Masquerades as ancestors

I remember one time ,my mother came back from the university,almost in tears,i remember my grandmother taking out some money from the tail of her wrapper were she kept a small bundle of her money for safe keeping to my uncle Ubong to pay the motorcycle rider who had brought my mum from Ikot -Ekpene town.

My mother was studying English Language Education from the University of Uyo,Akwa Ibom state.My grandparents took pride in the fact that they were able to give their children the highest form of education then,which was tertiary education,you see,they were among the very few families who did in the village,most people could not afford it or didnt think education was that useful anyways,they had their farms.

Whenever my mother or any of her other siblings came home from school ,my grand uncles and their children would come to the house and listen with rapt attention to various tales of school life or politics or watch my mum and siblings play various board games,that was were i picked up my love for scrabble and chess, we also played card games like ''whot'',i didn't understand the other pack of cards,with the kings and queens and jokers,until much later in life. 

I remember the times when they would have to return to school and my grandmother would gather all her resources,she would go into her room and be deep in thought,it was on one of such occasions that she took out the ''singer sewing machine'' and it never came back home again. i had been using the machine to sew brown paper dresses for my imaginary children...but that is a story for another day.

On this day,my mother came back sad,she had been harassed by some masquerades who had sprung from nowhere unto the road with machetes and whips and mother had to give them some money before they let her and the motorcycle she was riding on pass and on getting home my grandmother had to be the one to pay the motorcycle rider.

It was then that i understood how much of a menace the Ekpo Masquerades had become,there had been an ongoing debate in the state to have them banned,but i was puzzled because Ekpo masquerades were supposed to be ancestors who had returned to earth to dance at celebrations and village festivals.

This was their initial motto,but apparently the masquerades had grown into an entity of its own and had set up their own rules. These ancestors thus resorted to scaring women and children whenever they came out,sometimes even the men were not spared. They were dressed in green palm leaves with huge masks often black and their bodies were black ,truly like the dead,the wore bells on their ankles to warn everyone of their approach but the truly mean ones wore only wooden beads and would sneak up on anyone from the bushes and give you such a fright you would scamper and hide.

Ekpo masquerades were truly scary,on days when they were set to appear,i would eat to my fill and then stand outside the compound very close to the road side to catch a glimpse of the masquerades. once i spotted them ,because they usually moved in groups ,i would run into the house and peep from behind the curtains of my grandfathers living room,and when that set had passed i would come back out to the road again,anticipating another set .

The masquerades were eventually banned when their notoriety became extreme and they began to use machetes to cut people who wouldn't give them money. 

One day at dawn,i had gotten up very early to look for mangoes behind our house,no one else was awake,as i opened the door to the backyard,i saw my uncle and some of his friends,covered in black charcoal paint,beside them lay some palm-fronts and ekpo masks,as soon as they spotted me he screamed at me to go back into the house,i ran back immediately,and that was when i understood why the masquerades always wanted money,dead ancestors would not have needed money,they used cowries in their time,or didn't they????

The time i attended a burial vigil

''this world is not my own

im just passing through....

the angels beckon me

from heaven's open door

and i cant feel at home

in this world anymore''

Songs like this usually rent the air during vigils at burials in my village,there was usually a live band playing songs all through the night,people would be gathered under the canopies made from palm fronts ,drinking 33'' beer and malt or soft drinks,the older ones consumed stronger alcholic drinks locally brewed in the village called Kai Kai. There was a lot of meat to be eaten and food was prepared by the family of the deceased.   

I was never allowed to attend vigils

My grandmother said it was not a place for children,but some of the children in my school did attend ,and they filled me in leaving no details out,

i always wished to attend a burial vigil and somehow i got my wish when my great grandmother died.

''Anenne'' as we called her was quite old,nobody knew her age but she must have been close to a 100 years if not more. 

She used to make the most delicious beans using only crayfish and locals spices,she thought stock cubes were poison,oh well,her beans was delicious always,i snuck over sometimes during break times in school to eat some and then dash right back into the school and continue with classes,fun times.

She lived in a small hut,even though her sons had asked that she move into their modern houses,she has refused and stayed in her mud hut instead. Annenne also never stopped going to her farm,everyone asked her to stop,that she was too old and should rest and that she would be taken care of,she didnt stop,she stuck with her old ways until she died. 

When i heard she had died at night i feared the worst,i thought her old hut had collapsed on her while she slept,but it was nothing of the sort,Nne had just slept and not woken up again,she had died in her sleep.

So finally,after a series of meetings ,Annenne's burial date was fixed. And ,there would be a vigil,i was all for that,because how would my grandmother tell me not to attend the vigil of a family member? she wouldn't dare,i was going to be in those canopies all night long and no one could stop me.

My great grandmother had never been to church,she didn't attend catholic Mass with us at our village church,she hadn't believed in the white man's religion or in their God,she was a traditionalist,so all we could was give her a traditional burial. 

Everyone came home for the burial,all my aunts and uncles were at home,i could smell the fufu and afang soup everywhere,the night finally came,my aunt and i had prepared a song,the rest of the event was a blur,i played and ran round the whole compound with the other children,ate everything in site,at some point during the night i'd slipped on some plantain leaves while running somewhere and some how i'd scraped both my knees.

