ODENIGBO 1999
(literally, One Who Writes in Igbo)

TOMORROW IS PREGNANT TODAY IS EARLY ENOUGH

Writer: Prof. Chinua Achebe

Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri

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ODENIGBO 1999

September 4, 1999
At Odenigbo House, Villa Assumpta, Owerri

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CONTENTS

Page

Explanation of the two writing-styles used in printing "Tomorrow is Pregnant" 1

Odenigbo Chant 2

Odenigbo Public Lecture Explanatory Words. 3

An Account of Professor Chinua Achebe 6

Tomorrow Is Pregnant Today Is Early Enough in Prof. Chinua Achebe's writing style 11

Tomorrow Is Pregnant Today Is Early Enough in Standard Igbo writing style 34

If you examine the Odenigbo book that you are now holding, you will see that the lecture "Tomorrow Is Pregnant Today Is Early Enough" was printed in two writing-styles. The first style is the way the learned Chinua Achebe wrote his lecture. The second style is the way Igbo language experts write the Igbo they call Standard Igbo, or Central (general, common) Igbo.

I decided that "Tomorrow Is Pregnant" would be printed in these two writing-styles in order for the Igbo people to understand the journey of the Igbo language and the difficulty that awaits its growth and progress.

Chinua Achebe will use the style he used to write "Tomorrow Is Pregnant" in giving the Odenigbo lecture. If you want to read the lecture in the Standard Igbo writing-style, turn to where it is in this book.

May it go well!

Amarachi A.J.V. Obinna.

ODENIGBO CHANT (prayer, hymn)

Jesus of Odenigbo, Christ of Odenigbo

Abide with us children of Igbo

So that we in joy and love

May confess you - our great Odenigbo

God gave us Igbo language

To use in worshiping him, and spreading the Gospel

In Christ and in the name of Christ his son

Who is the Savior of all humankind.

That is so we may speak, read and write Igbo

That Igbo and the Gospel may enter among us

Writing out the real fruit in Christ

Odenigbo (Igbo writers) our Saviors

Igbo voices praise God the father

Igbo voices praise God the son

Igbo voices praise the Holy Spirit - God of wisdom

Now and forevermore - Amen.

INTRODUCTION

ODENIGBO is the name of a public lecture which the Catholic congregation of the Owerri Archdiocese supports for the praise of God and the true support of the spirit of the Igbo people through spreading the gospel, good things, good behavior and true learning among the general public who are interested in the Igbo language.

There are four tenets of "ODENIGBO">

1. There are many good things in Igbo land and those that came from other lands, that required support and acceptance among us, especially in things concerning good behavior and good learning. Making these good things increase, grow, be established and known among the Igbo means making them be written down. Therefore, ODENIGBO is a lecture causing good things to be written, established, and widely known.

2. The Igbo language has not had the honor, respect and support that it should have among the Igbo to speak, explain and interpret the thoughts of Igbo people who use Igbo language to do this, this is still something many Igbo people look down on or ignore completely. This is why ODENIGBO should become a real progressive force in using Igbo language to interpret people's thoughts. As this is being done, ODENIGBO will start to take interest in using Igbo language to do things among the Igbo. The joy and abundance that are in the Igbo language will emerge.

3. In the world now, writing and reading Igbo language has become a challenge facing Igbo language speakers. It is not enough to use Igbo language to speak or explain things. That is why the Igbo speaker must also become a reader and writer of Igbo.

4. The Christian congregation in Igboland is one of the places where Igbo language is of great importance. That is why Igbo language has become the chief language in things concerning God in all of Igboland. On account of the twin situations uniting worship of God and language, the Catholic Christian congregation in Igboland is very happy to support Igbo language by causing the Gospel of salvation in the world and all explanations in it to go forward in Igbo language. When this is done, Jesus Christ the savior of the whole world will be saving the Igbo from their sins, saving good things in our midst and also saving Igbo language from the neglect the European government brought to it. As He saves the Igbo, He is called ODENIGBO, TRUE ODENIGBO, ODENUWA.

PRAYERS AND HOPES

Long ago many Igbo people longed to have an advanced public lecture that would be given in Igbo language. ODENIGBO was the fulfillment of that longing. May God, from whose hand all wisdom comes, bless the plans for the ODENIGBO lecture.

Our prayer is that all Igbo people receive and support this new project that we are bringing out, which is ODENIGBO, a public lecture.

Our hope is that, at a not-too-distant time, many Igbo people will gladly speak, read and write Igbo and use it in promoting learning and teaching both in elementary and high schools.

Praise be to God in the highest, on earth peace to men, to those whose behavior pleases God.

THOSE WHO SUPERVISE ODENIGBO

The arranging and supervision of ODENIGBO is in the hands of the Archbishop of the Owerri Archdiocese and those he has selected to help him. It is their job to select the topic and the ODENIGBO lecturer every year.

THE TIME IT WILL TAKE PLACE

The Odenigbo public lecture is held every September. It will fall on the first Saturday in the month of September.

For its beginning in the year 1996, the day it fell on was the seventh day of the ninth month.

The Odenigbo public lecture of last year was Saturday, September 5.

This year it will be on Saturday, September 4.

The place it will be held is the Maria Assumpta Cathedral Owerri, at the Odenigbo House.

ODENIGBO IS CALLING, LET US GO

DIRECTIONS

If you want to know more about ODENIGBO public lectures, call or write here>

Director of Planning, ODENIGBO,
Villa Assumpta Box 85, Owerri,
Imo State, Nigeria. Tel> 083-230-115.

-Ezenwa Ohaeto, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

Ladies and gentlemen, I greet you.

If one says that an elephant was not a wild animal, a person says that it is as if there was something that passed by in the twinkling of an eye. One who sees an elephant tells what he sees. There will be few people who have not heard the name of the 1999 Odenigbo lecturer in our Igboland. If it were a masquerade that we were bringing out today, it would be IJELE. Ijele is a great masquerade that it takes five years to prepare. But today it is a strong man in person, a recognized expert in learning, standing among us, in Odenigbo House. Only Archbishop Obinna knows what it took for him to bring back to us our great brother for the big Odenigbo celebration this year.

