There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra Read Free

still active outside
     my home. I still had access to a number of relatives who had not converted to Christianity
     and were called heathens by the new converts. When my parents were not watching I
     would often sneak off in the evenings to visit some of these relatives. They seemed
     so very content in their traditional way of life and worship. Why would they refuse
     to become Christians, like everyone else around them? I was intent on finding out.
    My great-uncle, Udoh Osinyi, was able to bestride both worlds with great comfort.
     He held one of the highest titles in all of Igbo land—
ozo
. I was very interested in my great-uncle’s religion, and talking to him was an enriching
     experience. I wouldn’t give up anything for that, including my own narrow, if you
     like, Christian background.
    In Igbo cosmology there are many gods. A person could be in good stead with one god
     and not the other—
ogwugwu
could kill a person despite an excellent relationship with
udo.
As a young person that sort of complexity meant little to me. A later understanding
     would reveal the humility of the traditional religion with greater clarity. Igbo sayings
     and proverbs are far more valuable to me as a human being in understanding the complexity
     of the world than the doctrinaire, self-righteous strain of the Christian faith I
     was taught. This other religion is also far more artistically satisfying to me. However,
     as a catechist’s son I had to suppress this interest in our traditions to some extent,
     at least the religious component. We were church people after all, helping the local
     church spread Christianity
.
    The relationship between my father and his uncle Udoh was instructive to me. There
     was something deep and mystical about it, judging from the reverence I heard in my
     father’s voice whenever he spoke about his old uncle.
    My father was a man of few words, and I have always regretted that I did not ask him
     more questions. But he took pains to tell me what he thought I needed to know. He
     told me, for instance, in a rather oblique way of his one attempt to convert his uncle
     Udoh. It must have been in my father’s youthful, heady, proselytizing days! His uncle
     pointed to the awesome row of insignia of his three titles—
ichi ozo
,
ido idemili
,
ime omaalor
. “What shall I do to these?” he asked my father. It was an awesome question. He had
     essentially asked: “What do I do to who I am? What do I do to history?”
    An orphan child born into adversity, heir to the commotions, barbarities, and rampant
     upheavals of a continent in disarray—it was not at all surprising that my father would
     welcome the remedy proffered by diviners and interpreters of a new word of God. But
     my great-uncle, a leader in his community, a moral, open-minded man, a prosperous
     man who had prepared such a great feast when he took the
ozo
title that his people gave him a praise name for it—was he to throw all that away
     because some strangers from afar had said so?
    At first glance it seemed to me that my father, a deeply religious man, was not tolerant
     of our ancient traditions and religion. As he got older, however, I noticed that he
     became more openly accommodating of the old ways of doing things. By this time he
     had developed quite a reputation as a pious, disciplined, honest catechist. He was
     widely known as
onye nkuzi
(“the teacher”), and the villagers found him very trustworthy. Strangers would often
     drop off valuables at our house for Father’s safe-keeping.
    Those two—my father and his uncle—formed the dialectic that I inherited. Udoh stood
     fast in what he knew, but he also left room for my father to seek other answers. The
     answer my father found in the Christian faith solved many problems, but by no means
     all.
    As a young person my perspective of the world benefited, I think, from this dichotomy.
     I wasn’t questioning in an intellectual way which way was right, or better. I was