Discontinuing the Fear of Ancestral Beings
As early as eight years of age, my father would send me and my siblings to go cut grasses for the rabbits. We would go on foot from one village to another, taking a snake-like tiny path that was constantly bullied by both little and giant-like elephant grasses. The journey to Agbele was always dusty and cloudy, as though people constantly burned something and let the black smoke poison the oxygen we inhaled.
I hated that chore — cutting ‘milk grasses’ for rabbits. Not only because of the stress involved and my father’s lack of appreciation that always followed the completion of the task, but because we would always pass Club 24, an area that, to me, was dedicated to our ancient gods.
Club 24 was a tiny area, centered at the heart of the Igbogbo village. In many cases, there was no way you would move from Igbogbo to other surrounding villages without passing through Club 24. It had three adjoining roads that led to different places — forming something like a triangle at the middle. On the right side of one road, the Igbogbo market sat pretty and busy. Different types of foodstuff were sold there, too many people hit one another as they moved while some heads hovered above stalls, haggling. At the far end of the market, an old woman sold chicken feed. Many times, my father sent me to buy feed for our turkeys to eat — another chore I hated doing, probably because I could care less for his turkeys, or because directly opposite the market, a traditional house sat eerily and every time I looked at the old woman’s unfriendly and harsh face, I imagined her to look like one of the gods that hid their faces behind the walls of that house. Her face, hard and frozen, constantly sent chills down my spine and her heavily wrinkled hands were always creepily cold — like someone who had already made peace with death. The left road was what led to Agbele. It was very narrow and an incoming motorist had to wait for an outgoing one if they did not want their cars to kiss each other.
The middle road was my nemesis. It wasn’t a tarred, smooth or motorable road like the other two. It was a street — like a big street that housed hundreds of people. When you passed through this street, you would end up in another street, and another — until you got to your destination. The main entrance of this street had something that would have been a gate. There were walls on both sides and murals covered almost every inch of the walls. On one side was something like a skull. Then there was a hut with different palm fronds. Then there were different heads and colours and shapes that all looked scary and mystifying. On the other side of the wall was the ebo¹ center — it was where the deities ate and had their fill. Every time I went to Club 24, I would always see food in calabashes that were meant for the gods. Yam with boiled eggs and palm oil, eko² and cocoa with palm oil, rice and stew in leaves, moinmoin and eggs. The gods were clearly enjoying.
Every time I went to Club 24, dread filled my lungs and clasped my heart in its iron hands, because there was always one thing or another — one event or another that would creep me out.
Once, I had been whipped because I walked with my slippers. I was ten, moving carelessly around Club 24. I was on my way to Agbele as usual and since I had a lot of school assignments to do, I wanted to get my chores done as soon as possible. I was too engrossed in my own problems that I had failed to notice that people around me were not wearing any form of footwears. The Egungun³ had come out of that Club 24 street, long and very colourful. The jagajaga⁴ on its body had a lot of clothing and leaves that looked like thorns. As usual, boys trailed behind the Egungun, beating the drums, chanting and hailing the god as it passed. Many children paused what they were doing to gawk at it while adults just continued their business — it was a normal sight.
Scared of the Egungun, I hurriedly passed before it got to the center of the road, but I had only taken a few steps when I had people screaming at me, “bo bata e, bo bata e⁵”. I looked around, nonplussed. The tawai tawai sound I heard made my senses fly back into my head. I hurriedly removed my Dunlop slippers and rubbed the part where I had been whipped. Tears sprang into my eyes as one of those boys held me “obinrin lasan, oo ni bowo fun Egungun⁶”. Women immediately gathered, barefoot, and pleaded on my behalf “omode lonse, ko mon nkankan⁷…”
Someone once mentioned on Twitter how Nigerians ‘celebrate’ Santa Claus even though it’s not a Nigerian culture. According to the tweep, people would let their kids love and respect Santa Claus while shielding them away from our very own Egungun — masquerades that are a part of our culture, our heritage, the spirits of our gods manifested in flesh and bones. Although I found it silly that someone would compare Santa Claus to masquerades, I still couldn’t help but wonder why many kids — and people in general — fear masquerades — something that is meant to be a part of us. The truth is that our Egunguns have never proven themselves to be lovable, especially to children. While Santa Claus goes about with gifts, our masquerades, that are meant to be a visible manifestation of the spirits and gods, move about with whips.