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF ACHEBE

On the 16th day of November, 1930, Isaiah Okafo Achebe and his wife Janet had their fifth child. The name they gave their child was Chinualumogu, Chinua for short. His mother and father had their reasons for giving their son this type of name. Chinu³a grew up and became someone who made Ogidi town proud. He quickly went through Ogidi primary school and from there entered Government College Umuahia where it took him only four years to complete reading what his peers took five years to read. Immediately afterward, he entered University College Ibadan in the year 1948. Chinu³a was known in elementary and college for being clean and being first in examinations. This made a teacher say to his father, "Be prepared (Tie a cloth around your waist) because the education your son will have will not end in Nigeria." It is true that Chinua Achebe entered university studies to become a medical doctor, but he abandoned the idea of becoming a physician and switched to the arts (that is, studies in the arts). There he stayed until he received a B.A. degree (Hons) in 1953.

ACHEBE THE WORKER

Our hero tried his hand at various jobs. He has worked in foreign lands and Igboland where he was known for dedication to his work. Where does one start in recounting them (does one count a few and omit others)@

He took on a teaching job beginning in 1953 in the town of O³ba. He worked at this only seven months before the Nigerian Broadcasting Service called him and employed him in the year 1954. He did this work well, which caused him to be sent for study in England. On his return, he was promoted to the position of Director of Radio Broadcasting. After this he became the supervisor of the Nigerian Broadcasting Service in the Eastern Department.

In 1961, he was made Director of the Voice of Nigeria. It was from here that he ran for his life in 1966< when darkness gripped us in Nigeria.

The University of Nigeria at Nsu³ka then invited him to work as "Research Fellow," which was (one who joined in the field of discovery). He did this work until 1973 when he was made Professor of English. Please call him Prof!!

At the same time, Prof. Achebe was teaching at the University of Massachusetts in America. When he finished, he continued at the University of Nigeria at Nsu³ka, where he taught until he decided to stop teaching in 1981, so he could be able to write books. Other places where Prof. Achebe has taught include universities all over the USA such as Storrs, Connecticut, Guelph, New York, California and universities in Canada, until he met with a highway accident in 1990. His god was awake and fought for him and saved his life. We are grateful to the European doctors who treated him, and his wife Christie Chinwe who took good care of him. As Chinu³a recovered, the people of Bard College in America came and asked Prof. Achebe to teach for them. That is the place from which he has returned to give us the Odenigbo lecture of 1999.

PROF. ACHEBE THE WRITER

One cannot count the books Prof. Achebe has written. They are so numerous and far-reaching. Please, let me mention some for you. The books he has written include Things Fall Apart (1958), the one he is known by, which has been translated into more than 60 foreign languages> Igbo Kwenu!!!< No Longer At east (1960)< Arrow of God (1964)< A Man of the People (1966)< Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Books of Prof. Achebe's poetry include Beware Soul Brother< Christmas in Biafra. He also wrote Girls At War< Morning Yet on Creation Day< Hopes and Impediments. Books that Prof. Achebe edited @include African Short Stories< Contemporary African Stories< Don't Let Him Die< The Umuahian< Aka Weta, Egwu aguluagu³ (unsung) na egwu edeluede (unwritten)< Africa< The Drum and The Flute< The Trouble with Nigeria, etc. As we have heard, new books that Chinua has written will come out soon. It is wonderful. Thanks be to God.

PROF. ACHEBE AND HONORARY DEGREES

Various countries of the world have praised Prof. Achebe for the books he has written. Twenty-seven universities have given him honorary doctorates to honor him. In Nigeria, the universities of Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Ife and Nsu³ka have given him the honorary doctorate. In foreign countries, some of the universities that have given Prof. Achebe the doctorate include Harvard, City University of New York, and New Brunswick in Canada. Open University of Kent in England, Georgetown in Washington, Westfield in Massachusetts and many others have given him doctorate degrees. To enumerate them all would take too much time.

PROF. ACHEBE AS SUPERVISOR OF PEOPLE

Prof. Achebe is a good father in his household. His children have had his full support in completing their educations in various universities. He and his wife have lived together happily for 38 years.

The way Chinua has supervised his household is the way he has cared for the public. It was he who started the association of Nigerian Authors he also started the journal called Okike, Uwa ndi Igbo and a magazine called African Commentary. He was once the Pro-Chancellor and head counsel of Anambra State University of Science and Technology, and also was President General of Ogidi Town Union. This means that he has supervised his household, supervised his town, supervised his fellow writers and supervised university people. Countrymen, one who is sought out is doing something!! Prof., keep it up!

PROF. ACHEBE, A FAMOUS MAN

Prof. Achebe is a man who is not only a good representative abroad, he is also a man whose name is famous in all the world.

If one mentions Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God, everyone knows the hand that beat these drums, the head pulls out the ear. (Refers to the fact that everyone knows the author of those books.)

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) made Prof. Achebe their spokesman in things concerning the health and well-being of the world&s people. It is said that one who eats beans will drink water (to him who hath will be given), that is why he was given the awards of the Margaret Wrong Memorial Prize in 1959< the Nigerian National Trophy in 1961< the Jack Campbell Prize in 1964< Chairmanship of National Guidance Committee in 1969< Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972< Honorary Fellow of the Modern Language Association of America in 1975< Nigerian National Merit Award and Officer of the Federal Republic in 1979< Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature of London in 1981< Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters< assistant chairman Peoples Redemption Party 1983.

Countrymen, Prof. Achebe's awards are innumerable.

Countrymen, you have seen indeed that Prof. Achebe, our brother, is a man whose name is known in the world.

Hurrah!! Blessings on you!!

If the whole world praises this person, will his brothers and sisters keep quiet? No! Igbo kwenu³!

The Call

My brothers, the one we present so we may hear his voice now is one who leads the world with his stories, one who blazes a trail with his writing, one who uses his thoughts in a meaningful way.

With honor and respect I ask our father Archbishop to personally introduce to us this learned man of ours, one who is known throughout the world, who is the true Igbo son he traveled to a foreign country and brought back to us, so he can open the package of thoughts that make up Odenigbo 1999.

Friends - let it be written - in Igbo!

(Standard Igbo)

Igbo people, I greet you! Igbo people, you will live! Those (Oru) who are your neighbors will also live - o! The Igbo who stay at home and the Igbo who travel, they all will also live - o! Wherever a child is, let him wake up. Ladies and gentlemen, I greet you! Chiefs and titled people, I greet! Whichever title you have taken, let it be respected!

