Society : Story Time
I was born in 1971, at the end of the war. My
family was overwhelmed with joy after my birth. I
had come out a whopping eleven pounds and as a
result was nicknamed “double man” by my
mother’s only brother. I was born in an oba ji
(something similar to a manger), where farm
produce was stored for the next planting season,
and was later taken to Aba General Hospital in
order to get my birth registered. I was the first son
of Monday and Grace, the first grandson of Eunice
Ewurum, and the second grandson of Nwanyi
Burunnu.
Unbelievable as it might sound, I was fully
conscious of my environment as soon as I was
born, a gift that I will try to explain later.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on who
you ask—I remember things that happened right
from my birth. No one could tell that I had this
ability and it was a particularly difficult situation for
me. There I was, a baby with the ability to
understand all that was happening around me, yet
having to depend completely on adults—who
sometimes had no clue what I wanted—to think and
act on my behalf, simply because I could not speak
yet.
My grandmother Eunice came to stay with my
parents after my birth, and she brought with her my
cousin Ijeoma.
Traditionally, after every birth, the new mother
would be aided by her mother for at least three
months, and at the end of that period, the new
grandmother would leave her daughter’s house with
loads of gifts in exchange for the help rendered.
However, my grandmother and cousin would stay
with us for more than a year.
I remember that my mother used to lay me in a
bamboo chair in the single room where they were
still living when I was born. Above my head was an
array of weird wooden objects, which I suppose
were meant for my amusement. I was indeed
amused, not by what the adults around me were
doing to please me, but by their sheer ignorance
and inability to discern exactly what my needs
were at the time. My parents slept in a bamboo
bed across from my chair-bed….
In other corners of the room were heaps of items—
personal belongings like clothing, shoes, and
cooking utensils, as well as my mother’s bicycle
and sewing machine.
Even though my father was doing well in his
business at the time, the war had devastated most
of the cities in the Igbo region. During the three
years of the war, the independent state of Biafra
had created and used its own currency, but after
losing the war, the Biafran money became
valueless. Everyone had to start all over again.
As I grew into a toddler, soldiers, guns, and hunger
—remnants from the war—were familiar sights to
me. In that period, it was typical to see children
look sickly and malnourished, but I was chubby and
healthy. This amazed the soldiers who came
around, and they took to calling me “double man”
as well. The soldiers grew quite fond of me and
would visit my village just to play with me. I loved
having them around, but my joy was at the expense
of most of the villagers who, having lived through
the war, were still severely traumatized by the
mere sight of soldiers and would take to their heels
whenever they approached. Though I never felt
their fear, I understood it, so whenever I saw the
soldiers in the distance, I would alert my cousin
Ijeoma; she would lock the doors and hide while I
remained outside, letting the soldiers lift me and
throw me up in the air. That environment had a
tremendous effect on me. I started to fantasize
about becoming a leader and a soldier, and vowed
that I would work toward this, even if it took a
lifetime.
Unlike many other children, I started walking by the
time I was seven months old and was talking
before my first birthday. According to my mother,
my first word was onyeocha, meaning “white
person.” She remembered me telling her that I
wanted to marry a white girl, and was amused not
just by my speaking, but by my fascination with
white people. This enthrallment grew, and in my
elementary school days I would draw pictures of
white people while other children drew tigers and
elephants. So deep was my fascination that my
relatives believed I would one day marry a white
girl.
I grew up with a lot of adult attention, which I
enjoyed immensely. One evening, roasting corn with
Uncle Francis, I had a terrible accident. For about a
minute Uncle Francis had left me sitting on a tall,
rocky stool in front of the charcoal fire that was
roasting the corn, while he went inside the house. I
dozed off on the stool and fell into the fire. Nobody
believed that I would survive the third-degree
burns, and in following the Faith Tabernacle
teachings, I was never taken to a hospital. I
endured the excruciating pain, a remarkable feat
for a baby, and still have a scar on my chest from
the fire. What I never told anyone was that I did
not fall into the fire by accident. When I fell asleep
on the stool, I saw some strange people in a dream
who were trying to take me with them; as I
struggled, they pushed me into the charcoal fire
and held me there, where I lay screaming until
someone found me. It might have seemed like a
dream, but the hands pinning me down were all too
real. I suspect that this incident was connected to
my father’s involvement with the secret society.