Aside from Eyo⁸, who I fell in love with as a kid because of their all white apparels, their dances and their friendly demeanour, most of my childhood memories of masquerades, deities and our traditional gods have been of fear, too much sacrament and hush. The appearance of an Egungun was a warning gong that trouble was whirling somewhere. Women grabbed their children and brought them close to their breasts and young kids scampered in trepidation.
As a kid, I also believed that there was too much segregation and relegation of the female gender by these gods — or those who worship them.
Little me loved the Oro Festival because on that day, I wouldn’t go to school. In Igbogbo, it was very common to observe the Oro Festival and it was very important for women and girls to not come out of their homes. One day, as the procession of Oro worshippers passed by, I stayed by the window watching them. One of the men saw me. Immediately, he screamed and, in a few minutes, boys were banging our gate. Fear gripped me in ways I cannot explain and big balls of sweat dripped from my pores. With my heart beating as though it wanted to tear out of my chest, I ran to the door and locked it from behind. Then I ran to each windows of the house and drew all the curtains. My father saw me shaking and panting heavily and asked what happened. I explained that I had seen the highly hallowed Oro god and they were coming for me because I had committed a taboo. By this time, the noise at the gate was getting so loud, but my father, amused and erupting into spasms of laughter, told me to calm down. Then he went to open the gate while I hid under the bed. It was later he told me, “that is not the Oro deity, those are thugs who are just looking for money in celebration of today”.
I always wondered why women couldn’t come out during the Oro festival and boys were allowed to, but I never got a logical answer to that question. If our gods are also very powerful, why did the slave trade happen? Why were our fathers subjugated and subdued so much? In my little mind, I thought worshipping the gods meant you were all-too-powerful. Still, the inability of older folks to answer my never-ending question about our gods, deities, and masquerades stifled my belief in them, choking it slowly and steadily until it couldn’t breathe. At the end, for me, our ancestral gods were relegated to stories I read in textbooks and storybooks just for the fun of it, and our Egunguns were just wicked creatures who loved to whip people.
Telling a child, today, to worship our ancestral gods is matched with a lot ofGod forbids. One could argue that the arrival of Christianity and Islam eroded people’s beliefs in our traditional gods, and then made them see masquerades as fetish, demonic beings. But one could also admit that our fathers who worshipped these gods did not do enough in communicating the essence of worshipping them, and masquerades, who should enjoy ancestral reverence, do nothing but bully people and scare little children.
Today, many Nigerians are living in the consciousness of not dancing to the tune of the white man and that includes the religion that they brought to Africans. Still, very few Nigerians are willing to go back to our traditional mode of worship or the celebration of our masquerades.
We can bring back the beauty of masquerades and its festivities, but first, we have to annihilate the fear attached to them. To many young people, our traditional gods are purely evil hand-made figurines who demand for human sacrifices and the blood of virgins — no thanks to Nollywood movies that consistently show how traditional worshippers destroy people’s lives, especially when you are rich and well-to-do. So, for many Nigerians, their first instinct, when they see a masquerade, is to run away.
Like Santa Claus, we can make our kids love our masquerades. Perhaps not enough for them to hold hands or take photos with masquerades, but enough to stop them from seeing them as a symbol of horror, evil and revulsion. We can make children see masquerades as a beautiful sight to behold, a part of our rich culture and heritage, a gift from the gods that have trickled down from generations to generations, the spirits of our ancestors manifested in flesh, the legacies of our fathers and the fathers before them.
Just like CRK and IRK are taught in schools, we should also make it our duty to educate our kids on our traditional modes of worship, our gods, deities and the masquerades that represent them. As the world progresses, we should ensure that our traditional values and culture are not windswept by the gale of globalization.
- Ebo — a sacrifice meant for the gods.
2. Eko — moulded corn starch.
3. Egungun — Masquerades
4. Jagajaga — ruffles
5. Bo bata e — remove your shoe
6. Obinrin lasan, oo ni bowo fun Egungun — a mere woman, you have no regards for Masquerades
7. Omode lonse, ko mon nkankan — she’s a child, she knows nothing.
8. Eyo — a Nigerian masquerade that’s always clad in white.
