By
Obododimma Oha
That certain
things can happen and certain things cannot are subject to a particular group’s
perception and the limit of their knowledge in context of time, and not a
matter of unassailable truth. Granted that there are some universals as to what
can happen and what cannot in our world, but that, too, is subject to experience in our own
world. For instance, gravitational pull which makes it such that when someone
throws something up, that object must fall down, is one possibility known on the
planet Earth. Outside the Earth, it is something else: an object thrown up
stays there or falls in another direction of a pull. Thus, that is established
and is taken into consideration in throwing things or in handling thrusting
objects, such as airplanes that make a thrust and force themselves to stay in
the air or missiles that are launched. Apart from this, groups of humans in the world have expressions in their
languages to capture what is possible and what is not. Igbo expressions of the
possible and the impossible deserve some attention for the following reasons:
(1) the expressions show us the limit of knowledge registered in the language
at some time; (2) (1) above, is one reality that the language, like all
others, is subject to change according to time; (3) those expressions reveal
some issues that need some rethinking in trying to change the cognitive life of
the speakers, especially those in the local areas that may not have
had meaningful formal education.
The Igbo
provide an adjustment to knowledge made available to somebody in the culture by
stating that Agakarịam-ije kara onyeisiawo ihe mara (A person who has traveled
much knows more than the hoary haired in the local community). It is true that age
gives us an advantage in knowing, because the older person is believed to have
had more experiences in life. But travelling out of the local area to many
places gives us more exposure, more knowledge. Now, because we have not traveled extensively
out of our planet and have not encountered other beings from other galaxies, we
assume that we are alone, that ours is the only life-sustaining world! Before European explorers came to West Africa, West African ancestors were taking
their bath in their rivers and streams, and thought their villages or those
around where the end of the world, or that there were no other people who could
be white-complexioned! Just like beings on other planets, as suggested in science fiction, could have green or blue blood, and not necessarily the purple type like ours. Similarly, the Whites did not know that those places they explored were inhabited by people. In fact, something like the country people are dying
for now and call fatherland, Nigeria, did not exist. My great grandmother did not
even know that she was even on a continent called “Africa” or that she was an “African”! Imagine that! For her, these were strange labels, just like the labels of places in the folktales she performed to her grandchildren! She only knew that she was Igbo (by virtue of the language and the culture),and that she was from our clan, period. The ancients in our clan thought the Earth was curved, as in Igbo expressions like eluigwe ibado ihu n’ala (the sky lying face-downwards), “ebe elugwu badoro ihu n’ala”
or “where the sky lies face-downwards”.
Well, it was
by traveling to other places my ancestors had not been before encoding some
impossibilities in Igbo language that I got to know that some of the
following were possible:
(1) Ala ji ọkpa asu akwụ (A land where palm
oil is processed with the legs.
(2) Atụrụ ipu mpi (The sheep developing horns)
(3) Akwụ icha n´ọdụ igu (Palm heads being
ripe from the tail end of the palm-frond).
One would not
have thought that humans would use their legs (just like some people in some cultures using
their legs to marsh vine fruits to produce wine) until one traveled away from
the Igbo community and during a conference excursion in a part of Nigeria, was
shown how local women processed boiled palm nuts with their feet! Apart from the inevitable hygienic demands, there were also health challenges. The heels of the
processors were broken and could easily get infected. In Igbo areas, the palm nuts
coming out of the pots were terribly hot and it was inconceivable that anyone, except
for torture, would ask another person to use feet instead of long pestles to
pound them! Of course, these days the hot nuts are automatically pounded by
machines, not humans and scooped with shovels into pressers.
As for atụrụ
ipu mpi (the sheep developing horns),
this was also thought impossible in the culture. It was when I was resident in St.
