By
Obododimma
Oha
I had, in a previous
blog article, “Uwa Bu Ahia,” reflected on the Igbo representation of life as a
type of going to the market for shopping. Igbo people are among those groups
that try to explain or understand complex/bewildering experiences by seeing one
thing (the unfamiliar) in terms of another (the familiar). In other words, they
make use of analogy a great deal. Why would humans not make such comparisons in
order to deal with difficult experiences?
Another analogical
thinking of life in Igbo folklore is expressed in the highlife music of Muddy
Ibe and his Nkwa Brothers System “83” as follows:
Ije uwa na—aga ka agwo,
O na-aga ka agwo;
O si akanri aga,
O si akaekpe aga,
Ije
uwa na-aga ka agwo!
(The
journey of life moves like a snake,
It
moves like a snake;
It
moves towards the right,
It
moves towards the left,
The journey of life moves like a snake)
As one can easily see,
we are invited to the kinesthetic of snake movement and asked to see the
complexities of the journey of life as such a movement. Ordinarily, the snake
movement conjures fear in us: the snake slithers and when we find ourselves
within the dangerous space of being attacked, we are uncomfortable. The movement
of the snake is not understood in Igbo culture as a “beautiful” thing. Even
Igbo visual artists hardly deploy the snake motif in their drawing, except to
speak about danger or to warn about it, as in mmanwu wall murals. It is rather in the Indian culture that a snake
or its movement is described as “beautiful.” Another exception is the mamiwota (mermaid) wall mural, which obviously reveals the Indian influence. In fact, the Indian deity sporting her snakes as the mamiwota is hardly visualized as a Black African entity but an Aryan. Granted that there is something
near to snake esthetics in Igbo discourse in visual art, as when they describe
something as O turu agwa ka eke (It
is spotted like eke the sacred python), but I suspect that this expression of
the snake’s beauty has something to do with its being seen as a totem of a god
or goddess; in other words, its cultural veneration. It just ends there. There
is hardly any visual art in Igbo culture that deploys the python esthetics.
Maybe in emerging intertextual and counter-discursive ones that it would be interesting
to encounter!
It is not just a
comparison. Igbo philosophy of life is at work there. The journey of life has “bends,”
and if one is here on its adventure, one should expect such bends! Rightward
bends and leftward bends. Ije uwa na-aga
ka agwo. The snake moves cautiously in these bends imposed on it by nature.
Maybe its legs are inside, somewhere not visible and it has to be propelled by
representative muscles. So, the wriggle provided by these rightward and
leftward movements ensures that it has balance in the difficult trip. Let any
creature try to make it more difficult or interfere with the movement and the
snake would use its fangs. Ije uwa na-aga
ka agwo and these bends are not all sweet narratives!
That brings me to
other senses we could make out of the snake movement. One is here in the
journey by chance, not by one’s own making. Perhaps it is part of something big
happening or about to happen. But the choices we make on that journey are
important variables too. They can shape the rightward and leftward movements.
The bend into Calabar, into Ibadan, then the US, then Senegal and back to
Ibadan; then Lagos, then Namibia and back to Ibadan have all inserted choice
into the scheme of chance. Or is it Cameroon and Ghana and India, Germany,
Austria, France, Switzerland, etc? How our whereabouts in the snake movement
colour the narrative! Maybe if one had the courage to disappear in this snake movement,
one would not have been bothered like the tortoise whether the shithole smells
badly! How the rightward and leftward movements create sub-texts in the
narrative!
Ije
uwa na-aga ka agwo! And that’s why we have to be cautious
like the agwo, for we do not know where it would end and when it would end.
Comments