Camillas Hemsida
Camilla Svensson
ENA 202Life in an African Village
Chinua Achebe describes in his book Things Fall Apart (1958) some interesting features of what life could look like in an African village during late 19th century. The society that the Nigerian author presents is in most ways considerably different from our western society of today. Life in the African village of Umuofia was, among many other things, spiritual and traditional.
The spiritual aspect of life in Umuofia is well illustrated by the episode where Okonkwo and one of his wives finally have a child that does not die at a young age. After having had to bury several of their children, Okonkwo and Ekwefi are told by a medicine man that all the children actually are one so-called ogbanje; a child that repeatedly dies and returns to its mother’s womb to be reborn. The parents are also told that it is almost impossible to bring up an ogbanje without it dying unless its iyi-uwa is first found and destroyed. An iyi-uwa is a special kind of stone which forms the link between the child and the spirit world. And so, after nine burials, the daughter Ezinma is born. Although she survives childhood, her parents still think she is one of the ogbanjes. One reason for this is that Ezinma is often ill. But on one occasion Ezinma tells the medicine man where her iyi-uwa lies buried. The stone is found and destroyed, and after this the people of Umuofia considered Ezinma to be free from her spell.
Sometimes I believe in so-called super-natural things myself, so I do not blame the inhabitants of Umuofia for their reasoning about the children’s deaths. I find it odd too that a woman can have nine children who all die before the age of three, and then a tenth who survives. I suppose there is a physical explanation, but maybe there is a spiritual as well.
On the other hand, I do not like the fact that the people made the little girl aware of the fact that they thought she was carrying an evil spirit within her. It must be devastating for a child to have that image of herself.Tradition also guided the inhabitants of Umuofia. Things went on as they had for generations, and people in general did not question the laws that ruled them. When reading the book, I astonished at the fact that Okonkwo, the main character of the book as well as a highly respected inhabitant of Umuofia, had to leave the village for seven years after accidentally having shot a boy. The gun went off, and, as Achebe describes it on page 87: The only course open to Okonkwo was to flee from the clan. It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a clansman, and a man who committed it must flee from the land. Okonkwo had committed the female, because it had been inadvertent. He could return after seven years. Achebe also tells us that violent deaths were frequent in the village, but nothing like this had ever happened.
There are two things about this that puzzle me as a westerner. The first thing is that the killing had been accidental, but still Okonkwo, with his high rang, had to leave his home village for seven whole years. I thought that rang played a much greater part in those African societies, and that the greater men got more lenient sentences. The second thing that puzzles me is that it was against the rule to kill a clansman, but apparently not another person. If Okonkwo accidentally had shot down an outlaw, a so-called osu, he would not have had to leave his village. For most of us westerners, a murder is a murder, no matter who has been killed.
Western society is considerably different from the African village-life described by Achebe. A European, for instance, visiting Nigeria might feel uneasy and confused among the traditions and spiritual ceremonies of the Africans. But still, I think it is good for us to read books like Things Fall Apart in order to understand other people as well as in order to challenge our own beliefs a bit.
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