Our Odelele Choice

By

Obododimma Oha

A narrative Igbo proverb very interestingly presents what looks like a tragic inclination of a family: the case of following a mother, an ancestor, to die an avoidable death. In the proverb, we are confronted with the need have to reasoning, sound reasoning, and not joining the band-wagon. If we are able to reason, we can prevent our falling to the same fate or would (as the successors) find out what killed the ancestor. And so, this is true to an individual as it is to a society (at a macro-level). Have we bothered to ask really: why are we backward? Why are we not taking the lead economically or scientifically like other nations? Are we the main authors of this backwardness? Is this backwardness as a result of the way we think? Or, is life or where we are now the consequences of the way we think? In addition, or as a corollary to consequence, if we cannot change our pattern of thinking or continue to justify our thinking and our pattern of thinking, do we not rightly merit whatever is the consequence of that thinking, or do we not deserve receiving the same kind of reward reserved for those in that line of thinking, which may run from generation to generation?

While we reflect on these major questions, let me drive the bus of this discussion on the route of what looks like a discourse analysis and philosophy. The full narrative proverb in Igbo says:

Nge gburu nne nwata? (question)

Ee-ro! (answer/chorus)

Nge na-agbo n’ite (question)

Ee-ro! (chorus/answer)

(What killed the child’s mother? (question)

Toadstool! (chorus/answer)

What is boiling in the pot on the fire? (question)

Toadstool! (chorus/answer)

This proverb crafted like a riddle (whose answer should be clear to the speakers of the language, to make the meaning or contextual application of the saying clearer) is introduced understandably as a question, but the interesting thing is that the questioner may be the chorus or the one answering to consolidate the rhetoric of the talk or the answer may be shared between questioner-speaker and the audience, to enhance common ground in the main talk. That is to say something like, “OK, we agree here or we agree on this; therefore, we (must) agree on that!”

Ngee gburu nne nwata? (or Gini gburu nee nwata?) which prompts that discourse or which provides that basis for the invitation to reasoning, is an obligatory assertion-question. We base the ensuing argument on what caused the death of the mother, it seems to say. It is as if the discourse is based on a factual or irrefutable diagnosis on the death of the mother or cause of death by toadstool. The point, then, is that, as an argument, the cause of the mother’s death is the first proposition upon which the acceptability of other ones following is based. That the toadstool killed the mother is the Conclusion or Claim in the presupposed argument, which now becomes the first premise of the wider argument.

In my translation, I have chosen “toadstool” which we know is poisonous mushroom. I reasoned that it would not be appropriate to just choose “mushroom” as an equivalent, as one may be tempted to choose to match the original Igbo version. Ee-ro (ero) in Igbo means “mushroom,” but we know that many varieties of mushroom are edible and could be eaten. In that case, the proverbial saying could not have meant just “mushroom” but a variety of it. The word “mushroom” or “ero” therefore, is a general word or superordinate under which we can have the following in Igbo: “atakata eloo,” “odelele,” “bute ute, bute ekete,” “ero mgbakpuru,” “ero nnamagu,” “ero odu ji,” "ero oduji," "ero mgbo," etc. In the English translation of the discourse, therefore, we have a clear case of convergence. In Igbo, we have a divergence, for there are many types of “ero”!

Obviously, the likelihood that the “odelele” (toadstool) would kill the woman’s child too is something to be derived by simple inference. It is a simple causality, unless a deus ex machina intervenes; unless a reliable anti-dote is found and administered to the child in time. Perhaps something would happen and the child with “long-throat” (Nigerian pidgin for “a terrible greed”) will not even eat it! Maybe somebody would walk carelessly near the pot on fire and the contents would be spilled. Maybe, just something would happen. But with that deus ex machina pending, there is every likelihood that the child would die of toadstool poisoning, too. The likelihood is high!

If the likelihood is high, then what will save the child is just a radical action; maybe a creditor who is irate walking to the family and wishing to punish it, but not knowing that the punishment would be a blessing, would save somebody’s miserable life, would get hold of the boiling pot and spill the contents.

Another likelihood: maybe the child is tired of life and just wants to end it, having observed from the mother’s death that odelele could kill. Maybe the child wants to commit suicide though the odelele! How often a mischief or punishment turns to a blessing! Life is networked in a way and what this person does here, or this person’s isolated experience, may be a cause or effect of another’s experience, having negative or positive outcomes. Also, life could be paradoxical: that negative action could finally be in the interest of the group or person for whom it is intended as a punishment.

This simple folkloric expression invites everyone, or every society, to common sense, to reasoning, and to the awareness about the crafting of its death. Simple judgment would educate the child that odelele is poisonous. But there is one thing else there about judgment and about finding things out. The child boiling odelele is not trying to verify if it could kill. Yes; any society that wants a better future must be ready to take risks to find out possibilities; it cannot be left to chance alone to determine our direction. The child is not trying to find out if odelele could kill; the child’s mother has done that. The development of backward societies hinges on their willingness to make reasonable choices, and the continuation of choices or practices that pull them backwards. Yes; poor reasoning, if if widespread, could ruin a society.

Is it not interesting that this is a simple folkloric expression which also expresses a people’s philosophy of life and which reveals to us something about its logic, its argumentation, and its discourse generally? Yes; African folk expressions are like that. They often do not express just one thing!

Yet, we should learn from it. As individuals and as groups, are we making the right choices in life or the wrong ones? Are we accumulating suffering for ourselves (as a consequence of one odelele consumption or the other)? Is the suicide through odelele necessary? What is that society or person boiling? Is that society or person expecting a deus ex machina to come and spill the contents of the pot unknowingly and save them from merited death, death of reason?