Okonkwo had to admit that he knew of no such person. “But that is the work of God,” he said.
“It is the work of our forefathers,” said the old man. “They built a powerful medicine to protect themselves from thunder, and not only themselves, but all their descendants forever.”
“Very true,” said another man. “Anyone who denies it does so in vain. Let him go and ask Nwokeke how he was hit by thunder last year. All his skin peeled off like snake slough, but he was not killed.”
“Why was he hit at all?” asked Okonkwo. “He should not have been hit at all.”
“That is a matter between him and his chi. But you must know that he was hit in Mbaino and not at home. Perhaps the thunder, seeing him at Mbaino, called him an Mbaino man at first.”
Four years in England had filled Obi with a longing to be back in Umuofia. This feeling was sometimes so strong that he found himself feeling ashamed of studying English for his degree. He spoke Ibo whenever he had the least opportunity of doing so. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to find another Ibo-speaking student in a London bus. But when he had to speak in English with a Nigerian student from another tribe he lowered his voice. It was humiliating to have to speak to one’s countryman in a foreign language, especially in the presence of the proud owners of that language. They would naturally assume that one had no language of one’s own. He wished they were here today to see. Let them come to Umuofia now and listen to the talk of men who made a great art of conversation. Let them come and see men and women and children who knew how to live, whose joy of life had not yet been killed by those who claimed to teach other nations how to live.
There were hundreds of people at Obi’s reception. For one thing, the entire staff and pupils of the C.M.S. Central School Umuofia were there and their brass band had just finished playing “Old Calabar.” They had also played an old evangelical tune which in Obi’s schooldays Protestant schoolchildren had sung to anti-Catholic words, especially on Empire Day, when Protestants and Catholics competed in athletics.
“Otasili osukwu Onyenkuzi Fada
E misisi ya oli awo-o.”
Which translated into English is as follows:
“Palm-fruit eater, Roman Catholic teacher,
His missus a devourer of toads.”
After the first four hundred handshakes and hundred embraces, Obi was able to sit down for a while with his father’s older kinsmen in the big parlor. There were not enough chairs for all of them to sit on, so that many sat on their goatskins spread on the floor. It did not make much difference whether one sat on a chair or on the floor because even those who sat on chairs spread their goatskins on them first.
?
?The white man’s country must be very distant indeed,” suggested one of the men. Everyone knew it was very distant, but they wanted to hear it again from the mouth of their young kinsman.
“It is not something that can be told,” said Obi. “It took the white man’s ship sixteen days—four market weeks—to do the journey.”
“Think of that,” said one of the men to the others. “Four market weeks. And not in a canoe, but a white man’s ship that runs on water as a snake runs on grass.”
“Sometimes for a whole market week there is no land to be seen,” said Obi. “No land in front, behind, to the right, and to the left. Only water.”
“Think of that,” said the man to the others. “No land for one whole market week. In our folk stories a man gets to the land of spirits when he has passed seven rivers, seven forests, and seven hills. Without doubt you have visited the land of spirits.”
“Indeed you have, my child,” said another old man. “Azik,” he called, meaning Isaac, “bring us a kola nut to break for this child’s return.”
“This is a Christian house,” replied Obi’s father.
“A Christian house where kola nut is not eaten?” sneered the man.
“Kola nut is eaten here,” replied Mr. Okonkwo, “but not sacrificed to idols.”
“Who talked about sacrifice? Here is a little child returned from wrestling in the spirit world and you sit there blabbing about Christian house and idols, talking like a man whose palm-wine has gone into his nose.” He hissed in disgust, took up his goat skin, and went to sit outside.
“This is not a day for quarrels,” said another old man. “I shall bring a kola nut.” He took his goatskin bag which he had hung from his chair and began to search its depths. As he searched things knocked against one another in it—his drinking horn, his snuff bottle, and a spoon. “And we shall break it in the Christian way,” he said as he fished out a kola nut.
“Do not trouble yourself, Ogbuefi Odogwu,” said Okonkwo to him. “I am not refusing to place a kola nut before you. What I say is that it will not be used as a heathen sacrifice in my house.” He went into an inner room and soon returned with three kola nuts in a saucer. Ogbuefi Odogwu insisted on adding his kola nut to the number.
“Obi, show the kola nut round,” said his father. Obi had already stood up to do so, being the youngest man in the room. When everyone had seen he placed the saucer before Ogbuefi Odogwu, who was the eldest. He was not a Christian, but he knew one or two things about Christianity. Like many others in Umuofia, he went to church once a year at harvest. His only criticism of the Christian service was that the congregation was denied the right to reply to the sermon. One of the things he liked particularly and understood was: “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.”
“As a man comes into this world,” he often said, “so will he go out of it. When a titled man dies, his anklets of title are cut so that he will return as he came. The Christians are right when they say that as it was in the beginning it will be in the end.”
He took the saucer, drew up his knees together to form a table, and placed the saucer there. He raised his two hands, palms facing upwards, and said: “Bless this kola nut so that when we eat it it will be good in our body in the name of Jesu Kristi. As it was in the beginning it will be at the end. Amen.” Everyone replied Amen and cheered old Odogwu on his performance. Even Okonkwo could not help joining in the cheers.
“You should become a Christian,” he suggested.