I grew faster than most children my age, and I
retained the gift of seeing supernatural things. I
sometimes told other children of their future,
though mainly the negative aspects. Sometimes I
would tell them of the impending death of a parent,
or when they were about to receive beatings from
their parents or get hurt in other ways. Many times
I would see the death of my friends or relatives
and tell them. My predictions usually came to pass,
and because of this my friends became afraid of
me.
At age four, I was enrolled into elementary
(primary) school. At the time, the enrollment
requirement was for the middle fingertip of the
right hand of the prospective pupil to be able to go
across the child’s head and touch his or her left
ear. This was to ascertain the age of the child in
the absence of birth certificates, which many did
not have during this period. The usual age for
enrollment was six, but I took the test and passed.
However, some of my friends, even those who were
up to six years old, failed the test because their
growth had been impeded due to malnutrition
brought about by the war.
I was happy to be in school. At that time, I would
go to class with the square piece of slate that I
wrote on, as well as different colors of chalk. When
I got home each day, I would take time to clean my
slate. I would gather some fresh green leaves
(particularly the ones called Awolowo leaves) from
the bushes, mix them with charcoal and a little
water, rub the paste over the slate, and leave it to
dry for hours. I had a lot of fun in primary one (first
grade). Between learning our ABCs and numbers,
we spent a lot of time singing and playing. We
were also told a lot of folktales and were taught
Christian religious studies.
I was fearless—unafraid of the dark or of being
alone—but that changed suddenly after a traumatic
experience. One day, returning from the creek with
my cousin Uchenna, our buckets of water balanced
on our heads, something very unusual happened.
We saw a female in black approaching us. That
would have been no reason to fear, except that she
was hovering above the ground, not walking, and
beside her was a creature I find hard to describe.
It had the head of a crocodile and four enormous,
diamond-shaped eyes. Its neck was like a giraffe’s,
and it seemed not to have well-defined feet but
had several hands, with nails about twenty-four
inches long. The creature’s abdomen seemed to
change color like a chameleon. Chills ran through
my body, almost paralyzing me. Uchenna and I ran
home as fast as we could, abandoning our buckets
where they had fallen. When we told our family
about this, they said we must have seen a ghost—
but I suspected, once again, that it was related to
my father’s association with the secret society.
From that day on, I became fearful of the dark and
of being left alone.
My ordeal with ghosts persisted, and I developed a
serious fear of them due to many terrible recurring
nightmares. Nevertheless, I defeated these ghosts
every time by using the magic words my mother
had taught me to shout whenever I was in trouble:
“The Blood of Jesus!” Most of my dreams were
extraordinary—to borrow my father’s words, they
were more like out-of-body experiences or astral
traveling. These dreams usually involved me
coming out of my body and floating at the speed of
light through a series of scenes, while still
conscious of my body lying in my bed. Sometimes,
while in this state, I would be attacked by the
same group of ghosts who, for some reason,
wanted me dead at all costs. In each encounter,
when I got tired of running from them, I would
become bold and declare to them: “Do as you wish!
You can cut and chop me into pieces, but it
doesn’t matter because I know that I am dreaming
and I will wake up in my bed.” Each time, after
taunting and telling off the ghosts, I would repeat
the magic phrase, “The Blood of Jesus.” The
phrase never failed; it always saved me, and
whenever I said it, I would wake up in my bed.
I was a very stubborn child and remained so
through the years. At times I could be extremely
violent and out of control. There was no
moderation or compromise in anything I did; it was
always my way or nothing at all. In spite of all this,
I was still influenced by certain religious beliefs
that my parents had inculcated in me. The Bible
readings and prayers that we had at my house
early each morning since my birth had a significant
effect on me, causing me to rebel against certain
aspects of the culture that surrounded me. At a
very tender age I became a crusader, bent on
destroying all the idols’ houses scattered around
my village. Sometimes I would gather boys and
girls my age and we would go around the village,
knocking down all the wooden gods and the objectsof their worship that were so common at the time—
despite the fact that most of the townspeople
went to church and claimed to be Christians.
In my village there was a popular goddess called
Nneorji (mother of the iroko tree). The iroko is
highly revered among the Igbo people, possibly
because it grows to be very large, with lots of
branches that provide shade. People often gather
under the iroko to conduct meetings or to get
respite from the heat. The iroko has a very long life
span, some living more than five hundred years.