Archbishop Obinna, let me thank you especially for the great honor you gave me in selecting me to be the Igbo lecturer of 1999.

The idea you and your group had to start the Odenigbo lecture was extremely beautiful. The name you gave it is suitable as well. It is like the eagle that perched in the iroko tree< if you keep on looking at the eagle, you keep on looking at the iroko tree. This is how Odenigbo is in my eyes--something that is famous on the one hand, something one writes in Igbo on the other. My prayer is that Igbo writing will come out of the weak situation it is in now, rise, stretch, and become strong.

On the day that Archbishop Obinna left Owerri, shot seven leopards, swam seven seas, and entered the place where I was hidden away in a small town called Annandale, New York, my heart skipped a beat. I then asked him if all was well. He told me to hurry, that the Igbo were waiting for me to speak to them in the Owerri Archdiocese. Igbo kwenu³! (Igbo, agree!) Kwezuonu³ (Agree, all)! You will live. Archbishop Obinna has known that Chinua Achebe does not take the Igbo people for granted, that if I am told that the Igbo are waiting, the law is that I must go. My only misgiving was that what I came to say would not be even half of what you would be expecting from me. My fear was that I would already be placed on a big seat that you would prepare for me and my feet would perch on top. So I beg you to take me the way I am. I remember the day a friend of mine took me to some auto repairers and told their owner who I was. He said to my friend> Is that all? Something else like that happened the day I went out to see an elderly friend of mine in Ogidi, and he told someone there with him who I was, he then shouted that a famous animal does not satisfy his desire. That is why I implore you, please to take me as I am.

Some nine years ago I left unprepared on this journey to the white man's land of America, and remained not setting eyes on Igbo land even for one single day. The goat perspires, but its hair keeps it from being noticed. However, what encouraged us, my wife and I and our children, was the prayers we knew that you were offering for us.

Archbishop Obinna was the one who chose to call the talk I am going to make today "Tomorrow is Pregnant." I then looked at it afterward and saw that it fit well, but that I should prop it up and fix it, so that it should not stand alone, because something that stands alone freezes to death. Because if something stands, something else stands near it< even if the thing standing near it is alone - (o³nu³ oyi n&o³nu³). It is because a bad thing has no model that we call it a bad thing outright.

So I looked for something to go along with "tomorrow" and saw that I should not look for it in the past, that the present is where we are today. I then remembered and said to my friend Obinna> "What about Tomorrow is Pregnant> Today is early enough@" He told me that was good. We then made it final.

There is no reasonable person (whose thoughts are in his stomach) who does not know that "tomorrow" is extremely important. Every tomorrow, if one seeks to give it a name, is deep, is mysterious because God did not give us the wisdom that will tell us how things will be in the future.

There is a big masquerade that used to come out in Ogidi when my father was a boy. He was known for the question he used to ask the adults when they greeted him>

"Look at my head and tell me which is bigger> what I carry in front of my head, or what I carry behind the head."

The way the masquerade was, it was obvious to a goat and a chicken that what he carried behind his head was bigger than what he carried in front (share, portion). The one who was asked this question would then answer> "Sir, Egwugwu and Egwuregwu, the one behind is bigger."

The masquerade would turn around smiling, then thank you and say to you> "You have looked as a human being looks and have perceived as a human being perceives. You are not to be blamed. But if you look at my head the way a spirit looks, you will see that the one in front is bigger. That is why the spirit says that the future is greater!"

The future is another way that we say that tomorrow is pregnant. The prayer that we pray and the justice that we beg for is that tomorrow be born in health and peace< that what is in the future should not be more of suffering, rather that it be more of good things and joy.

A funeral hymn of the CMS people says>

From the power of Jesus

It will be well

We expect that tomorrow,

It will be well.

Our fathers (cut off their own headscarfs), and said never again! But it is the same prayer that we pray, one justice that we beg for.

The question I want us to ask ourselves is this> Is there something we should be doing while waiting for what tomorrow will bring? We will be praying with faith. But a person whose wife is pregnant and close to delivery will not take a prayer book and sit down close to her morning, noon and night. After he prays what he is going to pray, let him go and look for what he will use to go to the hospital, look for what he will use for the birth ceremony, and buy the fish to use in preparing nsala soup.

This is what all of us should do when we say that tomorrow is pregnant. We should not take our hands, place them in our laps and wait for her to give birth. We should go out and look for something we can be doing while waiting. Because the Bible tells us that faith or prayer without works means what? Death! (James 1>10).

There are many kinds of work> manual work, farm work, mental work and so on. What I want us to look at today is mental work. Let us think a little bit about the completely unsatisfactory situation the Igbo language is in today. If you take the Igbo situation and compare the Yoruba or Hausa situation in Nigeria, in Africa and in the entire world, there is no other name we can call Igbo except one of shame and tears. How does a strong person then become weak! Why is it that Igbo that was an example of progress in the whole world would turn out in such a way as to fall behind in the primary thing a country is known by - its language@ What many people will reply if they are asked this question is that the Igbo people are imitating western ways, the world then confuses them - they are not westerners, their own is Igbo.

Something like this, the Igbo say that one should make inquiry about, that this thing is not without cause. It is that inquiry that I am asking you to start making here today. However, let me tell you that there is no diviner or divination better than the Igbo meeting here today. Igbo people, I greet you! Tomorrow is pregnant, but today is early.

It is true that time has been leaving us behind< it is true that the century that is ending in a few months from now seems to have been wasted for us, because those with whom we started the race have completely overtaken us.

But beating our breasts and gritting our teeth will not help us at all. The only important thing is to find out what happened to us, where the rain beat down on us. When we finish doing this, it will be easy for us to decide what to do in the future.

Let me tell you what my thoughts are about this trouble we are in today. It began one hundred and five years ago when the people of the C.M.S. (Christian Missionary Society) sent out a young minister called T. J. Dennis to join those who were spreading the gospel in O³ni³cha. Dennis reached Onitsha in the year 1894 and entered the work the C.M.S. had begun in Igboland in 1857.

That means that the C.M.S. had been there for 37 years when this man Dennis came to help them.

