The African Child

CHAPTER 3

COPING WITH DIFFICUTIES FROM DAY ONE

As a growing child I had more than my own share of difficulties. Born on Nkwo market day, my earthly life came on as I arrived in the world with birth issues. My mother on her way back from the market began the pains of labor. She had barely dressed down when the child in her was in a haste to come out. There was no time and no one to send to call a traditional midwife. I was born along the market street, half a mile from the market. My mother was able to take care of me as the baby water had broken already and the head of her baby had come out. On that fateful evening, as she got home, my mother's only companion was my immediate senior brother, Asonye. He died many years later, in 1949, from kidney infection as a result of deadly poison he had taken while living at Oguta.

However, word has gone around the neighborhood that Ugadie has had her 4th live birth, a male as usual, the only female child had been born 11 years before as her 2nd child. There was really no joy when I was born as my mother told me. Nobody came to her help. Nobody even came to clean me up and certainly there was no soft landing for me on earth from Day One.

The highly respected mother of my most adored 'uncle' and foster father to me, generally called 'Nwam,' her full name being Nwuruozo, meaning" ozo title gain" till she died called me the name which summarized my earthly arrival- 'Okuruonweya' meaning the child who nursed himself. So did every other member of the kindred took liberty to give me a name that gives meaning to the person's perspective of my conception and birth. So I was called "Nwaonu" or "Onunado" meaning the tongue causes dispute, a name in defense of my abandonment at birth. But my birth also was seen by a segment of some relations as a peace maker in the larger family as this group chose to call me - "Onyezeikpe" meaning the king gives judgment. Then what did my mother call me? Apart from her several adoring and sometimes flirtatious names she mostly pestered me with, my mother and her closest allies chose to call me "Asuzu" meaning "who never fears the babbling noise", reflecting that I was born on a big market day of Nkwo Isu or amidst disputations. My mother's sister who had lived with and witnessed the tumultuous disputes during the pregnancy even continued the battle of words after my birth by calling me - "Onyiriuka," one who overcame wordy battles.

None ever stopped even 8 years after my baptism in the Catholic Church. So, as I grew up with many conflicting names, I was to gauge the intentions of those who knew my beginning by what they called me. I personally preferred the middle of the road name which was registered at the time I began schooling at age 3. Indeed, each name given to me was fitting for one element of my make-up and my registered name' Asuzu' was not as divisive as the others yet many did not like it. If they thought it was too flattering, I did not help matters when at age eight I chose my baptismal name- Cornelius, the first Gentile to convert to Christianity with his family, and a Roman centurion.” See Acts 10: 1-29”

Now, how did it happen that I was not given a baptismal name like others but rather, that I chose one for myself? When the colonial masters took over the administration of a colony, they took along missionaries of the Protestants and those of the Catholic faith. While the district officers and their assistants took charge of governance of the area- collecting taxes, ensuring peace in communities and hunting down slave traders, it fell on missionaries to establish schools and build churches for the communities and fighting the obscure and illogical cases of killing of twins and other criminal activities engaged by natives. On the face of it, all looks well and good but there were conflicts between the old and the new. In most African communities tradition takes 1st place of honor and was in constant clash with the incoming Whiteman’s order of business.

However, for Africans, there is the order of primogeniture ensuring the rights of firstborn males to near exclusive ownership of family property as well as inheritance of titles of traditional rites.

So it came to be that at the end of the World War 11 many African communities received back their surviving sons who fought alongside of the Allied Forces, and the missionaries who came to preach the gospel of Christ.

EFFECTS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The returning soldiers quickly dissolved in their larger communities having been discharged while some took up jobs as interpreters in courts presided over by white colonial officers.

The missionaries on their own began to set up schools in localities they found friendly and supportive. The mission schools proprietors were paid grants in aid assessed by the number of school children. Here is the incentive that motivated the chase for children to go to school. The negative side was that each child would pay the school fees then in a couple of shillings but hard to come by. In town after town the lead school teachers became the “administrators” who made rules binding not only on the school children but on entire communities. They were the standard bearers; the touch lights in darkness.

A rule was made in those days in my ancient town of IsuNjaba that each family must register one child to attend school. A polygamous family as I belonged to had a choice to choose from any of the children from any of the man’s wives. At this time, I had three senior brothers of school age. But my father would never give up his first born son from my mother because of his inheritance status. He would not give up his second from his first wife because that was his mother’s only son. The third child is my immediate brother from my mother but he is the reincarnate of my father’s late only brother whom he named Dike and his most loved so he would not give him away to the white man’s recruiters. I was only three years old and no saving grace so was thrown into the hands of the school recruiters. Nobody had any excuse for me not even my tender age was pleaded. I was the sacrificial lamb.

The fear generated was born of ignorance and sheer falsehood to scare away illiterate parents from sending their children to school. In one instance the parents refused to tell recruiters how many children they had but presented girls who were promptly rejected. The boys were hidden away.

The spirit of revolt is in born in me, inherited from my mother’s side. She had all her life fought injustice of any kind. A woman of noble birth and her father’s first daughter, her parents named her Eshinobieze, meaning “bred from the king’s line”. She came from a large and influential family of Umuokoroko, Ebenator of the old Ekwe autonomous community. She had visited her cousin’s marital home at Amugbara when another young man saw her and could not sleep for days until she accepted his hand in marriage. All tradition was observed. The bride price of 21 shillings paid and she took her time as “Ada” to get ready to move to her husband as required by tradition. Unfortunately, not long after, the man died.