Louis, Senegal, for two years, that a Cameroonian colleague took me to to see a
variety of (female) sheep that had horns like goats. In fact, the sheep had
littered and were feeding their young then: so, one was pretty sure that they were female
by their breasts and horns. Indeed, one’s knowledge only stops where one’s
experience stops. It was true, as expressed ambiguously in one woman's name in Igbo, Amazuiheonụ (No one knows everything; or We are not all wise!). Only the tortoise, as rendered in one Igbo folktale, would in futility seek to have all wisdom alone in a calabash!
I am yet to
see palm-heads that develop from the tail end of palm-fronds, but that may be
possible when I have become a spirit and have started walking head-down to the
market place in the spiritworld! For now, it still remains impossible, an expression of
impossibility in Igbo. In Igbo folklore, there are representations of
these impossibilities as being possible in the spiritworld, where there is a
different order of things, where our earthly knowledge, especially referential knowledge, is reversed.
The Igbo
saying, ala atụrụ puru mpi might be used also as an idiom for a very distant
place or an abomination, apart from an inconceivable, fictional place.
But apart from
these ones, there are the following that are well captured in the Highlife
music of Muddy Ibe and Nkwa Brothers:
(4) I ka m
ogologo, ị ga-aka m mkpụkpụ? (If you
are taller than I am, would you also want to be shorter than I?)
(5) I
ga-ebute uzo kpere azụ? (Would you lead the procession and also bring up the
rear?)
(6) I ga-ebi
n’ala biri n'elu? (Would live downstairs
and also live upstairs?)
The
expressions, (4) to (6) above, all indicate the utter greed and selfishness of the
person in question. The person wants to be tall and at the same time short; live
downstairs and upstairs; be the first in the line and the one bringing up the
rear to show his or her importance; only ten self alone! Naturally, an
individual cannot be taller than another person and also shorter. If the person
is shorter and the short person gets a little praise for a fitting shortness,
he or she would want to be short and
claim to be shorter again! This calls attention to the emerging danger in which an affluent person may be the only Onwa (moon) in the community and, if there is another emerging luminary, a Gbuere m onwa (the bright pole star literally called "Kill the Moon for Me"), this Gbuere m onwa is in danger of being assassinated or kidnapped somewhere along the line. Every rich person wants the numeral "1" added loudly to whatever equally noisy name he or she picks as a title! As we reflect on possibility and impossibility, those interested in repairing their African communities need to look in this direction. Indeed, Igbo culture also indicating this natural
impossibility is not yet abreast with cloning or any other science in which one
entity can be made multiple and possessing several forms at the same time!
It is also
not possible for an individual to lead a line and also bring up the rear. If
there is suspicion that the prominence is given to the person at the rear, the person at the front would start regretting being the first and would want to be last. One can
only be one place at a time, retain one position at a time. Also, one can only
occupy one room in a storeyed buiding, and not live upstairs and downstairs, or
live in all the rooms. It is true that in modern culture, one can have a
bedroom (somewhere), a study, a toilet anther location (if it is a
self-contained apartment), etc. But these these do not translate to “living” in
all the rooms.
This has
serious implication for training and mentoring. One’s trainees or students
should ideally be greater. They are the trainer's or educator’s greater future.
Happy is that teacher that is able to produce a more sophisticated thinker. Teachers
who want to be greater than their students have no future, indeed; they ought to be
sad! This reminds one about the relationship between C.S. Lewis’s two devils in The
Screwtape Letters, Screwtape and Wormwood. The senior devil and instructor in
the art of temptation, Screwtape, is really jealous of his student, Screwtape
and sees no value in his suddestions. It is only in Griffin’s Fleetwwod
Correspondence, as I examined in another blog article, that we understand this
hidden agenda and cold conflict.
Igbo ideas of
impossibility show us that human language grows with experience or needs to
grow. Certain expressions in the language representing ancient imagination or backwardness, may embarrass the speakers of the language as we move into the future. If we are just prisoners of the expressions of that language, our reality
would be a sick one with time. Like a human being, a language grows and can
also die.
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