Dennis was a man who had heard the call of Jesus in his heart, and was also a very hard-working person. The family from which he came in the white man's land were not people of means, which caused Dennis not to be educated as he wanted. But they were people who tried, and also were Christians.

Dennis was born in the year 1869. On the very day that he was twenty he gave himself to the C.M.S. people to work to spread the gospel in Africa. The C.M.S. people then received him, trained him for four years in seminary, made him a deacon in 1893, and sent him to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he stayed for one year before going to O³ni³cha in 1894.

Dennis did not know the Igbo language when he came to O³ni³cha but was very interested in learning it.

However, what he said after one year passed was that he could not understand one word in fifty of the word of God spoken in Igbo. Perhaps he thought that as soon as he set foot in O³ni³cha he would start to speak Igbo like the natives, not knowing that Igbo was not a dance of gathering snuff in the hand. But Dennis was not a diviner whom people called on to chase away spirits, and then the spirits came and started to chase him.

One very important thing in the work of spreading the gospel was to put the Bible and other books in the languages of the people who were being taught. The people of the Niger Mission (as the C.M.S. in O³ni³cha was called at first) started slowly in this work. The one who began this work was called J. C. Taylor, who along with Crowther came to O³ni³cha in 1857. Taylor was a Sierra Leonean but his mother and father were Igbo who had been repatriated from slavery. Taylor did not know Igbo well when he came to O³ni³cha but he was an Igbo at heart. Another thing that helped him was that there was another Sierra Leonean called Jonas who came along with Crowther and Taylor and who spoke Igbo well.

It was Taylor who one might say laid the foundation for the C.M.S. church in O³ni³cha. There were a few books in the New Testament that he had put into Igbo that the Niger Mission had in the hands of the church when Dennis came to O³ni³cha in 1894.

It took Dennis a long time to say that Taylor's interpretations did not fit well because he did not know English well. But this was the way he expressed it. What Dennis wanted was that he himself should be the one who would interpret the Bible in Igbo language.

As I said, Dennis was a hard worker. He then got ready (tied a cloth around his waist) to alter or correct (as you please) some things that the first people had done. While he was doing this he also interpreted the remaining books of the Bible. By the year 1910, those who printed the Bible in the white man's land had brought out the complete New Testament in the O³ni³cha dialect< What it was called in English was Niger Ibo New Testament. If we remember that only five years had passed since Dennis had set foot in Igboland without knowing one word, we will agree that he was a man whose voice was crying in the wilderness.

But this was only the beginning. Like the ambitious person he was, Dennis took up the Old Testament, interpreted, printed, and brought it out in the year 1906. Indeed, Dennis was one who wasted no time.

If Dennis' story ended here, the inquiry we make today, the idea we meet to consider, would not have been necessary. But Dennis is like the Ugwuo³ba woman of whom it is said that "she cut corn cocoyam and used her feet to put it on the fire, "or the type of Asaba woman who, if one says that her child is beautiful, says that she has not had a bath, that is the way Dennis handled @ Igbo so that Igbo is in its trouble today.

Dennis discovered that Igbo was spoken in different dialects, then saw that he had more work to do. But the Igbo had always known that towns spoke different dialects. The towns referred to were not Hausa or Yoruba, but around various parts of Igboland. The townspeople spoke in a dialect but their counterparts (those who coughed) knew what it meant. However, Dennis didn't understand this bit of wisdom.

The various dialects that the Igbo spoke then started to disturb Dennis' sleep. What was to be done to this Igbo language so it would become a real working tool one could use to spread the word of Christ throughout all of Igboland? What he thought of was that he should call together a few people from Bonny, Onitsha, and U³nwana (Afikpo) and Owerri to meet in Egbu Owerri and think about a new Igbo not belonging to any particular person, but belonging to all of them as a group, which was Union Igbo (Igbo njiko³aka).

As I tell this story, maybe you are thinking that Dennis was the only one in the C.M.S. Niger Mission. Others were there, both whites and blacks. The head of C.M.S. in O³ni³cha was Archdeacon Dobinson, who had been in Igboland for many years< pastors Smith and Basden, Miss Warner who started Saint Monica, a beginners school for girls in Igboland, and others. There were blacks there, but let us first leave them for now because they did not own the church. What did the other whites think about Dennis' idea about Union Igbo. Someone like Basden began early to say that it was not clear to him, that neither was it to Miss Warner and Smith. But this did not bother Dennis, especially when the head man himself, Bishop Tugwell who lived in Lagos, supported Dennis. But even if the bishop had not supported Dennis, God supported him, as his mind told him.

I think that one thing more than all the others he put forth that was important to the C.M.S. in supporting Union Igbo was that it was easier to have one Bible everyone could read rather than to have three or four. It would also cost less. It is clear to me that it was not the future or the progress of the Igbo language that he was thinking about.

One department of C.M.S. in Bonny called Niger Delta Pastorate (NDP) and their director, Mr. Crowther, did not agree that the Bible interpretation should be done in O³ni³cha. They then started to interpret their own in the Isuama dialect. Dennis and Bishop Tugwell supported him, then started to undermine them by going to the Bible printers and telling them to wait a while for a meeting of various churchmen of the NDP, the Methodists, the Presbyterian, and the Qua Ibo who were spreading the gospel all around Igboland. This meeting was called in August 1904 but Dennis was unable to reach O³ni³cha for it. Those at the meeting then agreed that interpreting the Bible in O³ni³cha dialect as well as in Isuama dialect would be a good thing.

However, Dennis had now become very old, and he had become like one who, although a discussion had been concluded in his absence, when he entered the discussion was repeated "he had acquired status 1/4. In 1905 he called another meeting in Asaba< being careful about his support, he saw to it that Bishop Tugwell himself came and presided.

Everything went the way Dennis had planned. It is true that not everyone at the Asaba meeting agreed with what Dennis had planned, but they kept quiet because those who were in the majority supported Dennis.

The place Dennis selected to be the headquarters was Egbu Owerri. In October 1906 he left O³ni³cha and went to Egbu, where he and his helpers began to put the Bible into the language he called Union Igbo that Dennis hoped the Igbo would speak in the future. What Dennis did was go to a certain area of Igboland and take a word, go to another area and take an additional word, go to a third place and take another one to add. The three areas they emphasized the most were O³ni³cha, Bonny, and Unwana, because no Bible translation had been started in these dialects.

