Dr Jekwu Ozomena
It was after the flogging that followed our failed raid on ‘mango Dom’ that grandma told us the story of Munachi’s husband, Akuezue, the man who thought that having it all would bring him fulfilment.
Dominic’s mango tree was to us what the tree in the Garden of Eden must have been to Adam and Eve; mysteriously aloof yet temptingly and tantalizingly near. At that time of the year, the tree was laden with ripe juicy fruits, its branches lowered heavily under the burden. The tree itself was smack in the middle of a deserted compound as Dom (as he was known to the locals) had relocated from his homestead, locked and barricaded the gate while the lawn had become overrun by weeds. From our vantage point perched on top his derelict perimeter fence, we could see swarms of flies and bees buzzing around the mounds of fallen yellow and red fruits rotting amidst the knee-high undergrowth.
I can’t remember who first came up with the idea of the raid, our cousins or my elder brother and I. What I remember however is that my brother and I provided the strategic and tactical input, borrowing heavily from skills gleaned from devouring several editions of ‘Commando’ war comics, especially a particular edition that revolved around ‘Operation Barbarossa’, Germany’s World War II invasion of the Soviet Union.
We had the raid planned down to a T…or we thought we did. For how could we have factored in that Onyebuchi’s mother, whose house bordered Dominic’s perimeter fence, would be down with a fever on that day, a fever strong enough to keep her away from the Eke Market. Even if, by some strange stroke of genius or luck, we managed to factor this in, none of us could have conceived the idea that she would be out spreading her washing on the line at the very moment our raiding team, Commando like, scaled Dominic’s fence and assaulted his temptress of a mango tree.
As planned, the invading force scaled the fence, darted from cover to cover behind various objects en route the tree and final assault; crouching behind a derelict hen-run, and for the final approach, skirting over an abandoned oil barrel that must have served as a component of a local water reticulation system at some point in time. The first sign of trouble was when we got to the tree itself. Menacingly adorning its stem, was a deadly looking juju encrusted with what looked like dried animal blood, multicoloured parrot feathers, and red and white stripes of cloth. I immediately froze in fear and remember wondering to myself that whatever could look so brutishly ugly must be extremely deadly. My cousin Uche Tua-Tua paused only briefly before scooping a handful of dry sand, spat on it three times, sprinkled the resultant gooey mess of sand and saliva on the juju, and unceremoniously ripped it off the tree. Till today I still don’t know if this was a sheer act of braggadocio or if dry sand and spit does truly neutralise the efficacy of ‘mango tree guarding juju’.
With the juju thoroughly dealt with, the invading force scrambled up the tree like a bunch of hungry circus monkeys. We were barely aloft when what appeared to be a picture-perfect plan disintegrated completely. The second sign, or rather the second sound of trouble was when Nne Onyebuchi’s shrill voice rent the air with
‘Ndi ori mango oh!
Nekwanu ndi ori mango oh!! Come and see mango thieves oh! Come and see mango thieves oh!
Our team of invaders came slipping and sliding down the tree, almost on top of each, and somehow managed to make it, scrambling and running, to our respective homes. But Nne Onyebuchi was not done with us just yet. So as we cowered behind closed doors, under staircases, inside clay water pots or in the latrine, we could hear the woman reeling off our names and the names of our parents to all that cared to listen. It wasn’t long before a small posse was organised to fetch the four of us.
Till today I don’t know what happened to the other two invaders. All I recollect is what happened to my elder brother and I. The posse’s timing was the worst that one could imagine. They arrived just as my father was coming back from a leisurely evening stroll. I could only imagine the consternation on his face when he learnt why the posse was waiting. The next we heard was his gruff voice sternly calling out to us. As if we were under some kind of mind control, despite the fact that we knew the fate (or thought we knew the fate) that awaited us, we both meekly emerged from our different hiding places, teeth chattering in fear, like two little lambs to the slaughter. The beating we received that day remains legendary in our village. Some of the beating apparatus include the knobbed spine of a raffia palm frond, the stem of an old golf club, and, irony of all ironies, a cane improvised from the branch of a mango tree.
