy of my office. In the jurisdiction where I live, one of the statutory requirements for a valid Last Will and Testament is proper execution; and proper execution, a legal term, includes the signing of the Will by two witnesses, at the request of the person making the Will, in the presence of the person making the will and in the presence of each other, and those witnesses must actually see the person making the Will sign it.
And so I made the mistake of asking the office secretary and another lawyer whose office was next door to mine to be witnesses to my Will. Normally, witnesses do not read the Will but only sign after the person making the will has signed, usually on the last page. But the female witness, a very bubbly and curious spirit, boldly turned over the first page, which I had placed face down and startled me with “Why do you want to be buried in your village?”
My usual inclination would have been to ignore such question. But this lady was one of the few people I respect and trust among my co-workers. I wanted, very badly, to convey to her, in the best possible ways, the Africanness, no the Igboness, that underpinned that clause in my Will. Words failed me and failed me very badly. And so I painfully ignored her.
The next day, everybody in the office was talking about my testamentary request to be buried in my hometown. I was forced to sit down, for the first time, and attempt to articulate a handy explanation of my request not only to educate my co-workers but to avoid the very danger of someone else giving it the wrong interpretation for, after all, it has been said that onye no ebe a na-eke akpu biko meghee onu ka onu ya hapu i bu eriri eji eke akpu (if you happen to be present where knots are being tied, be sure to use your mouth before your mouth is tied into the knot).
I wanted an easy way to convey to the inquirer that somehow my subconscious self, being aware of my frequent professing of my Igboness, now demands that I live through what I profess. It was not sufficient to talk of culture and tradition without doing culture and tradition because the Igbos say nwata turu ilu nna ya turu, kwuo kwa ugwo nna ya ji (a child who repeats his father’s proverb, let him also remember to pay his father’s debts).
I sat down in my office and closed the door and considered several approaches. Should I just simply say that I chose to be buried in my hometown because I am an African? Somehow that did not sound sufficiently profound because many Africans have died and been buried in
America. I had even heard that some Africans in
America who have no relatives left in their countries of origin now consider it a tradition to bury their dead in
America. What can I say but recall the Igbo elders warning that ahapu ihe ojoo ya gbaa afo, ya aburu omenala (if you allow evil to go on for a whole year, it might become a tradition).
Should I say that it is the culture of my people? Again, that would be only partially true because cultural traditions are often not mandatory. I needed reasons personalized to myself. Should I say that my family requires it? That would not be factually true either because, while it may be understood as a given in my family, no one really broaches the subject of choice of burial sites while a man is still alive. For much of that afternoon I considered and discarded several ways of explaining why I chose to be buried in my hometown.
Finally, half-disappointed in myself for my inability to articulate some unassailable and profound rationale for my decision, I walked out of my office and when I saw the curious secretary, all I could say, without even thinking, was “There is an Igbo man in me that refuses to let me go. He refuses to let me leave my village even while I am physically away.” As soon as I said that, I realized that I had given sufficient and unimpeachable answer. I have since been at peace with myself and, like the girl married to a cripple, I have accepted the terms of my marriage.
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Posted by Robot| 17.08.2007 01:08