OFEKE (Adapted from the novel Ekumeku The Rising Sun)

OFEKE (Adapted from the novel Ekumeku The Rising Sun)

OFEKE (Adapted from the novel Ekumeku The Rising Sun)

In most of the Enuani communities including Igbuzo, men who took no titles were referred to as ofeke. Small-minded men who had no significance in the affairs of the village. Emuka was one of the ofekes known in the whole of Igbuzo. While men fought battles, ploughed farms, hunted down animals in the wild, increased their yam barns, and contested each other for titles; Emuka frosted in his millennial indolence. Emuka was one of the oldest sons of the soil in the whole of Anioma who lacked the guts to take wives or own properties. He was only accepted in pleasure houses and drunken
brawls.

The story of Emuka was known to all and sundry because he was an efulefu. He originally came from the rich family of Ezeibe, one of the most decorated warriors in the land of Igbuzo.

Emuka never took interest in the gathering of men discussing the taste of blood stuck on their machetes. He was intensely passionate about taking the dance steps of young women, shaking their waists to the rhythm of the egele drums.

In a festival of Ani goddess hosted in Umuodafe, Emuka, intoxicated by gourds of palm wine would disguise himself as a young maiden and sneak in to join the egele women to dance to the crowd. Everything was proceeding well until Ezeagbara, the chief priest of Igbuzo pulled his staff to the crowd with a dreadful warning issued to the person desecrating the Ani festival.

The coward, Emuka removed his disguise out of fear of being struck down by the Ani goddess. The crowd glared at the young man in shame – throwing spits to the sand to show their utter disgust. The festival continued after Emuka left the community square at Umuodafe, head bowed in shame. Shame! It was just the beginning of the woes to be faced by Emuka.

Ezeibe pulled every string in the world to get any daughter of Anioma to marry his son after his betrothed bride had jilted him over the incident. No one wanted him. Everyone in the community avoided Emuka like a plague. Whenever he walked, children scuttled so fast with their legs away from him to avoid being struck with the curse of an ofeke. The young maidens of Igbuzo discussed his name in ‘jest’ to each other, and cursed themselves in the village stream with his name passed around like a rejected heritage. Elderly men used his story to warn their sons about the plight of an ofeke.

After some years, Ezeibe conceded to pressure and decided to sell his son to the slave merchants at Asaba the next Eke day. The first rise of the sun was accompanied by the abomination in the compound of Ezeibe. Emuka had strapped himself to the tree at the center of his father’s compound, a strong rope strangling his neck until all the air was sapped from his lungs.

Ezeibe had warned his household to show no respect to the spirit of Emuka. In no distant time, youths from neighbouring communities were assembled at Ezeibe’s compound to perform some ritual before taking down the corpse of the young man from the tree. For it was an abomination for men related by blood to touch the corpse of another man who died of his own hands.

After the ritual was completed, the youths hurled Emuka to their shoulders, and processed towards the Alusi Amali forests in silence.Whenever a local encountered them on the path, the local would spit to the soil, and scream in utter disgust, ‘Tufiakwa! The smell of a dead vulture infests the air. Let the evil forests take the evil it brought to mother earth!’
Ezeibe, and some close family members walked behind the youths in silence to the forests of Alusi Amali. When they reached their destination, Ezeibe ordered the youths to dig a shallow grave and roll his son inside with no ritual done on his behalf by his family.

Small men deserved no respect!

(Ekumeku The Rising Sun is available on all platforms including Amazon, B&N and other digital bookstores.)