The next morning when my grandmother found me asleep in one of the rooms where the children slept,she had gently woken me up,made me bid everyone goodbye,then on our way home had plucked some ixora branches which she used to flog my legs all the way to our house.

Annenne was buried in her hut that day,i did not attend ,i was still smarting from the pains from my knees,and how my grandmother had flogged me all the way home.

Memoirs of the village Vol 2 - On Burials celebrations and customs

When my uncle died,i was hard hit. I couldnt understand why a final year medical student at the university of Port Harcourt would just die,it was hard to fathom how someone i had spoken to some months back was gone and i would never see him again. 

Uncle Inyene was my mother's youngest brother,he was a lively soul,the bright star and i looked up to him. He would tutor me in mathematics and make fun of me when all i wanted to read were pacesetters and Mills and Boons,so when he died ,i was a bit lost,i couldnt even see his body ,i overheard my mother telling her younger sister ''Inyene looked so lean and different'' i held the pillow and cried that night as i'm crying now. 

I had barely gotten back from Togo were id spent a year as a foreign student. 

So we went to the village. 

As i travelled with my mom via Edo Line transport i imagined what the village would look like,my grandparents compound,the pear trees i used to climb,the orange trees that stood infront of the building . I even thought about the mango trees in the backyard were i would run out early in the mornings especially after rainy and windy nights to pick the lush and ripened mangoes that the wind would have blown down.

We got to Abak Ifia after some days,we had stopped in Port Harcourt to make  arrangements to take his body home,i wore black and we rode in the car behind the ambulance that carried his body. I was pensive all through the 1hour and some minutes trip to the village. 

The compound looked far different than i remembered it ,vast and devoid of laughter,pensive faces stared at us,no effusive welcomes as id been used to.....my grandma wasnt there and neither was my grandfather,they had died in 1999,a month apart,but when my grandma had died it was different,maybe because she was older,the compound was fuller then,grandpa was in his rocking chair on the verandah,he called my name and he hugged me,when he saw my mother it was as if his strength was renewed, when grandma died,there were the usual activities,there was a band playing live music as she lay in state,i saw grandma,i rubbed the ''tony montana' powder as is custom allover my neck,the mortician came to the house to embalm her body,she lay on a white magnificient bed,although  we all cried so much,there was still a ray of hope because we were all together.......

But when Inyene died ,there was only gloom and despair,the ambulance drove straight to our village church for Mass ,and then back to the compound for Inyene to be buried ,then everyone dispersed,there was an emptiness i couldnt describe and nothing was ever the same again.

Memoirs of the village Vol 1- The Village Square

         

I grew up in a small community in Akwa Ibom state called Abak Ifia. It is made up of mostly farmers and raffia makers, my grandmother was a teacher,a head teacher and so was my grandfather,so although we werent rich,we werent poor either. 

Abak Ifia has a Village Square,this is the place were consultations and meetings were held by the elders and village Chief. The Village square is a large open area,surrounded on all angles  by tall willowy trees ,this made the inner part of the square very dark and eerie. Right in front of the square were statues of past village chiefs in a sitting position holding the staffs of office.

It is believed that all village chiefs in Abak Ifia were buried in a sitting position,hence the need to place the statues over their graves ,maybe to show that those ancestors though dead were still very much a part of the community. 

It was also said that village chiefs were buried with  human heads to accompany them to the land of the dead and also serve them there.

Whenever a chief died,there were usually no announcements from the town crier,but news somehow filtered out and people avoided lonely pathways or faraway farms for the fear of being beheaded and buried with the chief,you see the dead chief would be given seven human heads to accompany him to  the land of the beyond!!

Whenever i had to pass through the village square,i'd hold my breath and run as fast as i could through the path to the Mission ,if it was near evening, the fear would triple.

 Chirping birds and the  sway of the trees and the shadows cast would send shivers down my spine. i would run as fast as i could all the while imagining when another chief would die and how i would never want to accompany a chief to the land of the dead.

TAKING RISKS

 I remember this one time i was to travel from Abuja,the FCT where i was interning to Zaria, Kaduna state. 

On getting to the park i found out the fare was much more than i could afford,an interns salary is meagre in this parts,if any, so a voice told me to take a taxi from Abuja to Kaduna and then get another one to Zaria,when i added up the difference it seemed cheaper ,and at that time it made sense to do.

 I got to Kaduna and instead of going into the park (Kawo) to take a registered taxi ,i decided to be smart and take one of the golf cars parked outside the park. 

I got into the car,was the first passenger,so i sat in fronts,(shotgun), and waited for the other three passengers to come so the journey would begin. As is the case with vehicles at the park one never gets to see the driver until the car is full  ( all passengers are complete )then a driver magically appears and collects the fares. 

That was the case on this day.
When the driver appeared my heart sank,he was a young man,and my mothers words came back to me 'Do not enter a vehicle that is driven by this small small boys'',i braced myself for the trip ahead,and what a trip it was. from take off to the end of the trip i had my heart in my mouth,the driver sped as if he was on fire,he constantly looked around nervously and the skin on his face and arms were covered in beads of sweat,he was clearly intoxicated.
It was a miracle we arrived without any accident.
That experience taught me a lot ,and the lessons are evident because i always listen to my mother now. 😊😊
In this life there  are various risks we take but we must always weigh carefully those we decide to take and ensure the resultant benefits are well worth it. 

I like this picture, so i put it up.