I want everyone to understand that I did not come here to malign Dennis or his work. What I want to throw out to you is that language is not a piece of iron that the blacksmith takes and puts into the fire, takes out and knocks into shape or moulds as it pleases him. Language is sacred, it is mysterious, it is fearsome. It is living and breathing. It is what separates humans from animals. It separates people from their counterparts< towns from their neighbors. That is why a guest who comes from the land of my fathers owing a debt of a cow will enter and take from me the language I established, spread it, and say that it will benefit me in the future.

We should remember the year 1913 as the day Archdeacon Dennis left behind the rain that is beating down on the Igbo language today. It was in that year that those who printed the Bible in London brought out the poor quality thing (onyeo³ki³ka-agba) called the Union Igbo Bible. But the matter did not end there. It is necessary to ask some questions> Where were the Igbo? What about the one who owned the egg the goat was chewing? Where was Anyaegbunam, the first one to be made a priest in Igboland, where was he? What about A. C. Onyeabo³, the first one to be made a Bishop in Igboland? It is true that these people were at the meeting, but they had no say in the matter. They denied the devil and all his work, but they were not the ones who owned the gospel.

In the year 1918 G. T. Basden, who was secretary for the C.M.S. in O³ni³cha, sent out questions about the Union Igbo Bible, in order to find out the thoughts of the C.M.S. workers--the whites, the Igbo pastors, the West Indians. As Basden said, all the whites replied to the questions . . . Let me say the rest in English> "of the native clergy the three youngest answered . . . The reason why the Native clergy have not answered is that they are afraid to state their opinions on paper."

It was only Basden who spoke strongly against Union Igbo. But as we have seen, Dennis defeated Basden. However, what he defeated was not Basden, but he defeated the Igbo language.

In all the years people were arguing for and against union, one thing Dennis and his group supported was "understanding." Did the O³ni³cha people understand Union Igbo? Did the Owerri people understand Isuama? At no time did Dennis ask> How does this sound to them? At no time did he ask> Will you use this language to sing songs of joy or cry tears of sadness? This question was not important to Dennis. But Basden understood what it would bring in the future.

"Bible reading becomes a burden, rather than a duty and a pleasure . . . One cannot find Lancashire, Devonshire, Cornish and Somerset dialects mixed

up in our Bible. Why should such a system be inflicted upon a poor

uneducated people . . . "

Never mind whether the Igbo people were "poor uneducated people" or not. The truth in what Basden was saying was that what Dennis did with the Igbo language was unheard of - it had not been done in any other place. It is very important that we all understand this well - that what was done in the Igbo language in 1913 was unheard of. Those who did not understand what was said used the Yoruba Bible or the Efik Bible as examples. They asked> Why is it that Yoruba can have one Bible but Igbo cannot? The answer to this question is simple. Yoruba has one Bible because the person in charge of the gospel in Yoruba was Samuel Adjayi Crowther, a Yoruba by birth. He then set about selecting one among the various Yoruba dialects. The dialect Crowther selected was that of Oyo. Listen to me carefully. Crowther did not go and first study Yoruba for five or six years< he did not go and call a meeting with one Ijebu person, one from Lagos, one from Owo, one from Ogbomosho and others who spoke various dialects in Yorubaland, and tell them to begin to take a word here, a word there so that a new word would be created that they all would be understanding. Crowther knew in his heart that language was not something manufactured, for which tools needed to be brought in and applied.

What Dennis did wrong, or the way he went wrong, was not to seek one Igbo dialect to be used in translating the Bible, but rather it was the pride and disregard of a stranger who entered their country (ka) Igbo, and telling them that you yourself are the blacksmith of language who came to mold for them a new language better than what they spoke, that their fathers spoke, and their grandfathers everlastingly.

Nothing I have read or learned about Dennis shows me that he was a bad man. He was a hard worker, one who came wholeheartedly to help the Igbo, and brought his wife and his brother and sister to come to that work. But this did not prevent Dennis from looking down on the Igbo or disregarding their language. Listen to what he wrote concerning Igbo>

"Our translational difficulties were two-fold, viz, firstly, those arising from the poverty of the language, and secondly, such as arose from difference of dialect. The former are, of course largely chronic in character, and are common not only to all the Ibo dialects, but also,

many of them, to all barbarous languages" (Church Missionary

Review 1912).

The two words that jump out above, that are paired, are poverty and barbarous. The Igbo language has no wealth< it is found wanting. It is a language of uneducated people, who are like wild animals with no understanding. Tell me, if someone uses ideas like this to approach a language will he deal with it respectfully, or insultingly?

This matter did not concern Dennis alone. It concerned the collaboration of the whites and the blacks starting from long ago. It is three hundred years since the white man came from across the ocean and climbed up, step by step, onto the land of Africa. The battles they came with were without compare. He carried guns, wielded knives, and had fire in his mouth.

The white men did not fight wars themselves, but rather they ferreted out the never-do-wells and the know-nothings among the blacks, and gave them weapons of war, gave them hot wine and told them to enter and spoil the land< they snatched men, women and children and took them away to be sold. The slave markets started in this way, slowly increasing and penetrating deeper every day, every year, until all of Africa was in turmoil, up to three hundred years.

The matter we fought about in the Biafran war lasted fewer than three years, but look at the effect on us (how our faces and eyes are) after we finished fighting it. Think about three hundred years! The Biafran War over and over (mmaji mmaji), one hundred times! "One hundred times."

What happened to Africa was strange (not something that is told to people). If one does not believe that the monkey's illness was severe, let him go and see how the eyes of the bear (atani³) have seen fire!

When the gospel arrived in Igboland in 1857, the Igbo did not know themselves. Eternal suffering had begun to oppress them hopelessly.

The white people, on their part, did not regard the Igbo as anything on account of the years upon years that foreigners kidnapped black people and sold them. It was not for nothing that an elderly man in O³ni³cha at that time said that if he should return in another world he would not come as a human being but rather he would come as a stone. What else need a person hear to know that times were not good in Igboland?

If the Igbo situation was so bad, should we blame those who brought the gospel for disregard they came with? Their blame was that disregard was not in the teaching of Christ< another thing was that the foreigners bore some responsibility for the things that placed Igbo in the condition it was in.

