Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart

Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo's body was dangling, and they stopped dead.

"Perhaps your men can help us bring him down and bury him," said Obierika. "We have sent for strangers from another village to do it for us, but they may be a long time coming."

The District Commissioner changed instantaneously. The resolute administrator in him gave way to the student of primitive customs.

"Why can't you take him down yourselves?" he asked.

"It is against our custom," said one of the men. "It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offense against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it. That is why we ask your people to bring him down, because you are strangers."

"Will you bury him like any other man?" asked the Commissioner.

"We cannot bury him. Only strangers can. We shall pay your men to do it. When he has been buried we will then do our duty by him. We shall make sacrifices to cleanse the desecrated land."

Obierika, who had been gazing steadily at his friend's dangling body, turned suddenly to the District Commissioner and said ferociously: "That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself/ and now he will be buried like a dog…" He could not say any more. His voice trembled and choked his words.

"Shut up!" shouted one of the messengers, quite unnecessarily.

"Take down the body," the Commissioner ordered his chief messenger, "and bring it and all these people to the court."

"Yes, sah," the messenger said, saluting.

The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive

Tribes of the Lower Ni^er.

i : old woman. - . woman,– also used of a man who has taken no title.

cbi- . personal god.

efukfu : worthless man.

egwugwu : a masquerader who impersonates one of the ancestral spirits of the village.

ekwe : a musical instrument,– a type of drum made from wood.

eneke-nti-oba : a kind of bird.

eze-acjadi-nwayi : the teeth of an old woman.

ibd : fever.

ilo : the village green, where assemblies for sports, discussions, etc., take place.

inyanga- . showing off, bragging.

isa-ifi : a ceremony. If a wife had been separated from her husband for some time and were then to be re-united with him, this ceremony would be held to ascertain that she had not been unfaithful to him during the time of their separation.

iyi-uwa- . a special kind of stone which forms the link between an ogbanje and the spirit world. Only if the iyi-uwa were discovered and destroyed would the child not die.

jigida : a string of waist beads.

kotma- . court messenger. The word is not of Ibo origin but is a corruption of "court messenger."

kwenu- . a shout of approval and greeting.

ndicbie- . elders.

nna ayi : our father.

nno : welcome.

nso-ani- . a religious offence of a kind abhorred by everyone, literally earth's taboo.

nza : a very small bird.

obi- , the large living quarters of the head of the family.

obodo dike : the land of the brave.

ochu : murder or manslaughter.

ocjbanje : a changeling,– a child who repeatedly dies and returns to its mother to be reborn. It is almost impossible to bring up an ogbanje child without it dying, unless its iyi-uwa is first found and destroyed.

ogene : a musical instrument; a kind of gong.

oji odu achu-ijiji-O : (cow i.e., the one that uses its tail to drive flies away).

osu : outcast. Having been dedicated to a god, the osu was taboo and was not allowed to mix with the freeborn in any way.

Oye.– the name of one of the four market days.

ozo: the name of one of the titles or ranks.

tufia- . a curse or oath.

udu : a musical instrument; a type of drum made from pottery.

uli.– a dye used by women for drawing patterns on the skin.

umuadct : a family gathering of daughters, for which the female kinsfolk return to their village of origin.

umunna- . a wide group of kinsmen (the masculine form of the word umuada} .

Uri : part of the betrothal ceremony when the dowry is paid.