By
Obododimma Oha
A shallow-minded person may look at this topic and think the concern is with those Igbo traders who may live in other communities, selling some goods. Of course, we could identify those, but this essay is not about them.
This is also not one of those essays that are designed to calm angry people down and to build bridges. It is rather written in honesty to make sons and daughters of Adam and Eve think deeply and come to their senses. It is about how fluid identity is and why people should approach it with caution.
My late father told me in a conversation that while he was living in Cameroon in the 1940s, two of his kinsmen there sold all their things and traveled with Hausa people to northern Cameroon, with intention of crossing into Chad later. The departure of these Igbo kinsmen, a final goodbye, meant that a new group of hybrids, but most probably a Hausa group, would emerge.
They followed the Hausa people to northern Cameroon, leaving no contact addresses. That was the last time they were seen.
It is likely that they followed the Hausa group to a Hausa village in Northern Cameroon or crossed to Chad as citizens and founded villages. If I still regard the descendants as my relatives - - that is, if I can identify them - - I must be joking. They won't even believe that they are related to me. Their past is drowned in the ocean of history. What matters to them now is the future, same way their Igbo ancestors destroyed their past and joined a caravan bound for the North.
I just have to accept that our village has given birth to other villages, or has been giving birth to other villages, some of which I don't know. Village, then villages. A network of villages. Known and unknown kinsfolk. Just some hamlets that may have been founded by people from our village elsewhere! It is even possible that Victor Glover, first American Black and first African at the International Space Station, is from our village!
"Ụmụnna furu efu!" Lost kinsfolk. I would join our village people in saying. Our village will always grow to lose. When the moonlight play and masquerading become too boring, some fellows may escape and settle elsewhere.
I recall that we had to beg an uncle who had been made a traditional ruler in a part of Cameroon to come "home" to Nigeria. Come home to Nigeria and leave his kingdom? And you home people are now too wise! "Ewu Kamaro" (Cameroon goat, a term derogatorily used in referring to Igbo people who live in Cameroon) would not accept that kind of troublesome wisdom!
Our village has become a bus station. Some are embarking the wagon. Some are disembarking, especially given the discomforts at "home" in Nigeria. Some have escaped to China, some to India. Many more are planning to escape. Do you blame them? Stay and be shot dead and branded crook or terrorist!
In the next 1,000 years I would like to come from the spiritworld just to know what that village has become. Just a visit, an excursion! I would find out if it is still giving birth to other villages in other places. But I must go back after that brief visit.
But what does it indicate? It means that we all (all humans) are part of one big family. We are related and have merely gone out to establish villages here and there. But we have one "home," which was left behind to frolic with the caravan. That person that discovers our common origin is the real person of the earth.
Eziokwu, nwanne dị na mba! Truly, there is a blood relation out there, even in another land, and we don't know!
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