Sometimes in my travels in the white people's land, a question students ask me is "The coming of the gospel to Africa, was it good or bad@" This question is a trap (a question used to confound older people). The way I answer it is that the gospel, according to its name, is very beautiful. But the gospel that came to Africa was not the only thing in the bag it came in.

The white people's disregard for the blacks was in the same bag. It was this disregard that caused Dennis to think that he was a god who would create a new Igbo language< to think that the Aro³chukwu Igbo did not know what they were saying when they said that they understood Union Igbo but it was not pleasant to the ear< to think that all the others who were saying that one should go slowly in taking up Union Igbo carefully were cowards. The name the O³ni³cha people gave Dennis was o³zo³jiriogwe (one who uses thorns). The Igbo say that the name given to a man is what he becomes.

I asked myself this question at first> "Where were the Igbo when all this was happening?" I then replied that they were there but had no say. But that answer was not satisfactory. We must examine it well to see what we can learn about today and yesterday. The child who has been stung by a bee avoids the big fly. It is true that the Igbo did not speak out at the first discussion at their place, but there is a way that a person who has no say will look (show his face), so that everyone knows immediately that he approves of what is being said.

The Igbo not stand in unity and show that they did not go along. Some showed, some did not show. The white people who stayed in various places around Igboland wasted no time in using this matter to divide the Igbo> Oni³cha, Owere, Isuama, Bende, Arochukwu, etc. The question we should ask ourselves for today and tomorrow is this> What caused it to be easy for us to fight among ourselves, fights over unimportant things, yet abandon the war that was in the village square?

The C.M.S. opened Awka College for training teachers at the start of this century. In the year 1919 a man who supported Dennis blindly went and asked the people of that college what they thought. According to this man, they had a vote that showed that 19 people supported the union Bible, while 15 did not support it. This man came from the British and Foreign Bible Society in London. The vote of the Awka people made him very happy. But listen to what this man, called Banfield, said about the discovery he made about the Igbo who did not support the union Bible>

"You know as well as I do that the native has little stability of his own and moves and thinks as his superiors do."

What do we call it? Scorn!

But what I want to point out is the thoughts of the college students who were going to spread the gospel and knowledge in Igboland. What one of them told Banfield was, "It would be good for us to learn to read the Union Bible and then we can be understood wherever we are stationed." This young man was at Awka College, but he didn't know that Awka (people) were traveling around all of Igboland, without having to learn a new language called union. He didn't know that my mother's father, Iloegbunam, who was well known, had gone on a trip to Okigwe, married a woman there, and had children. Did he go and learn Union Igbo before he left Awka on his journey? Don't blame the Ogidi woman who said that book (learning) is like if someone keeps on reading, she reads herself into (opens the bag of) stupidity!

Let us cut short the Dennis matter here. It is finished. The only thing we can do now is to chew our fingers (in regret), saying> "It is like wrestling, let it change." There are two or three misunderstandings about the union Bible. The first is that the Yoruba have a union Bible they all read. This is a big misunderstanding. What Bishop Crowther did was to take one dialect that the Yoruba spoke in Oyo to be the Bible language for spreading the gospel. He did not go think about (tinkawa) Ijebu and Ibadan and O³wo³ and Akure and O³gbo³mo³sho³ and others for them to obtain union Yoruba. He took a living tongue, that was spoken, a language that had a home. Whoever wanted to know about it, he went to its home and asked.

The second misunderstanding is to think that what Dennis did in Igbo was something languages do to themselves if they are left alone. Dr. Westerman wrote that what Dennis did to Igbo was what some small European languages did to themselves in ancient times. The only difference was that what Dennis did "was done by one person within a definite time, and not by slow and natural development." Dr. Westerman had several educational degrees, why then did he tell us that there was no difference between the living tree and the dried up one? Indeed, wisdom and foolishness are neighbors!

Archdeacon T. J. Dennis died on the ocean in the year 1917 as he and his wife were going on leave in the midst of the first German war. As I said earlier, I do not regard him as a bad man. Rather he was a man strong in his belief that the work he came to do in Igboland was very clear to him. He did not waste any time in struggling to keep that work as the most important thing. But his continuing disregard for the Igbo language and its owners led him to spoil things.

It was not only Dennis who committed this error. Those who commit it are plentiful and numerous. One man who is world-famous, Albert Schweitzer--philosopher, theologian, musician, medical missionary--was curing the sick as well as spreading the gospel in Gabon while Dennis was at O³ni³cha and Egbu Owerri. As Schweitzer's work became known, he was given the Nobel Peace Prize because of the way his work uplifted the brotherhood of nations. But all these things did not stop Schweitzer from opening his mouth and saying that the blacks were his brothers, but small brothers. You have seen the error of disregard that we have spoken of. Neaman was a commander of the army of the king of Syria. He was also well-regarded, in view of the fact that it was by his hand that Yahweh gave victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper (2 Kings 5>1). The disregard of those who brought the gospel is like a blot of leprosy on the body of God's messenger. He did this, did that< he was this again, but he came with disregard.

The story of Dennis and the union Bible has been a great regret to me in several ways. But the biggest one of all is how the opportunity the Igbo Bible had to be the headwater of Igbo writing was thrown away. This opportunity was thrown away so Dennis could have a chance to experiment in someone else's language. The worst thing was that after finishing the experiment he stopped those who were printing the Bible from bringing out the first Bible again< that is, he did not give the Igbo a chance to say whether they liked the first one, or the new one. Rather what was demonstrated to the Igbo was that the foreigner had the knife and also had the yam.

This is why the Naija Mission, a hundred years ago, placed Igbo writing in the situation it is in today. Archdeacon Dennis put down the footsteps we are following, which is that one man can stay in his own place, smell his hand with his nose, and dictate how the Igbo will be speaking or writing their own language. If he wants to be considerate, he calls a meeting of a few people and they bring out various new words. If someone hears that experts have been called and asks what it is about, he is told that apparently he did not come to the meeting in March!

Please forgive me. I don't want to harm anyone. What we are dealing with today is what was done to us long ago. There is no one to blame.