When an iroko is cut down, it becomes a huge
source of revenue. The timber is cut into different
kinds of construction wood, and the branches are
used as firewood. Traditionally, before an iroko tree
is cut down, certain venerations and sacrifices are
required. Some villages in Igbo land don’t cut down
their iroko trees at all; instead, they worship and
make sacrifices to them—animals and humans
included.
The little house of the goddess Nneorji—nine by
nine feet and made of mud, with a thatched roof—
was built hundreds of years ago, located
prominently at the entrance to the village. A
carved wooden statue of Nneorji stood in the
center of the hut, leaning against a wall. To the
left and right were a number of smaller wooden
gods, which I presumed were Nneorji’s sons,
daughters, and kindred—more than twenty of them
all together. Every few days the keeper of Nneorji’s
house would bring sacrifices to her. I could not
fathom why my village was spending so much on
inanimate objects, and it reminded me of a portion
of the Bible my mother used to read to us, in which
it clearly stated that idol worship was very
offensive to God. It also reminded me of the Bible
story in which Moses, having ascended Mount
Sinai, returned with the Ten Commandments only
to meet the Israelites worshipping a calf that they
had made out of their jewelry; in his anger, Moses
smashed the slate on which the commandments
had been written, and the Israelites were severely
punished. I concluded that since the adults in my
village weren’t brave enough to stop the idol
worship, I would do it myself.
It was believed that whoever went into Nneorji’s
house without going through the proper process
would die. Though my friends and I bravely went to the house with the intention of destroying it, they wouldn’t dare go inside with me. I marched into the hut and knocked down all the wooden gods, including Nneorji, challenging her to fight back in order to prove she was indeed a god. Of course the figure remained silent, and I said, “I thought as hub much. You’re just a piece of wood.”
I returned to the house later, shocked to find the
gods and goddesses standing again. I repeated my
destruction several times, always returning to find
the statues intact. But I was not deterred. I
remained relentless in my quest to destroy every
idol in my village. I gradually took the gods out of
Nneorji’s house and burned them, until there was
nothing left in the house.
To Be Continued…
family was overwhelmed with joy after my birth. I
had come out a whopping eleven pounds and as a
result was nicknamed “double man” by my
mother’s only brother. I was born in an oba ji
(something similar to a manger), where farm
produce was stored for the next planting season,
and was later taken to Aba General Hospital in
order to get my birth registered. I was the first son
of Monday and Grace, the first grandson of Eunice
Ewurum, and the second grandson of Nwanyi
Burunnu.
Unbelievable as it might sound, I was fully
conscious of my environment as soon as I was
born, a gift that I will try to explain later.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on who
you ask—I remember things that happened right
from my birth. No one could tell that I had this
ability and it was a particularly difficult situation for
me. There I was, a baby with the ability to
understand all that was happening around me, yet
having to depend completely on adults—who
sometimes had no clue what I wanted—to think and
act on my behalf, simply because I could not speak
yet.
My grandmother Eunice came to stay with my
parents after my birth, and she brought with her my
cousin Ijeoma.
Traditionally, after every birth, the new mother
would be aided by her mother for at least three
months, and at the end of that period, the new
grandmother would leave her daughter’s house with
loads of gifts in exchange for the help rendered.
However, my grandmother and cousin would stay
with us for more than a year.
I remember that my mother used to lay me in a
bamboo chair in the single room where they were
still living when I was born. Above my head was an
array of weird wooden objects, which I suppose
were meant for my amusement. I was indeed
amused, not by what the adults around me were
doing to please me, but by their sheer ignorance
and inability to discern exactly what my needs
were at the time. My parents slept in a bamboo
bed across from my chair-bed….
In other corners of the room were heaps of items—
personal belongings like clothing, shoes, and
cooking utensils, as well as my mother’s bicycle
and sewing machine.
Even though my father was doing well in his
business at the time, the war had devastated most
of the cities in the Igbo region. During the three
years of the war, the independent state of Biafra
had created and used its own currency, but after
losing the war, the Biafran money became
valueless. Everyone had to start all over again.
