BURNT HEAD -WAYS OF THE OLD

Those years were long gone, when judgement were meted on the dead that went rogue. Those days were no more, when elders with stellar qualities placed marshal punishments on those that erred, even when dead. Those days were lost when capital pronouncements on the dead were done by those with unriddled strength, who take uncommon stance on the dead, who hold the peace of the clan with uncommon actions.

Pa Josiah’s head was burnt — he erred from the greater beyond. I have only now imagined the hurt that the family felt when Chukwunatu’s sibling died, he was rumored to have been visited by my great uncle. I learnt there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when that incident happened. I learnt it was quite different from the very few occurrences that were over looked, a few ghostly slaps here and there, a bit of head-knocks and little bit of misadventures that characterized Pa Josiah, only this time it had gone too far.

Obioma had died, in faraway Benin — the elders had swallowed it enough. A pride of strong elders from Ahaba had met and decided to exhume his corpse to stand trial. They were ready to go the whole length to save the remaining clan from calamity. At trial, strong men and a herbalist riddled a corpse with his sins, legend has it that “anya ya gbaga kwara-kwara” eye balls were recklessly alive as he accepted his faith. Strong men gave the corpse no chance for a defense and pronounced a once wonderful gentleman, a man of the people — -second death by severance of head and burning to ashes.

An act that laid the spirits to rest ever since, a solution borne of the old ways.

Agaezu’s head was burnt too. The old and strong in my clan had made that determination, they were not going to spare his head. He had gone rogue and had visited the living, albeit with trails of misfortune. At trial, Agaezu stood no chance of a reprieve as he had accepted a finality to his rest — -second death by severance of head and burning to ashes.

An act that laid the spirits to rest ever since, a solution borne of the old ways.

Those days were long gone, we now had elders that had been weakened by the turn of the new world, ones that have been shut-up by the realities of the awakenings, ones that will not utter a word to the erring living talk less of a rogue dead, ones that would now rather sit and watch the she-goat suffer the pains of child birth. We were now in a world where the elders in the communities have lost a prominent loud voice, one that echoed power even in the greater beyond, ones that were feared and revered even by spirits. We were now in communities with displaced leaderships, ones that were precociously occupied by youths who would dare go to the great beyond with impunity, without fear of judgement or reprisal. We were laden with a number of us who considered the after-life a fable, who considered the ways of the old, primitive and powerless. We were now in a society that has relegated the ways of the old — tucking it faraway where it marinated with impotency.

As I watch my village battle with this new identity and reality, I cannot but wish a return of the old ways, where the words of the old were gospel, where each pronouncement on the erring were potent, where fear of reprisal and capital punishments where paramount, where what the elders saw while seating down, we youths would not dare see, standing up. Ancestral curses were now a thing of the past, no one feared “ibu onu”. The deities have all gone to church.

As I watch my village struggle with this new identity, I cannot but wonder how to stir the ship back to shore, how to recover lost grounds. The villages were almost run over by lawlessness and brute disregard to any stated hierarchy. The youths are now the new sheriffs— flaunting all norms, brandishing brazen banditry, exhibiting awful and vile behaviors, nothing more is hidden under the sun, the palm wine tapper had seen it all but cannot utter a word for fear of reprisal, the village head is mute, the crown has once more moved to become ceremonious.

In all honesty, it would take those punishments as grave as burning the head in the aftermath to bring us back, else we would be long gone.

The ways of the old has to be brought back.