Trials of the Gods

Silence. Dead silence. The silence of the evil forest. The silence of the village cemetery. It was as if the gods had taken away their power of speech. Or stolen their tongues and deposited them in the land of the spirits. Or knocked them dumb.

The men kept sitting and meditating at the okwollo meeting ground. Words have been spoken. Suggestions have been proffered. Proverbs have been rendered. But they all came to naught. There were times when such things worked. Not anymore!

Umuaga has suffered shame. Who will hear of this in Igboland? Of course words have filtered out and ears have heard it. Now their village has become a tourist site. Not for good but for bad. Strangers have been trooping to Umuaga to witness the strange things that are happening in their land. And they can’t be stopped. If only they were coming with solutions. But no, they were visiting to see weird things and tell stories when they return to their lands. What would they do now? They have been sitting at the okwollo since sunrise. Now it is noon, and there has been no solution in sight. Not even a hint of the cause of the three strange events.

Nwoye, the priest of Nengo, adjusted himself on his mat and looked at his staff of office as if to gain insight. If the iron object could speak, it would have made revelations a thousand times. The priest has cause to feel the most worried. He was the custodian of the gods. He was supposed to tell the villagers the reason for the strange developments in the land. But he hasn’t been able to do so. He has consulted the gods but they have kept mum. What more would a priest do?

There were three gods in the seven villages of Umuaga—Nengo, Odumodu and Ofiammili—but Nengo was the most senior. So Nengo priest was regarded as the chief priest and mouthpiece of the gods but the gods weren’t talking to him.

He felt shame. It was as if he wasn’t qualified for the office of the priesthood. He felt like taking responsibility for the evils. But he wasn’t the one to blame. These things were happening for the first time in Umuaga. The village teacher said the things occurred in some distant lands but who will believe him?

Onwuakpaelo, the oldest man in the seven villages, has not seen nor heard of such strange happenings from the ancestors. He has been sitting on his mat at the okwollo, head bowed, as if communing with the gods. But the gods are angry and nobody knows why.

A large bird suddenly perches at the big udala tree in front of the okwollo. All eyes turned up the tree. It was a hawk. It didn’t bring any message. There were many such birds of prey in Umuaga looking for chickens. The hawk remained silent just like the elders in the meeting ground, patiently waiting for an innocent chick.

A hawk can hide on a tree waiting for hours to catch a prey. When one appears, it dives at the target with precision and carries it away to the forest. Some say the hawk eats the victim raw while others say it eats the worms from the decomposing flesh.

It was the presence of the hawk on the tree that broke the silence in the gathering.

“Chei!” they shouted in unison, in an attempt to scare away the bird. No one wants their chickens to fall prey for the hawk. The bird instantly flew away, knowing that its mission had failed.

“Ajo nnunu,” they added, as it flew away. Yes, the hawk is a bad bird, but it was only searching for food—not the cause of the mysteries in the land. It would fly elsewhere and carry a wandering chick or return to the udala tree at another time.

The men settled down after the bird had fled.

“Umuaga kwenu!” said the priest, trying to arouse the elders, as if the meeting barely began. But he got a few “Yaa!” the traditional response. Most of them laughed. The silence returned again.

The things happening in the seven villages are the sort of things that come up in folktales for children at night. The stories do not entertain, they frighten. But who could figure out these three things happening in Umuaga in storytelling?

The priest did not want to be defeated. “So what do we do my people?” he asked.

He shouldn’t even have asked the question. The villagers should be asking him. He felt bad.

“You should be telling us,” someone answered. “Are you not Nengo’s priest?”

Nwoye saw the question coming. “The gods are silent.”

They have heard that before. The soothsayers in the seven villages have been consulted too. But none of them could give reason for the three mysteries. Umuaga has been cursed!

The silence returned. None knew the way forward. And nobody wanted to adjourn the meeting. Solution must be found!

When the first strange thing happened, the villagers thought that the women, who first witnessed the occurrence at the Nengo River, were lying. They laughed at the women. But more and more villagers came with the same account. So the village elders went on a fact-finding mission and were shocked to find that it was true.

What they saw had never happened. So they thought that the god was playing games. If there had been flooding and the earth were red, it would have explained everything. But that was not the case.

When the situation remained unchanged, the elders convened a meeting at the okwollo to find out what was wrong. But there was no answer. Well, let Nengo do as it pleases to its river, they thought.

After four market weeks, the second mystery occurred. The news was first brought by children who went hunting birds in the forest. When the elders heard it, they were told not to say such things, it was taboo, it never happened. So the children spoke no further. What do they know?

However, women who were returning from their farms witnessed the sacred python do exactly what the children saw and told it to the elders. Yet the older men did not also believe until one of them witnessed it from a python in front of his mud house. “Alu!” the old man shouted. And an urgent meeting was held.