As I grew into a toddler, soldiers, guns, and hunger
—remnants from the war—were familiar sights to
me. In that period, it was typical to see children
look sickly and malnourished, but I was chubby and
healthy. This amazed the soldiers who came
around, and they took to calling me “double man”
as well. The soldiers grew quite fond of me and
would visit my village just to play with me. I loved
having them around, but my joy was at the expense
of most of the villagers who, having lived through
the war, were still severely traumatized by the
mere sight of soldiers and would take to their heels
whenever they approached. Though I never felt
their fear, I understood it, so whenever I saw the
soldiers in the distance, I would alert my cousin
Ijeoma; she would lock the doors and hide while I
remained outside, letting the soldiers lift me and
throw me up in the air. That environment had a
tremendous effect on me. I started to fantasize
about becoming a leader and a soldier, and vowed
that I would work toward this, even if it took a
lifetime.
Unlike many other children, I started walking by the
time I was seven months old and was talking
before my first birthday. According to my mother,
my first word was onyeocha, meaning “white
person.” She remembered me telling her that I
wanted to marry a white girl, and was amused not
just by my speaking, but by my fascination with
white people. This enthrallment grew, and in my
elementary school days I would draw pictures of
white people while other children drew tigers and
elephants. So deep was my fascination that my
relatives believed I would one day marry a white
girl.
I grew up with a lot of adult attention, which I
enjoyed immensely. One evening, roasting corn with
Uncle Francis, I had a terrible accident. For about a
minute Uncle Francis had left me sitting on a tall,
rocky stool in front of the charcoal fire that was
roasting the corn, while he went inside the house. I
dozed off on the stool and fell into the fire. Nobody
believed that I would survive the third-degree
burns, and in following the Faith Tabernacle
teachings, I was never taken to a hospital. I
endured the excruciating pain, a remarkable feat
for a baby, and still have a scar on my chest from
the fire. What I never told anyone was that I did
not fall into the fire by accident. When I fell asleep
on the stool, I saw some strange people in a dream
who were trying to take me with them; as I
struggled, they pushed me into the charcoal fire
and held me there, where I lay screaming until
someone found me. It might have seemed like a
dream, but the hands pinning me down were all too
real. I suspect that this incident was connected to
my father’s involvement with the secret society.
I grew faster than most children my age, and I
retained the gift of seeing supernatural things. I
sometimes told other children of their future,
though mainly the negative aspects. Sometimes I
would tell them of the impending death of a parent,
or when they were about to receive beatings from
their parents or get hurt in other ways. Many times
I would see the death of my friends or relatives
and tell them. My predictions usually came to pass,
and because of this my friends became afraid of
me.
At age four, I was enrolled into elementary
(primary) school. At the time, the enrollment
requirement was for the middle fingertip of the
right hand of the prospective pupil to be able to go
across the child’s head and touch his or her left
ear. This was to ascertain the age of the child in
the absence of birth certificates, which many did
not have during this period. The usual age for
enrollment was six, but I took the test and passed.
However, some of my friends, even those who were
up to six years old, failed the test because their
growth had been impeded due to malnutrition
brought about by the war.
I was happy to be in school. At that time, I would
go to class with the square piece of slate that I
wrote on, as well as different colors of chalk. When
I got home each day, I would take time to clean my
slate. I would gather some fresh green leaves
(particularly the ones called Awolowo leaves) from
the bushes, mix them with charcoal and a little
water, rub the paste over the slate, and leave it to
dry for hours. I had a lot of fun in primary one (first
grade). Between learning our ABCs and numbers,
we spent a lot of time singing and playing. We
were also told a lot of folktales and were taught
Christian religious studies.
I was fearless—unafraid of the dark or of being
alone—but that changed suddenly after a traumatic
experience. One day, returning from the creek with
my cousin Uchenna, our buckets of water balanced
on our heads, something very unusual happened.
We saw a female in black approaching us. That
would have been no reason to fear, except that she
was hovering above the ground, not walking, and
beside her was a creature I find hard to describe.
It had the head of a crocodile and four enormous,
diamond-shaped eyes. Its neck was like a giraffe’s,
and it seemed not to have well-defined feet but
had several hands, with nails about twenty-four
inches long. The creature’s abdomen seemed to
change color like a chameleon. Chills ran through
my body, almost paralyzing me. Uchenna and I ran
home as fast as we could, abandoning our buckets
where they had fallen. When we told our family
about this, they said we must have seen a ghost—
but I suspected, once again, that it was related to
my father’s association with the secret society.