Almost the whole neighbourhood came out to watch the flogging circus, including our two cousins who followed us on that doomed raid. It was sufficiently painful and humiliating that my father, blue in the face, huffing, puffing and panting, flogged and humiliated us before the entire village, what was most painful was the fact that our co-conspirators were to be seen amongst the jeering and leering crowd. Even the pleas of my grandma fell on deaf ears as my father could not accept…no, did not understand, why his two sons would covet a neighbour’s mango fruits. His hyperactive mind must have assumed an exponential explosion of thievery, from the first little step of mango stealing to armed robbery and then probably gold bullion heists.
That evening happened to be a night of a full moon, so after my grandmother had bathed us, and applied her cure-all poultice on our burning welts, an admixture of kerosene and warm palm oil, she offered to tell us the story of Munachi’s husband, Akuezue, a man who thought that possessing all the wealth in the world would bring him fulfilment.
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Akuezue was known far and wide as an ethical and principled man. Truly this was a man the God’s bestowed their favour on, for he had enough wealth to take care of his needs. He had a thriving trading business, travelling to the great Bini Kingdom, to buy exotic items that were retailed in almost all markets across Igbo land. He also had a thriving fish business. Fishermen in his employ trawled the town’s Ori Ngene and the great Omabara river which it flows into, harvesting fish that were subsequently smoked, and sold at the Eke market. It was said that customers came from as far-flung as Ijebu and Igalla land, just to buy Akuezue’s smoked fish.
Yes, Akuezue was very rich, but even at that, he shunned ostentatious living, expending a significant portion of his wealth on philanthropy. Overtime Akuezue became a sage of sorts, for who best to learn about success than the man who has achieved success over and over again.
However, there was a problem. His beautiful wife Munachimso had been without a child for over 10 years of marriage. Many a time and by many, Akuezue had been overhead bemoaning his fate and was known to have once said that he would accept any child, even if he had to make a deal with the devil. The pressure was mounting for tongues had started to wag.
‘Are you sure his wealth is not from Ogwu-ego, as a result of a covenant with the devil?’, ‘Can’t you see that he has traded his wife’s womb for wealth’. In hushed tones, some even alluded to a mysterious incident that was said to have claimed Munachi’s stepbrother and stepmother when she was a child, of which the town’s ndi-ichie elders had barred people from discussing. The common denominator in all the stories was the devil and a pact that either Akuezue or Munachi was alleged to have made.
In Akuezue’s village lived an old woman known to all as Arude, she whose skin is flawlessly beautiful and as smooth as silk. Nobody seemed to know Arude’s age, however, all the elderly people of the town had come to know Arude as an adult and knew that she had always been stunningly beautiful. There was something surreal about her beauty, she had never been known to fall ill, suffer from any ailment whatsoever, and was also reputed to know all the healing herbs for some of the most intractable ailments. There were even rumours that she came from the land of the River spirits but no one dared confront her which such absurdities.
So it was that one day, Akuezue, while making his evening rounds of the village ran into Arude.
“I am not even asking for a son” he moaned, “if only I can have a daughter. Not just the average daughter, but one more beautiful than the combined beauty of all the maidens in the village. Surely that would fetch me a very large dowry, then my fulfilment would be complete”.
Do not bet on that replied Arude, for there is more to life than owning and garnering all worldly possessions, but Akuezue insisted, for he was clearly distressed. So Arude put a direct question to him.
“What are you willing to give to have this child and how far are you willing to go?”
“Everything and anything” responded Akuezue, “I am willing to go to the end of the earth to get this daughter, by any means necessary”.
With an iconic smile as she briskly walked away, Arude’s response was “ya lee ka isi kwu”, let this spell work as you have willed.
When he got home, Akuezue told Munachi about this encounter and how he thought Arude’s response strange. One month later, Munachi found out that she was with child and when the child was born, Akuezue gladly named her Adaku, a daughter born to abundant wealth.
On the day of her birth, Akuezue dashed off to the home of Arude to inform her that her prediction had come to pass only to meet a group of mourners. On his way home, he mused that Arude most have passed on about the same time that Adaku was born. But after a while, even this he brushed asides as mere coincidence.
Adaku soon grew to be an extremely beautiful child but at four years old it became clear that she couldn’t or simply refused to talk. She understood what people were saying quite alright but whenever she opened her mouth, all that came out was a guttural garble……she was very industrious, even for her tender age. As beautiful as the rising run and a flower in full bloom combined.
Something even stranger was the fact that she seemed to react negatively to the name Adaku, in a number of instances out rightly falling sick after being so addressed.