The elders talked and talked at the meeting. But like the first, nothing was found to be the cause.

The priest was particularly hard pressed to know what was going wrong. This was because the python was the totem of the god, Nengo, and the first sign happened at Nengo River. He was the priest and should know things but he didn’t have a clue. The gods did not answer him.

After repeated meetings, the elders wished that the incidents would stop. But they didn’t. The sacred python continued doing what it was doing and Nengo River remained in the same situation. That was when it dawned on them that there was trouble in the land.

By this time, news of the strange happenings began to reach neighboring villages who came to see things for themselves.

Then when the people thought that they had seen unexplained mysteries, the strangest of them all happened after another four market weeks.

If it had been seen by women or children, the elders would have doubted at first. But this was discovered by men at Amaisato village square. The only thing that delayed confirmation was that each time they went to the square to observe what the men saw, the incident didn’t take place. The elders only believed when it was noticed by two wrestlers who heard about it and went with intent to improve their wrestling skill for the village wrestling competition.

A meeting was called again to discuss the incident. Yet nothing came out of it. The three strange occurrences have come to stay in Umuaga. The men would continue to meet to find a way out.

At the present meeting, it was clear that everything has been done to find a way out. But the men seemed not to be near the end.

“We will sleep at the okwollo until a solution is found,” said someone who was already preparing to lie down on his mat. Everyone laughed.

“Gbam, I agree!” another supported.

“Who said that?” asked Onwuakpaelo, the Old One, referring to the first speaker. He seemed to have woken up from a conversation with the ancestors. Everyone sat up and paid attention. “We will get to the bottom of these problems!”

“Ezi okwu!” echoed everyone.

Yet nobody asked the old man how. Such questions are not asked of them. Old men are receptacles of wisdom and they can pull a rabbit out of a hat. They waited for the magic as the old man fell into a seeming trance again.

It was a thing of wonder that a school teacher said these three strange things had happened in other lands, they thought. Those must be the land of the devil, as Umuaga has now turned to be.

“Are we really sure that these things were caused by the gods?” someone asked aloud.

Everyone turned toward the direction.

“Who would have caused these things than the gods? It’s agbala, simple,” another countered him.

“I mean that someone must have done something to anger the gods,” the man replied defensively.

“I think he is making a point,” another elder rose in his defense. “Someone may have gone fishing at Nengo River.”

It was forbidden to kill and eat any fish from the river. The fishes are dedicated to the god, Nengo. As a result, there were many big fishes in the river. It might be tempting to do so, though it has its repercussion.

“That’s true,” supported another elder. “All these children of these days who do not know our custom can do so in secret.”

“Only if that child wasn’t born and bred in Umuaga because we train our children,” said another old man.

The okwollo was now busy with each one offering his own conspiracy theory.

“That’s correct,” said another old man sitting behind him. “No Umuaga child will kill and eat Nengo fish. I think it’s the women. Some of them cross the river or sit on the bare ground during menstruation—a thing forbidden in our land. Or perhaps, a man would have slept with a woman in the bush.”

“Alu!” shouted everyone at the speaker.

“You can’t shout me down,” he continued. “Some of us go farming and hunting secretly on our market day, which is forbidden by the gods.”

Now that was an accusation that hit hard. Though Eke market day is a holy day and Umuagas were not allowed to venture into the bush, some people would hunt or farm in close by bushes on that day.

The priest felt like responding at this time. “You all forget that the individual is punished for all of those offences, and not what is happening now. Anyone who eats Nengo’s fish pays the price. The woman who defiles the land remains barren for life. And anyone who steps into the deep forest on a holy day is taken away by spirits. Do we not know these things?”

There was silence. They were aware. It’s just that every one of them was scouting for the cause of the problem in the land.

“You also know that we observe our yearly cleansing routine: black goat for the land and a white cow for Nengo River. Would anyone say that the sacrifices were improperly done because the black goat had white spots or that the white cow had black spots? Or that the goat and cow were not fat enough? There is something that happened that we don’t know yet.”

“We will know,” said the oldest man, waking up.

All the elders kept silent. The one who knows all things is speaking.

“I was hearing all that you were saying. But you don’t talk like gods. They are the only ones who can tell us what’s going on in Umuaga. I have a suggestion.”

The elders became all ears

“We will go to Olu to see Okeke, the most powerful soothsayer in all Igboland. Umuaga is polluted, the gods will not answer us here.”

“Ekenediligi Nna anyi ukwu!” The elders shouted in unison.

There seemed to be a sign of relief as if the problem plaguing the land has been solved. The okwollo became lively and all the elders were smiling to one another.

“You spoke well, Old One. That is the advantage of having people like you. None of us have reasoned in that direction. Do we now agree to send a delegation to Olu?”

“Yaaa!!!” thundered the elders.

And the priest rose and pinned his ceremonial spear to the ground in affirmation.

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