Ikenga

The tale (in Igbo language) was set as from the late 1940s. It is the story of Ndukwe, a converted devout Christian and, more particularly his only son Okechukwu who was supposed to have been born with a ‘strong hand.’ After a childhood of fame and infamy, Okechukwu changed for the better at conclusion of secondary school and for a while things moved too easily for him. At 21 he’s got a good job at Owerri, a wife (married for him by his parents) with 2 kids, a house of his own in his village and even a car given to him by his employer thanks to his soccer skills and good personality. So you are left wondering what the ‘strong hand’ would lead him to, since a dibia woman had prophesied that he would end up killing a man, after Ndukwe refused to have him undergo some preventive rites by her called ike aka.

Then suddenly, Okechukwu’s outstanding good fortunes nose-dived, to such an extent he no longer saw reason to continue living. His two kids died within a month. His dad finally put aside his Christian reluctance and visited a dibia about this. The dibia said it was agwu ikenga that was responsible, that Okechukwu had to go through the ichi ikenga rites to avoid further misfortune. But Okechukwu decided to postpone the rites and be with the wife who was in labor. And to cap it all, even the wife died also during childbirth. Fed up with life, he ended up joining the army at war (the Nigerian civil war of the late ’60s), willing death to take him as well. He conducted himself responsibly in the war and led several successful missions.

 After surviving the war, in the last couple of chapters Okechukwu finally went through the ichi ikenga rites, after which all his misfortunes stopped. Some of the things the initiates had to go through during the rites were rather scary, like having hot oil poured in your eyes and also having to dip your hand into a pot of boiling oil. At the end of it, those that survived then had the powers of dibia. Each would have a shrine where he would regularly make sacrifices, like at the beginning of each new yam festival.

His parents again married a wife for him. He went to ala Bekee (probably UK) with her to study medicine and returned after seven years with another two kids, built a hospital in his village, worked as a doctor at Onitsha (dishing out both Western and Igbo cures as required) before he was appointed a health minister by the government.

The moral of the tale seems to be that certain Igbo customs and traditions have to be upheld, regardless of Christianity. The book is full of Igbo proverbs and expressions, some I understood, some I could guess at, some I didn’t quite understand. One of these was añuna ngwo na nkwu na-abia, something that is mentioned in one of the songs of a popular Igbo rapper some years back. I used to wonder what this expression meant exactly until I saw the context it was used in the book: The best is yet to come.

March 27, 2015. Review initially written in 2009. Novel first published in 1985, this Paperback Publishers edition having ISBN 978 2432 56 3.