When the state of speechlessness persisted, on her 18th birthday, Munachi and Akuezue decided to seek out a seer, ‘ka a cho ana ife na eme Adaku’. Their search took him to the doorsteps of dibia kacha dibia, the greatest and most powerful of all medicine men in the land, for it was said that dibia kacha dibia wined and dined with the spirits, that anything that he could not divine was beyond divination.
On his first attempt to hear from his ancestors, dibia kacha dibia cast his divining beads on the raffia mat laid out in front of Adaku, and immediately found himself floating down the Ori Ngene and into the Omabara river’s banks. He could hear Omabara’s waves repeatedly crashing on its banks, the rhythm of the surf resonating ‘Ude! Ude! Ude!
Perplexed, dibia kacha dibia came crashing back to the land of the living. Turning to Munachi and Akuezue, he asked
“Do you have any ancestor by the name Ude?”
So Akuebue recounted his encounter with Arude before the birth of Adaku.
Aha! grunted dibia kacha dibia, Arude has reincarnated as Adaku, ‘O Arude nnoro Adaku’.
For he could clearly see that both Arude and Adaku ‘si na mmiri’, River kindred spirits. Turning to Adaku he hollered,
“Ude O bu mu bu dibia kacha dibia na ekene gi”, Ude, I the greatest of all native doctors salute you, and to her parents’ astonishment Adaku responded, dibia kacha dibia, I Ude heartily return your salute.
At which dibia kacha dibia turned to Adaku’s parents and said, you have burdened your daughter with the wrong name; her name is Arude or Ude if you like, so I suggest that henceforth you refer to her by that name.
Akuezue’s response was that he will not challenge the wisdom of his ancestors, agaghim agbaha ndi mmou okwu. With this, the sky let loose a torrential downpour of cascading rain while the sun unleashed laser rays of sunlight creating a rainbow through the sheets of rain…steam could be seen rising from the earth…as the heat of the sun forced the soaked earth skywards in inverted rain.
This strange phenomenon perplexed the village elders who quickly summoned dibia kacha dibia. ‘Kedu ka mmiri ga esi na ezo, nnukwu anwu ana eke’ How can there be such torrential downpour and great heat at the same time, something must be wrong…but the great dibia could only shake his head in bewilderment, for even he had never witnessed such an event in his lifetime.
Soon after, suitors started pouring in from far and wide. What struck everyone was Ude’s humility. She was never haughty or rude like some daughters of other rich men in the village, and these were men whose wealth paled in comparison to Akuezue’s vast possessions. Her body transformed the inexpensive fabric that she always chose to wear into velvet befitting Kings and Queens as her skin glowed with the radiance of a thousand suns.
Her beauty?
Well there were some who claimed that her beauty was so divine that all other women in the village appeared ugly beside her.
Yet Ude did not find any of the men in the long train of suitors to her liking. This kept her up many a night for she knew how much her father wanted her to get married and she truly wanted to please him…make him happy, yet something inside of her rejected all of them; handsome; ugly, plain, rich, well-travelled, even some who professed great healing powers and theological knowledge.
The reason for this was soon to be revealed to her, for one day as she dozed under a mango tree shielding her from the mid-day heat, she found herself on the banks of the Omabara river watching a band of exquisitely beautiful and ornamented damsels singing and dancing on what appeared to be the river’s surface. Their skins were beautifully covered with green Uli skin art, a skin ornament that Ude uncannily recognized that she had a great craving for.
She also wasn’t surprised when she realised that they were singing for her. From their chorus, Ude learnt that Omabara had heard Akuezu’s desperation for a child and loaned him one of its daughters thus no human was fit to take her as a bride. Through the song, Ude learnt that river spirits only marry their kind. Doing otherwise would trigger her death as well as the death of all the maidens in her village.
She woke up from this dream screaming, her forehead beaded in perspiration, the sweat soaking though the wrapper that covered her beautiful frame. Despite the initial apprehension, within her, she knew that the dream was real. The affinity she felt to the Omabara river, a river she had never visited in real life, was simply too compelling, the flood of memories that hit her…she realised that she knew every nook and cranny of the river’s banks including places in the river’s depths that no mere mortal could possibly know…and the dancing maidens…she had immediately recognised them as her sisters, for she knew them all by name.
The next day she told her mother that she wanted to ornament her skin with Uli skin art, that only after this will she get married. But even she knew that at the time, Uli skin art was alien to her village, in fact, Uli skin art was then alien to man, for it was a beauty practice of the River kindred spirits.
