By
Obododimma
Oha
The idea of
eating a human being is abhorrent and not many would want to hear about it
again. When Jesus told the Jews: “Unless you eat my body and drink my blood,
you will not have life in you,” their reaction was quite in order, even though
he spoke from another level of discourse that they did not understand. Does he think that we are cannibals? What a
gross insult! Didn’t we say it? This man of Galilee is mad, plain mad! Now, he
is asking us to eat him! Which sane person would say that? Now, when I write
about our eating and drinking our ancestors (even our enemies), have I not like
Jesus roused a sentiment and a description of the thought as insane? Yet,
wait and see that, even though this is only a blog article in which I give an
opinion, the opinion points towards a fact, a hard fact.
When we are
speaking, a part of the fluid from our mouths ascend to the atmosphere as
vapour. Even the vapour from the mouths of our enemies! There they join other
clouds and descend on the Earth as rain. The rain falls on the just and on the
unjust, we are told. It fertilizes fields and help plants to come alive and
grow again. In some communities, some of the water is collected in containers
for human and animal use. A greater part of the use is drinking. They have to
drink the water to live.
We are also
told by scientists that a greater part of the human body is made up of water.
The water could leave our bodies in various ways, but mainly when we die (as
mortals) and we are buried or cremated, the water of our bodies follows the
course of degradation and returns with time to other bodies of water in the earth’s
crust. Some may vaporize, as during cremation. But the point is that water
joins water. Water in this cemetery (from human bodies) would meet with water
from that cemetery, and one thing is sure: when borehole drillers pierce the
earth to get water, do we have a choice? There is no difference between water
and water down there!
The borehole driller would eventually help in the accessing and producing bottled water
and sachet type (called popularly “pure water” in Nigeria). Pure water indeed.
Is that a kind of euphemism? To hide away the fact that the drinkers are drinking their
ancestors (and even worst enemies)? Yes, through rain water (collected or
sinking again into the earth) or through “Pure water”, we drink those who have
gone and are reformatted for another life.
That is not
all. Don’t say it is ordinary water and seek consolation yet. You also eat your
ancestors. When we bury dead bodies or cremate them, we are helping the soil to
get more fertile. We are directly and indirectly feeding the plants that also
feed us in various ways. We are making the earth more fertile, manuring the
soil and the plants are happy that they can find food. The Ogbomosho mango we
like eating and lick our fingers or the Ondo plantain we hunger for is just our
ancestors coming back as food. Yes, seek consolation in the fact that you do not eat your
ancestors or enemies directly as such but through plant action. It is as
laughable as saying you do not eat eke the sacred python but you eat edi the
hyena that eats eke! More so, you hypocritically butcher the hyena you have
killed in the night so that you would not encounter the contents of its abdomen
and abandon the meat. The Igbo have a proverb for the butchering of the stomach of the hyena: “A naghị abọ afọ edi n’ehihie” (The
stomach of the hyena is not butchered in the daytime). Imagine the pretence!
Oh, you do not eat eke but can eat edi that has eaten it! Moreover, you are afraid
of looking at the contents of its abdomen! Pretentious you! Hypocritical you!
Indeed, the
idea of eating and drinking our ancestors can induce vomiting! But the fact is
that we still do so, even though indirectly. There is something mysterious about
life. Although we think of our ancestors as having gone somewhere, the fact is
that their human life or mortality remains here. Life must like the earth so
much. Life stays here and endlessly animate cycles! Or is it a recycling,
followed by a reformatting?
Maybe the
initiator or person who configured this old human technology commanded it to
use itself to increase and multiply. It is the configuration. Or maybe, as
social robots, we replicate ourselves, using what we have learnt from the
Master Creator. We are Creation learning Creation from the Creator.
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