Book Preview
Oseloka Obaze*
Saturday
24 September 2011
The
Chike Momah
(ISBN-xxx-
xxx xxx; USA; Due Fall, 2011, Pp. 240, Price, unstated)
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It
is often assumed that the ways of the fathers will be the
ways of the sons.
Not so, when two cultures and civilizations clash,
and become personified in the abiding love of one man and one woman from
different climes. In
The Jericho Wall,
Chike Momah carefully and faithfully
document the prevailing challenges young Igbo men born in America must squarely
face, when they arrive at the juncture of selecting a bride. The book delves
into the basis and parameters of Igbo marriages and why indeed, many Igbo men
continue to return to their native land to find wives and conclude related
formalities.
As the book
documents, marriage in the Igbo culture is a life-long process involving two
families. “Marriage is never simply between two individuals, the man and the
woman. It’s between two families… please don’t listen to anyone who tells you
differently. ” Oddly enough, in such a context, the two people directly involved
are more or less, not the major consideration. Culture as a defining and
separating ethos reigns supreme.
And paradoxically, even when as in this case, the groom and
the bride to be are both black, one a Nigerian-born American and the other, an
African-American –
Akata – the conflicts and
barriers do not abate.
The divisive reasons, some logical, some banal and
several unfathomable, is what Chike Momah explores superbly in this forthcoming
book, his sixth.
The Jericho
Wall
is
set in contemporary
A challenged Okocha Anigbo grasped the confounding import
fully in forewarning Tatiana that “The bottom line is that marriages – in our
tradition – are contracted between two families, not just between two persons
like me and you.
It is a family to family thing.
We come and knock on your door, to let your family
know that one of us – that’s me – wants to marry you.”
Nat Anigbo encapsulated Okocha’s dilemma further: “My son,
marriage is an institution, among the Igbo, that is bound by tradition and
customs. It isn’t something a young man – or girl- is entirely free to get into,
at his whim.
There are all manners of considerations that have to be
weighed in the balance.” Conversely, Philip Karefa admits, regrettably, that
“Tradition is something the African-American has badly missed out on, these many
centuries – I mean, whatever sense of tradition we brought with us from Africa,
but which has been lost forever.” The stage is thus set, for an otherwise happy
event to become conflicting and discordant.
If Nat Anigbo’s son would elect to buck the cultural trend
by going against everything his father stood for and preached, he would set a
precedent of unfathomable consequences. After all, “Nat Anigbo was well known,
among his friends, to be strongly in favour of encouraging the Igbo children of
the Diaspora to find love and marriage preferably within the Igbo or, failing
that, at least the Nigerian communities.” This latter view was not shared
directly by Okocha, who to the chagrin of his parents observed; “You think an
Igbo youth finds happiness only in marrying Igbo girl?
Is happiness what we younger ones see when we look
around us and see some of our Igbo families? ….You know that I know how many
families that have brought their domestic problems to you, and sometimes even to
the union.”
Explicably,
Nat Anigbo and his wife Ekemma are naturally conflicted. Much as they would
loved to see their son get married and give them grandchildren, they felt bound
by age-old culture of doing things the right way – the Igbo way and in tandem
with Igbo values and norms.
All the parties involved appreciated that formidable obstacles to marriages outside the Igbo clan persisted. Such obstacles were as age-long as the marriage custom itself or the proverbial Wall of Jericho. Breaching the custom would require formidably miraculous efforts similar to those needed to breach the Wall of Jericho.
Unsurprisingly, doubts even crept in between the elder
Anigbos prompting Nat to wonder about his wife: ‘He could not imagine the
reasons for the strange behaviour, since she knew well enough how he felt about
their young Igbo boys and girls marrying Americans…’ Such pangs of confliction
were not lost to Okocha, either, as he would convey to his younger brother Kanu.
“The entire Igbo community in this state, it seems, is watching our family,
waiting to see if our dad,
Ugo-oranyelu
as they respectfully call him, will let his son marry an
akata
girl, when he is always loudly proclaiming his opposition to the very idea of
such marriages.”
Besides the seemingly whimsical, there were other factors
more compelling as to why the Igbo had marriage parameters. Nat Anigbo had
unequivocally articulated this to his son thus: “We never rush into marriage
before we find out everything we can about our prospective in-laws.