Her mother searched for the Uli high and low to no avail, she visited all local markets, markets of adjourning towns still no result. Her father soon joined in the search, sending his emissaries to as far-flung kingdoms as obodo Eze Idu Na Oba, Igalla and Ijebu land, even as far as Nupe and the Fulani Kingdoms to no avail.
When this failed Akuezue announced that whoever brings Uli for his daughter will be rewarded with a fattened cock…he was soon to increase the reward to a goat, then a cow, then a herd of cattle but the Uli remained elusive.
Early one morning, 12 full moons into the search, Ude woke up as if in a trance, adorned herself in her best attire and set off for the great Omabara river. The usually courteous and amiable Ude did not respond to the greetings of Ada anyi e putakwalu ula, our daughter I hope you slept well, chorused by the women sweeping the village square. This was the first sign that something was wrong and it wasn’t long before one of the concerned women sent her young son to alert Ude’s mother.
A distraught Munachimso, tore along the village paths in the general direction that people had seen her daughter until she caught up with her on the banks of Omabara river.
And what a sight it was.
Hundreds of exquisitely beautiful maidens, all ornamented with Uli skin art, were singing and dancing on the surface of the Omabara river, stomping their feet to the choruses, without causing as much as a ripple. And then in the midst of them she saw her daughter Ude, home, more resplendent than she had ever seen her, finally in her elements.
Ude had the most beautiful of Uli skin art, the designs on her skin shimmered and slithered with an amphibious quality as she moved her body to the singing.
Despair…panic…tears…Munchimso tore off her wrapper, wailing and wringing her hands. She being a mere mortal could not walk on the river surface, and dared not wade into the Omabara, for its currents were renown as fierce and strong.
So she sang;
Nwam biko puta oh!
Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma
Nne gi ji efie acho Uli na afia
Nna gi ji efie acho Uli na afia
Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma
Beseeching her daughter to leave the river, Munachi reminded Ude the lengths her parents had gone to procure the Uli she desired.
With tears in her eyes, Ude turned to her human mother and gave a response that tore Munachi’s heart to shreds.
Nnem biko naba oh!
Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma
Omabara esechagom uli oma
Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma
Pleading with her Mother to go home for Omabara river had decorated her skin with the most beautiful of Uli art.
With this song the sky let loose a torrential downpour of cascading rain while the sun unleashed laser rays of sunlight creating a rainbow through the sheets of rain…steam could be seen rising from the earth…as the heat of the sun forced the soaked earth skywards in inverted rain.
The downpour stopped as quickly as it started, and with it went the exquisitely beautiful dancing daughters of Omabara river.
It was a broken-hearted Munachimso that trudged back home and reported to Akuezue what she had encountered at the banks of Omabara River.
It was said that something in Akuezue changed fundamentally that day. A despair that grew into an enveloping darkness, but his response was measured and philosophical,
“Is it that the Gods who show us the possibility of plenitude want to teach us not to aspire for more or is it that they what us to push even harder for those things that we don’t have?”
“Maybe they just want us to bid your time,” he said, and as if the Gods thought “this man has finally learnt his lesson”, Munachi soon took in again and bore him a daughter.
They named the child Nwaimedi, life is pregnant with lessons and meaning.
Munachi, having seen the Uli skin art on the water maidens, introduced the concept to the maidens of the village, a fashion that soon swept to neighbouring towns and villages. A young Nwaimedi’s skin was ornamented with beautiful Uli drawings for Munachi swore that the town would never again lose a child to lack of Uli.
It is even whispered, though it has never been confirmed, that Igbo slaves sold to the Americas eventually introduced to that continent a version of Munachi’s popular Uli skin art.
They called it ‘tattoo’.
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The effect of the flogging that followed our failed raid on ‘mango Dom’, the travails of Ude as shared by my grandmother, or a combination of both, ensured that from that day on, I never again coveted ‘mango Dom’ or for that matter, any other person’s mango or property.
©Jekwu Ozoemene 2013
*Another one of my old unpublished short stories. The fourth and penultimate in a series that includes “Water Spirit”, “Waterborne”, and “There is Something That Ogbu-Ojah Didn’t Tell Us” (published in ‘Terra Incognita: New Short Speculative Stories from Africa’ edited by Nerine Dorman and released in 2015).
*This is purely a work of fiction oh! Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
