26  Nigeria – Things fall apart – Chinua Achebe (Score 7.30)

Okonkwo is an important man in the Igbo tribe when Europeans first appear in the future Nigeria. We read about his father Unoka, in his youth when he was active and travelled to other villages with his band to teach the playing of his flute. There are nine villages, Okonkwo living in Umuofia.

We also learn about Unoka’s later years as an adult when he was lazy, poor, and owed a lot of cowries.

Ikemefuna, a young boy, is to be sacrificed in the village next to Umuofia to avoid war. They take trophy heads in a war. Okonkwo has taken five. The neighbouring village in question is Mbaine. Ikemefuna is from Mbaine. We learn about the life of the people, their customs and practices as well as some folklore.

There is the Feast of the New Yam which marks the beginning of the New Year. This gives thanks to Ani, the Earth goddess who brings fertility. There is much cleansing of houses, and decorating the outer walls with patterns in white, yellow and dark green. The women paint themselves with cam wood, a brilliant red dye with antibiotic properties, and paint patterns in black on each other’s stomachs and backs. Children’s hair is shaved in patterns.

Our hero, Okonkwo, is proving himself to be a bad-tempered idiot, though he is considered a great man. He beats one of his wives for cutting banana leaves to wrap food for the festival. He overhears her making a comment and he runs and gets his gun. She runs into the barn; he shoots at her and, luckily, misses.

Earlier in the year, during the Week of Peace when violence is strictly forbidden, he beat another wife. He broke the taboo. The Week of Peace is to encourage Ani to give good fortune during the clearing of new land for planting yams. The head priest punishes Okonkwo by fining him.

We return to the story of Ikemefuna. The Oracle has instructed that he must be killed. One of the tribal elders tells Okonkwo that he must take no part in the killing since the boy calls him father, having lived with him since he came into the village. However, Okonkwo strikes the second blow and kills the boy because he is afraid of appearing weak.

We see how the bride-price is settled, with other, though related, villages doing it differently.

Okonkwo is clearly an important man among the tribe. In the meetings of the nine “egwugwu” (the ancestral spirits of the nine tribes) he represents Umuofia and he appears, as do the others, in the masquerade outfits representing the spirits. The people either fully convince themselves that the creatures in front of them are the spirits, or they go along with the charade because it is important for the well-being of the tribe. I can’t put myself into their situation to determine how I might feel about it

Why did Chielo, the Oracle of the Hills and Caves, take Okonkwo’s daughter Ezinma and carry her to the furthest village before taking her back to the cave?

Are the guns and cannon fired at the death ritual for Ezeudu relics of a visit by Arab traders? There has been no contact with Europeans at this time.

During the funeral celebrations for Ezeudu, Okonkwo’s gun explodes and a piece kills Ezeudu’s son. It is necessary for Okonkwo and his family to leave the tribe, taking all their possessions. Since the death was accidental they can return after seven years. The men of the village destroy his compound and buildings so as to cleanse the land of the pollution caused by the killing of a fellow clansman (Ikemefuna, although living with Okonkwo’s family, was not of their tribe, so not a clansman).

Okonkwo, and the people he and his family are now living with, learn that one of the Igbo’s nine villages has been destroyed and everyone killed. A white man who “spoke through his nose and rode an iron horse” came into the village. The Oracle told them that this man would cause their destruction. They brought this about, some months later, by killing him on the spot.

A larger group of white men surround the village on market day and, without warning, massacre them. Only a few escape to spread the word.

Two years later Anglican priests arrive in Obieriku and build a church, gaining some converts. This is the beginning of the end of their culture, but they do not know it. Eventually, some more years having passed, Okonkwo and his family return to Umuofia.

Okonkwo is one of the six leaders who are tricked into attending a meeting with the District Commissioner to discuss the burning down of the church (a new, stringent vicar had taken over from the previous gentle, likeable, and understanding vicar). Before any discussion could take place they are set upon and handcuffed, taken to the jail and told that the village is to be fined 200 cowries. The translators from another, non-Igbo, tribe pass on the message as a fine of 250 cowries, intending to keep 50 among themselves.

f the fine is paid within six days they will be released. If not, they will be hanged. Even during the imprisonment they are beaten, whipped and starved.

After their return to their village a tribal meeting is called. It is interrupted by messengers from the High Commissioner “to put a stop to it”. In the altercation which follows Okonkwo beheads the chief messenger, and leaves so as not to bring blame to the tribe.

When the High Commissioner arrives to arrest Okonkwo his main concern is not to get mixed up in the gruesome details. His only thought is how he will weave this incident into the book he is planning to write – “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger”. I think that the reader will agree that the tribes, as we have seen them, are anything but primitive, though they are certainly lacking in the “advantages” of European “civilisation”.

This seems to me to be yet another example of the destruction of a people’s culture by an outside group, greedy for the resources of the local people who are not yet aware of the presence of their presence and value. The sad thing is that many of the incomers, and in particular the representatives of the many churches seem genuinely to believe that they are doing good.

There is a rather unexpected ending to the story but, in retrospect, I should have been able to foresee something like it since all the clues are there. Read it for yourself. I'm not going to make it easy for you.

I scored this book at 7.5