The Igwe Versus the Akpi in Igbo Cultural Critique of Generational Philosophy

By

Obododimma Oha

Umuaka ugbu a

Unu bu akpi

Akpi tulaa elu

Akpi atudolo ala

Okenye ugbu a

Unu bu igwe

Igwe tunye oji

Igwe atunye ocha

(Children of these days

You are ticks

Ticks shoot upwards

Ticks shoot downwards

Adults of these days

You are the sky

The sky black-spotted

The sky white spotted)

The folk song/poem presented above is featured among children and is among the renditions they use in bringing a day to a close with seemingly insignificant performances. But the rendition contains an important discourse, a plural response to and critique of generational philosophies. The Igbo understand that age or time might be an important variable in the ways we look at life and do take this into consideration in addressing the weaknesses and strengths of an individual in reasoning. Not that they insist that the older we are the righter we become in our reasoning, even though we have proverbs like Nwaanyi buru ibe ya uzo luo di n-aka enwe mkpomkpo aria (literally, “A woman who is the first to get married accumulates more broken pots in the homestead”). Yes; experience also teaches us and the more experiences we have, the more enlightened about an issue we should be! More broken pots are more challenges from which a person should learn and should know. But the Igbo also modify this in saying that Agakariam ije kaara onye isiawo mara ihe (The person who has travelled more knows more than the hoary-haired that is sitting at home). Of course, the Agakariam Ije has had more experiences, more encounters in life, and is still a champion made by experience!

Is it not interesting that the children’s rendition is double-voiced? One is the voice of the aged, the elderly, the other the voice of the child. The adult voice alleges that children of these days are difficult to control; that they are, metaphorically speaking, like the small tick, shooting up and down. The voice of the child counters this, replying that the adults of today are unreliable like the sky: here they appear to be white, but there they are black! Very slippery, too. I guess this nature of the adult is backed up by its portrayal in other folk discourses, for instance, in the story of the chicken thief who stole and was caught by children playing nearby. The thief says to a fellow adult who comes to the scene, “Please, look into my bag with the eyes of an adult.” And the man looked inside the bag (with the eyes of an adult) and saw instead a dead okwa, wild quail, thus exonerating the thief! The eyes of an adult, indeed! The eyes of an adult that see what we do not see, or that see something else!

What are the eyes of an adult, or what are in the eyes of an adult, such that the adult is black here and white there? You would agree with me that the voice of the child in the reply has a very powerful missile. Yes; it is akpi and is difficult to grab, but adults are igwe, white-that-is-black, that change to other patterns and create problems for those around. To say “mislead” others may be to be euphemistic. The generational conflict remains unresolved; while adults who have seen a different reality are subjected to another that is strange, young ones also find adult perception unbearable. In Igbo discourse, the ancient ones who lived in a different reality not acceptable to us are sometimes referred to as “ndi nduhie” (those misled, or those whose ways can mislead). We know how their ways could be misleading and how, for instance, they continue to cause problems through various forms of ancient imagination (in religion, in culture, etc.) that they have transmitted to us or have brainwashed us to accept.

Yes; children of these days could be worse than akpi. It is very difficult to hold them down to something, especially if one has many broken pots as ndi nduhie! You could see these generational views of life at conflict in various fronts. It has even become more pronounced as the current Igbo wrestle with knowledge in various domains, with the lenses from yesterday and today.

One is not safer or happier by choosing out of the two conflicting camps. It only adds to the reality that Ihe kwuru, ihe akwuso ya (When something stands, another stands beside it). Being a child means that one would become an adult or join ndi nduhie! Same for being an adult: one easily returns to childhood (in ways of reasoning, eating, etc.); one may even begin to crawl and maybe assisted to walk like a child! One becomes a child again!