What gives the most trouble is teaching Igbo children in the schools. We have come from Union Igbo into Central, and from there entered Standard Igbo. But what happened is still happening. Why? On account of Dennis. It is Dennis' law that fills our heads. Dennis' law is that everyone must speak or write the same Igbo dialect, come hell or high water (let him eat firewood and water)!

The reason this matter is very difficult is that those who seek instruction are not children, but teachers themselves. You will remember the teachers who were trained at Awka in the year 1919 who said that Union Igbo would benefit them when they reached their stations. I do not know if it was only I who heard the voice of the District Commissioner in the mouths of these teachers. The only thing they thought about was something that would make their work easy.

One thing I want us to hear and understand well is that one person alone, no matter how important he is, cannot enact laws about language.

One hundred people cannot give orders about language, even if their heads are in the clouds. Language goes along its own path. Sometimes it is very clear to us< sometimes it confuses us. If one studies language greedily, it is lost to him completely.

What is happening in schools these days is taking away from the children some of the Igbo they spoke in their mothers ¹ and fathers ¹ houses. This is a very bad thing for which there is no precedent< a bad thing to say the least. What kind of person are you if you tell a person that he should not continue to use the language he was born with, that he should get rid of it, and start to speak the one that Dennis' followers brought out? The child who writes "fa" is told to cross it out and write "ha."

It seems to me that we have completely opened the bag of foolishness. But today is still early. It is true that much time has escaped us, let us put an end to it and stop wasting another hundred years. Because when the old woman falls down twice, you count what she is carrying in her basket. If you shoot once, you strike a tree trunk< if you shoot twice and strike a tree trunk, was the arrow destined (carved) for the tree trunk?

Those who teach Igbo will meet together and consult about how they will change the teaching of Igbo language so it will be a thing of joy, and not a heavy burden. When our children were small, I remember how their faces shone like the sun if I told them to come so I could tell them some folktales. Those who teach Igbo should be making efforts to bring out to the children this sunshine that is in their hearts. What Dennis and his followers brought the Igbo was clouds that obscured the face of the sun like darkness.

The language that the child comes out into the world and hears is an ancient language, the way an elder's name was the name of the day he was born. The European calls it "mother tongue" - olu nne. To take a child's mother tongue away from him is like taking his mother's breast away from him, pulling his mouth from the breast.

Some of those who believe that everyone should be made to speak and write standard Igbo have said that what caused Chinua Achebe to go against standard Igbo is that it is not the Ogidi dialect that was used to make it. Let me reply to them before all the Igbo here today. I do not want them to take it. Do you understand what I am saying? I say that I do not want them to take it! Do you know who them is? It is the learned people, the followers of Dennis, those who think that language is "engineering." Language is a gift of God. I do not want to take his own from anyone< I do not want anyone to take mine from me. Perhaps some are thinking that Chinua Achebe does not regard Igbo the way he regards Ogidi. This is a lie, lie, lie!

One who has no regard for Igbo is someone who takes a short knife and chops up all of its branches. I have regard for Igbo and I have regard for Ogidi.

My prayer is that we train the mass of workers who will use our language and place in people's faces the morning sunshine that God placed in their hearts, by writing wise books and various discoveries, and books of plays, and stories of the land and folktales, funeral songs or poems, both old and new.

Those who want all of us to speak one dialect are saying that there is no time to wait until the Igbo language on its own speaks what will be Standard Igbo. But they are forgetting that it was wanting Standard Igbo that Dennis gave us union Igbo, which gave birth to central Igbo which gave birth to Standard Igbo. Making changes now does not help. It is like the bachelor who wakes up one day and says that he should look for a wife today or tomorrow -- does he think that a woman is a cloth that you hang up? Yesterday has gone, let us take the short time remaining today and encourage ourselves to go forward before dawn breaks.

What can I tell you about the Igbo situation in Nigeria that you do not know better than I? Let me start with the edge in licking hot soup. Every place and every town has something by which it is known, that is what others know it for. But most important is what people know themselves for.

If one could go back in history and ask the ancestors about the Igbo, they would tell you to run away, and they would agree that an Igbo would rather fall into the river than become a slave. That means that they have not been useful at all. They would tell you that there was a time that people who came in ships and were brought overland to South Carolina, turned back -- all of them, men, women, children and old people -- turned back as much as they could, entered the ocean and wasted the money that had been used to buy them. The name given to the place where this calamity occurred is Ibo Landing, even until today. There is a spiritual that African Americans call "Walking in the Water," which is still sung because of this thing that happened long ago.

If you leave Ibo Landing and go back farther in history and stop at two hundred years ago, you will find a man called Ekweano³, from Iseke in O³lu³ Division (as I myself discovered) captured during wartime at thirteen years of age, taken and sold in the West Indies, in America, both on land and sea, until he became a young man. He struggled as Igbo people do and taught himself to read, worked for money to free himself from slavery, then wrote a famous book in the year 1789< which he published and called "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olauda Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by Himself."

Ekweano³ was the first Igbo who wrote a book to tell the world that he did not come out of a jungle, that he was a nobleman's child whom the slave market had dragged through the mud. Every Igbo person should read Ekweano³'s book. Thanks to publishers, anyone can buy it today. This book is a gold mine of learning for the Igbo and the Europeans and all human beings. Many things that Ekweano wrote will touch the hearts of all, however none surpasses joy. There is a time he frees himself from slavery and jumps up, crying> "I am my own master!" two hundred years before Martin Luther King, Jr. cried "Free at last!"

The reason I talk like this is that some stories I have heard concerning what is happening in Igboland show me that some of our countrymen do not know, or have forgotten what Igbo people are known for. I then thought that I should tell you or remind you. The Igbo do not want someone they will call nnamukwu or "master." The Igbo do not want someone who will make them slaves< someone who will use them as boy-boy. If that Igbo finds himself in the position of slave or boy-boy, he will be working, striving to come out of it and be free. When did we learn that a man who heads his own household should leave his place and go to Abuja to sing that the king will live forever?

Do you know why the Igbo have no kings? It is not that the Igbo do not know what a king is. Remember that the Igbo and the Bini were neighbors, that Oba n'Iduu refused the folktales of the Igbo. Remember that the Igala and the Igbo were neighbors in another direction.

The fact that the Igbo have no kings does not mean that an Igbo person does not want to be a king. Every Igbo you see wants to be a king< but he wants the other person to become a king so that he can be under that person. That is why the Igbo say, "It is good, everyone should go to his own house, go and govern in his own household."

