Fictional Ndigbo Choppings

Long before the advent of Indomie the great fictional people that lived from Umuofia to Mbaino (present day South Eastern Nigeria) ate glorious organic food with aromas that could wake up the dead lying in the evil forest. Eating well was a daily occurrence but come the big feasts such as Weddings or the New Yam festival, no expense was spared in making everyone drunk with alimentary merriment.

No village is complete without the mavericks and Umuofia had two. One was Nwayieke who loved to pound her foo-foo late at night when mere mortals had eaten and where relaxing in their huts telling folktales or making babies. She cared nothing for the noise abatement rules and her distinctive pestle and mortal broke the silence of the night. The second one was the chief player of them all; Okonkwo who walked like he bounced on springs. He had three wives who had to be satisfied and that meant eating three meals on some occasions. Their children brought in the dishes fresh off the cooking tripods and like the equal opportunity husband that he was he ate all three meals. One could hazard a guess that the wives came to inquire if he had loved the food later in the night personally; for some questions are too important to be relayed through one’s own children.  

This was a village rich in culture and verbosity. You never approached the subject directly but danced around it the way a painful boil is scratched. There was always a preamble and food was an ever present metaphor in proverbial sayings. The people said proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten after all.

Visitors were welcomed with lavish dollops of proverbs and salutations. Next thing they broke the Kola to break the ice.

Sensitive things like money and bride price discussions needed to be lubricated with Palm Wine to keep the Umuofia engine running smoothly.

Okoye called on Unoka (Okonkwo’s father) to collect a debt. After pleasantries, Unoka presented a Kola Nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk.

Okoye accepted the Kola by saying ‘thank you, he who brings Kola brings life’.

When Okonkwo was starting out in life and needed a loan of 800 seed yams to plant he turned up at Nwakibie’s residence with a pot of palm wine and a cock. Nwakibie in turn presents Kola nuts and alligator pepper. The Kola was broken and prayers said and those present brought out their drinking horns while Okonkwo shared his palm wine. (Okonkwo drank his wine first; a precaution against avoiding poisonous chemicals touching the heart). They drank palm wine down to the dregs which were handed to Igwelo who had a job in hand. He was a newly married man and palm wine dregs was the Viagra of the time in Umoufia. Following Okonkwo’s pitch the impressed Nwakibie responded thus, ‘it pleases me to see a young man like you these days when our youth have grown soft’. (Chai!! Lazy Youth??)

Many years later when Okonkwo had become rich he was described as having two barns full of yams and three wives. This amount of assets ensured he had his place in Umoufia’s Forbes Rich List for yams were the King of Crops and he had enough to spare. When he was rude to a man who he deemed not to be successful enough to contradict him in a meeting, an elder cautioned him: those whose palm kernels were cracked for them by benevolent spirits should not forget to be humble

A man of great appetite, Okonkwo lost his head when his wife went to do her hair (Pre Brazilian. Perhaps Mbanta extensions) and forgot to make his food. Both angry and hungry, he pounced on her when she returned despite it being the Week of peace when no violence was allowed. Ani the earth goddess fined him a she-goat, a hen, a length of cloth and a hundred cowries. To that Okonkwo volunteered a pot of palm wine. (The gods too ate regularly).

The arrival of the feast of the New Yam was an occasion for great joy in celebration of the recent harvest and the giving thanks to Ani the earth goddess. It was feasting all over town. There was a fable about a man who presented a mountainous amount of foo-foo for guests so much so that people on one side did not see those on the other. It was not until evening that guests recognised in-laws over the now reduced foo-foo and shook hands over it.

The Okonkwo household ate well during the first day of the new yam festival. On the second day Ekwefi and daughter plucked the feathers of a chicken proving that there might be something to this Black man and chicken stereotype.

Suddenly the gods sent a blessing that flew in filling Umuofia with celebration. Locusts descended everywhere and the elders advised the young ones to wait for nightfall before harvesting the creatures. It was rich picking for Umuofia as dew had soaked up the locust wings rendering them immobile. 

The next day locusts were roasted on clay pots and crunched happily then washed down with palm wine.

After the killing of Ikemufuna,  Okonkwo overcome with grief did not eat for two days. On the three day he ate one of his favourite meals; roasted plantains with slices of oil bean and fish.

One dark night Ekwefi and her daughter had delicious foo-foo and bitter leaf soup. Then came the folk tale about the greedy tortoise who followed the birds to a great feast in the sky having borrowed feathers from them. As they approached the feast he was chosen as their spokesman and took on the alias All of you. The host presented pounded yam, yam pottage, a soup full of meat and fish.

The greedy tortoise asked who the food was for and when the host answered, ‘all of you’ he ate most of the food. The angry birds all took their feathers back. The parrot agreed to relay a message to Mrs Tortoise to put out soft furniture so that Tortoise could jump down from the sky. The vindictive bird changed the message and asked for hard objects to be put out. The tortoise jumped down and cracked his shell which had to be put together again by a great medicine man thus losing its smoothness.

Obierika’s daughters Uri ceremony saw the whole of Okonkwo’s household go in to help with the cooking. They went bearing gifts and the children made endless trips to the stream. The in laws were coming to take their bride and brought fifty pots of palm wine for the Umunna.

Cooking pots went up and down the tripods and foo-foo was pounded in a hundred wooden mortars.

Not too long after this great wedding feast Okonkwo found himself in Mbanta where he spent seven years in exile as punishment for killing a kinsman accidentally when his gun exploded. To thank his in laws for accommodating him he threw a generous feast for them before returning home.

Things however were not the same anymore. The British had come on Iron horses and put a knife to the things that held Umuofia together and they had fallen apart.

Adapted from the Novel Things Fall Apart by Prof Chinua Achebe