By Uduma Kalu
I participated in the igba nnunnu. But there's an aspect not frequently mentioned among the Ohafia, and that's igba egbe uro. I can't remember the name exactly. Should be igba egbe uro. It was popular in my growing up years in the Ndi Agwu compound of Isiugwu Ohafia in the 70s. It involved cutting a branch of a particular tree. The inside of that branch has a hole. But that hole is blocked by stuffs that must be flushed with stick. We could use a small bamboo since it has a hole already. Then a little stick with brushy head will be wet with saliva or water and pushed into the hole with a round piece of oil been seed cut to fit the size of the hole. The bean cake will used to block the other end of the hole.
Frequent sticking in and out of the brushy stick in and out of the hole creates pressure inside the hole that after some time, the oil bean piece will explode with a bang shooting with hurt anybody the gun was pointed at. In a way, it prepared the youth for the art of gun shooting for hunting, warfare and fun in those days.
Another rite of passage in Isiugwu Ohafia then was the art of igbu ishi, head hunting. I don't think this was popular in other Ohafia clans as its origin, I understand, is though Ohafia national but was rooted in Isiugwu Ohafia. Its origin could be heard in the Isiugwu Ohafia praise salute of 'Enini o wa agu', the enini, thorny green plant, that slices the leopard.
Now the story is that in those days in Elu Ohafia, there was a market where all Ohafia and beyond used to attend. I think it's this same market that the oha odu, the fabled tailed fellows used to come late in the evening to the market and left late in the evening of the end of the market until they were routed with ant infested palm fibre. But that's another story.
The gist is that a leopard always terrorized the Elu Ohafia market defying every effort to kill it. An Ohafia national call to kill the leopard was made. And its great warriors came. None killed it. Until this Isiugwu Ohafia man came. I will get his name and compound.
He scouted the market place, saw the leopard's hideout. The place was covered with the grasses called akurumba in Isiugwu. Akurumba is that popular gras you see in the bush looking like field grass. It creeps all over the ground. The man wrapped himself with the grasses, sharpened his cutlass and lay himself close to the mouth of the leopard's hideout. His cutlass ready. Maybe he used other smells to diffuse his human odour. But the story is that in that dead of the night, when all had gone to bed. And it was the leopard's time to wander around, the Isiugwu Ohafia man was wide awake. He heard the leopard close by, its rustling trot nearby. He saw it jump above him. It must be moonlight or bright night. He stretched his cutlass and sliced up, cutting the stomach of the leopard as it jumped over him. The leopard fell down. The guy ran to it and cut off its head.
In Isiugwu Ohafia, the saying, now salutation, enini o wa agu, remembers this episode. But it goes beyond that. Its reenacted in the festival of akurumba when those grasses I mentioned are worn all over the body by adult males from all Isiugwu Ohafia compounds. This is the akurumba festival. It's perhaps the largest number of festival masquerades anywhere in the world. Isiugwu has about 15 compounds. Imagine there are about 15-20 compound men in the costumes, with uhala following, along with the musicians, times 15 compounds, that's over 250 of the masquerades rampaging, satirizing and dancing from one compound to another, paying homages to deserving personalities in one day, receiving presents of all sorts from umudi in Ali obi- homes in new sites, and compounds etc.
The masquerades remember the art of bravery of the Isiugwu Ohafia man slicing the leopard in an Ohafia national call in Elu.
But the rite of passage here is a week before the festival. It's called igbu ishi, cutting a head.
This is when, as part of the new yam festival, which the akurumba festival is part of, male youths in their pre and early teens match out to the forests looking for that certain kind of bush melons that looked like melons. Melons look like human heads. They would fight to get this limited fruits and bring them home. They would be placed on the stones that marked the compound shrine to the examination of the elders.
Some of them would be sticked together on both ends of a stick. The idea of course was to remove fear of human heads in the young Isiugwu Ohafia male.
I don't know whether thing rite still exists but in my time then in Isiugwu Ohafia, I participated in it. I danced the akurumba festival both with the maternal compound of my mother, Ndi Agwu where I played the masquerade that fought with a sword, is it nabor? And also with my Ndi Okpo compound of my father's.
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