From that day on, I became fearful of the dark and
of being left alone.
My ordeal with ghosts persisted, and I developed a
serious fear of them due to many terrible recurring
nightmares. Nevertheless, I defeated these ghosts
every time by using the magic words my mother
had taught me to shout whenever I was in trouble:
“The Blood of Jesus!” Most of my dreams were
extraordinary—to borrow my father’s words, they
were more like out-of-body experiences or astral
traveling. These dreams usually involved me
coming out of my body and floating at the speed of
light through a series of scenes, while still
conscious of my body lying in my bed. Sometimes,
while in this state, I would be attacked by the
same group of ghosts who, for some reason,
wanted me dead at all costs. In each encounter,
when I got tired of running from them, I would
become bold and declare to them: “Do as you wish!
You can cut and chop me into pieces, but it
doesn’t matter because I know that I am dreaming
and I will wake up in my bed.” Each time, after
taunting and telling off the ghosts, I would repeat
the magic phrase, “The Blood of Jesus.” The
phrase never failed; it always saved me, and
whenever I said it, I would wake up in my bed.
I was a very stubborn child and remained so
through the years. At times I could be extremely
violent and out of control. There was no
moderation or compromise in anything I did; it was
always my way or nothing at all. In spite of all this,
I was still influenced by certain religious beliefs
that my parents had inculcated in me. The Bible
readings and prayers that we had at my house
early each morning since my birth had a significant
effect on me, causing me to rebel against certain
aspects of the culture that surrounded me. At a
very tender age I became a crusader, bent on
destroying all the idols’ houses scattered around
my village. Sometimes I would gather boys and
girls my age and we would go around the village,
knocking down all the wooden gods and the objectsof their worship that were so common at the time—
despite the fact that most of the townspeople
went to church and claimed to be Christians.
In my village there was a popular goddess called
Nneorji (mother of the iroko tree). The iroko is
highly revered among the Igbo people, possibly
because it grows to be very large, with lots of
branches that provide shade. People often gather
under the iroko to conduct meetings or to get
respite from the heat. The iroko has a very long life
span, some living more than five hundred years.
When an iroko is cut down, it becomes a huge
source of revenue. The timber is cut into different
kinds of construction wood, and the branches are
used as firewood. Traditionally, before an iroko tree
is cut down, certain venerations and sacrifices are
required. Some villages in Igbo land don’t cut down
their iroko trees at all; instead, they worship and
make sacrifices to them—animals and humans
included.
The little house of the goddess Nneorji—nine by
nine feet and made of mud, with a thatched roof—
was built hundreds of years ago, located
prominently at the entrance to the village. A
carved wooden statue of Nneorji stood in the
center of the hut, leaning against a wall. To the
left and right were a number of smaller wooden
gods, which I presumed were Nneorji’s sons,
daughters, and kindred—more than twenty of them
all together. Every few days the keeper of Nneorji’s
house would bring sacrifices to her. I could not
fathom why my village was spending so much on
inanimate objects, and it reminded me of a portion
of the Bible my mother used to read to us, in which
it clearly stated that idol worship was very
offensive to God. It also reminded me of the Bible
story in which Moses, having ascended Mount
Sinai, returned with the Ten Commandments only
to meet the Israelites worshipping a calf that they
had made out of their jewelry; in his anger, Moses
smashed the slate on which the commandments
had been written, and the Israelites were severely
punished. I concluded that since the adults in my
village weren’t brave enough to stop the idol
worship, I would do it myself.
It was believed that whoever went into Nneorji’s
house without going through the proper process
would die. Though my friends and I bravely went to the house with the intention of destroying it, they wouldn’t dare go inside with me. I marched into the hut and knocked down all the wooden gods, including Nneorji, challenging her to fight back in order to prove she was indeed a god. Of course the figure remained silent, and I said, “I thought as hub much. You’re just a piece of wood.”
I returned to the house later, shocked to find the
gods and goddesses standing again. I repeated my
destruction several times, always returning to find
the statues intact. But I was not deterred. I
remained relentless in my quest to destroy every
idol in my village. I gradually took the gods out of
Nneorji’s house and burned them, until there was
nothing left in the house.
To Be Continued…
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