The anthropologists did not come to Igboland to learn about them, because the Igbo knew what those people knew. But there was one American who went to O³ni³cha to learn their customs forty years ago. The book he wrote about what he discovered he called The King in Every Man. There is nothing one can say about the Igbo better than this. When will we learn that there is no Igbo who is good (enough@) to govern Nigeria, that it is only those of other lands who ought to be kings.

When did the Igbo discover that what is good for Nigeria is the government of dictatorship, government of wickedness (heart is at the back)? A friend and I, someone from our home, were discussing it not long ago at my home in America. What my friend was saying was that democracy is not for us, that what we need is "a strong man" like Abacha, one whom the white people will fear. I told him to please stop! Then he started to speak even more forcefully. He said that he didn't understand what I was saying. Wasn't I the one who wrote Things Fall Apart? Wasn't Okonkwo³ "a strong man," wasn't he the type of man the Igbo bring out to govern them?

This might have left me speechless, but it did not because it was not the first time I had seen someone misunderstand Things Fall Apart. Several ù years ago a scholar came from Germany to see me. The question he asked me was not altogether a question< rather it was telling me how the matter stood> He asked me if Okonkwo³ was a representative of the Igbo?

I then told him that he was, but he was not -- this then confuseded @ the man< all he could do was to scold me. I started to smile at him secretly because I understood the trouble I had put into the man's mind< a man who had finished writing his thesis that Okonkwo³ was a representative of the Igbo, came to receive confirmation, and then I threw sand into his gari³!

Igbo thought is not drawn from the top of the water< it is very deep. It is not a dance that you do after gathering snuff in the hand. An Igbo friend of mine came to my house and did not understand Okonkwo³'s situation, a scholar from Germany came and did not understand it. But, above all, Okonkwo³ himself did not understand it!

Okonkwo³ was a strong, dedicated man, who tried hard, spoke the truth, amassed wealth, took titles. All of those were what the Igbo said should be done. It was not only that people spoke to him this way, they spoke to him loudly. Okonkwo³ heard, then acted. But there is another thing the Igbo whispers in our ears. He says that if something stands, something else stands against it< if we take guns and knives in our hands, we should not criticize the flute and the gong and the calabash in the women's meeting, and those in the heart of Okonkwo³*s dreams did not hear the message that was sent in a small voice. U³mu³o³fi³a then did not support him on the day he broke his leg and fell into the fire.

The Igbo teach that a man should not go home by the same path that another man takes. This is a good teaching. But if one misunderstands this teaching, he can think that all people are equally endowed in the various gifts of God. The town that thinks like this will not progress.

One who says that democracy is not good for the Igbo does not understand the Igbo nor does he understand democracy. The Igbo govern themselves town by town. If there is something important for the town to discuss, the gong is sounded, all the men who are old enough to speak go and arrange themselves at the town square< the matter is discussed in public. The Igbo do not send a "representative"- someone who will speak out for them. It is obvious that this thing the Igbo were doing in ancient times is established as the first principle of democracy, or the father of democracy. We cannot say that we should turn back and start to follow the ancient ways because we are not the only ones who own our land. But one should not use this to argue that democracy is beyond us or that it is too much for us. Rather what we should be considering, and considering strongly, is how we will learn to select the messengers who will be going to the various houses of assembly to represent us ably when they get there. When the debates over independence started in Nigeria, one young man with great enthusiasm (who had fire in his heart) went to O³ka to seek votes to enter the "House of Assembly." At that time, the type of speech used to seek votes (political oratory) was not familiar to many people. The young man traveled around and brought his messages of war and fighting about how to chase away the white people immediately, take their positions and distribute them to our children. One elderly man then asked him> In designating the one you all will send, will mad people be included among them, or those who are sane@

What is important for us today is to be governed by those who are sane. We don't want to be governed by fools. It is true that suffering and hunger are in our nation today. But it is in times like this that a town falls into the traps of fools. That means that we should be very careful in choosing those we will send out to become our eyes and ears. A fool will not be our eyes and ears, but he will be our stomach, eating both his own share and ours. The writer Chinweizu used as an example the type of person on whom is placed a great masquerade who is controlled by a rope from behind, then comes out into the path and chases away the young men who hold it< then there is fear.

When I was very young there was a well-known strong man in our town. He grew to adulthood, was good-looking, could speak well, but he practiced thievery. However, he did not do it at home< he used to travel out. What he did was, in midday when everyone had gone to their farms, he entered our neighboring towns, carried away goats and went home. As he continued, the people of this town got ready for him. When he came again and stole, as he was carrying off his loot, eight young men came out, surrounded him, took a six-inch nail, drove it into his head and left him< he ran for his life toward home, and collapsed on the ground.

The man's people went and picked him up, fixed him up, sat him down the way it was done at that time, took a red cap and put it on his head, and told the townspeople that he died a natural death. They then went to the house of bereavement, carried the corpse around, when the nail that was in the man's brain, as if he were sitting here and doing whatever, suddenly exploded and threw the red hat into the yard. People came to the house of mourning, and the one who carried the corpse around, forgave his friend.

This is not a good story, but the reason I tell it is so we may remember that foolishness is not new. Also, that humans are responsible for their own foolishness< that brothers who cover up their children's bad deeds are wasting their time, because you do not use the palm of the hand to cover up diarrhea.

The fools in our politics are those people in their towns who are responsible for speaking to their children, before something bad breaks out, and really gets everyone in trouble. I don't say that nothing is going well in Igboland. There are many things one can say are going well. The way Dr. Alex Ekwueme accepted the way things went in the presidential election shows the behavior of a good citizen.

The politics of all or nothing is what is seen in a town that is uneducated, a hungry town, a town of not knowing what to say.

Let's abandon this type of politics and work together to improve Igboland, so that it shines like gold in the east.

(C) Chinua Achebe 1999.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Several things that I said about the work of T. J. Dennis in Onicha came from a new book by John Goodchild which is being published, which he calls "Dennis and the Ibo Bible." I thank him for this help.

** ** **

Members of the Odenigbo arrangements committee and leader of the elders P. A. Ezikeojiaku, Ph.D., translated this essay into standard Igbo.

Footnote Index