And if they want to, they too can check us out.
That’s quite simply how it is with the Igbo.
What kind of people are we marrying into?
Are they a respectable family?
Was there ever insanity in their extended family –
not just their what’s the word?
-- yes their
nuclear
family. Or a murderer? Are they from a stock of freemen, or
slaves-?
Okocha problems did not end there. Confronted by Tatiana’s
parents he was truthful about that the unsavoury state of affairs, which however
did not get him any succour or stop the questions: “You want to marry my
daughter, but your parents do not approve. How are we –her mother and me –
supposed to react to that?”
The denouement of the cross-cultural conflict was reached
when Okocha declared:
“We have our customs and traditions, and our old
ways of doing things: ways that need some overhauling. That’s a crusade that has
to be undertaken, by the young generation of the Igbo.” Of the needed change, in
itself a huge task to accomplish, he averred, “It will probably take the effort
of more than a whole generation of determined Igbo youths to move us forward,
and out of the quagmire in which we as a people are currently bogged down”.
Thus as the book progressed, overcoming the family and
communal opposition to the culturally mixed marriage and how such opposition was
to be breached is made incarnate with a Biblical story. After Okocha proposes to
Tatiana, he warned her presciently: “I need to warn you that we must expect our
own little wall of Jericho.
It is a wall that springs from family to family. It
is a wall that would not let our young Igbo persons find love where their hearts
lead them.”
At this juncture, conservative tradition and new age
perspectives collide; and time-honoured family and cultural values conflict with
unbending individualistic convictions.
The attending dichotomies are all too palpable. That
various interested parties weighed in, including Phillip Karefa, who though
good-humoured could “in an instant, turn irascible when provoked” did not help
matters. When he dredges up the issue of “us and them” and how “they sold our
forebears into slavery,” matters become more complicated, albeit briefly.
Unbeknown to Okocha, some of his kindred shared in mission
to reform some anachronistic Igbo tradition. Unsuspectingly, he found allies
where he least expected, proving that some within the Igbo community were
willing to think outside the box and meld Igbo traditions with the Americans
“own ways of doing these things”. Hence, some of his father’s Aniagu kinsmen
joined him in performing the initial
iku aka
rites in order to
“exercise his most critical and fundamental natural right: his God-given and
inalienable right to marry the girl of his choice”.
Mr. Karefa summed up the dichotomy nicely. “I do
understand that its is sometimes difficult for people to let old days die, even
in a rapidly changing world.”
Various efforts by different personalities to bridge the
cultural divide and get Nat Anigbo to reconcile with reality proved futile. He
summarily rejected every entreaty, “every olive branch,” despite being a
“terribly outnumbered minority” and despite the tenacity of his interlocutors.
“Though many agonized with Okocha and Tatiana, none
could offer a palliative for their mental suffering.” Matter got even more
complicated when Anigbo’s second son, Kanu’s dalliance with Jonetta, another
American girl became public.
It is in this context that Chike Momah exhibits his
most acute dexterity as a thinker, writer and a man well-versed in the Igbo
culture. Delicately but assuredly, he brings the story to a convincing, emotive
and thrilling end.
The Jericho
Wall
is by itself a complete sociological compendium of Igbo
values, norms and mores, which are interspersed throughout the book.
It is a truly wonderful book about a passionate and
increasingly divisive and topical cultural issue germane to the Igbo Diaspora.
This much-needed discourse and distillation of the
marital and cultural challenges confronting the Igbo community in America has
been dealt with in a very informative and dispassionate, but yet sensitive way.
It is a beautifully written and well-crafted story that many in the Igbo
community will gamely relate to. Hence this volume will serve as a true guide
for Igbo parents and children and their prospective in-laws.
Other Africans and African-Americans also stand to
benefit from it since the book provides invaluable insight to an otherwise
complex and heartrending issue.
The Jericho
Wall
is
a fascinating narrative rendered from the heartfelt and authoritative vantage
point of an accustomed insider. Its cultural and historical merit will stand on
the very essence of its unquestioned value and veracity. Bravo, Chike Momah!
------------
Mr.
Oseloka Obaze
is a co-founder of the
Kwenu.com Book Review Forum,
which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo
and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers
Endowment (AWE). From 1999 to 2005, he served on the editorial board of
INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a