Deathly Enclave

By Camilius Egeni

His uniqueness was startling and started right from birth but became fearsome on the cusp of his adolescent. He was the child everyone called a reject without future. However, the gods never make mistakes; they blessed him with supernatural powers. Being an autistic child in Africa comes with lifetime blatant sorrow, but Egbuna followed his destiny to become an herbalist. Now, Egbuna goes from being a meek child with autism to become a fortune teller and a great healer. He cured diseases, especially spiritual attacks and performed magic to build his brand.

Deathly Enclave is a coming-of-age novel that unapologetically interlaces divergent tales and explores the cultural practices, including female genital mutilation, polygamy, rejection and killing of twin babies, caste system, and community living in a remote African community. It is based on the true story of the life of a legendary herbalist told by a firsthand witness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647507879

Camilius Egeni

Camilius Egeni is a senior public administrator with expertise in budget development and public administration. He is the author of Environmental Effects on Public Behavior: The Case of Inuit Suicide. He is a long time Nunavut resident, a husband and father of four. He has a love of nature, photography, and sports. When he is not working or writing, he spends time reading to his children and playing sports, including soccer and baseball.

Book preview

Deathly Enclave

Camilius Egeni

Austin Macauley Publishers

Deathly Enclave

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgment

Preamble

Chapter 01: The Introduction

Chapter 02: The Death and the Relocation

Chapter 03: The Start of the New Beginning

Chapter 04: The Seasonal Celebrations

Chapter 05: The Gifts for the Gods

Chapter 06: The Visit of the White Folks

Chapter 07: The Rejection and Traits

Chapter 08: Female Genital Mutilation

Chapter 09: The Kitchen Tales

Chapter 10: The Moonlight Dance and the Suitor

Chapter 11: The Unthinkable Challenges

Chapter 12: The Conundrums and Weird Occurrences

Chapter 13: The Challenge of Christianity

Chapter 14: Ghoul, the Messenger of Death

Epilog

About the Author

Camilius Egeni is a senior public administrator with expertise in budget development and public administration. He is the author of Environmental Effects on Public Behavior: The Case of Inuit Suicide. He is a long time Nunavut resident, a husband and father of four. He has a love of nature, photography, and sports. When he is not working or writing, he spends time reading to his children and playing sports, including soccer and baseball.

Dedication

To Chinyere – my life partner, for the best gift in life

and

To my children,

Ifechi, Chimamaka, Chimemerie, and Chikaire

whose radiating inner glow warms and vivifies my day.

You are my luminaries; you gave me the oxygen to continue.

Copyright Information ©

Camilius Egeni (2021)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Egeni, Camilius

Deathly Enclave

ISBN 9781647507862(Paperback)

ISBN 9781647507855(Hardback)

ISBN 9781647507879(ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021915524

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

Late Grace Uzunma for advice and pictures

He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning may be called a heaven-born captain.

– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Looking at a king’s mouth, one would assume he never sucked at his mother’s breast.

– Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.

– Simone de Beauvoir

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

– Marie Curie, Our Precarious Habitat

Proverbs are like a sharp double-edged cutlass for clearing farmlands that makes both the strong and the weak people potent.

Preamble

Deadly Enclave is a historical delineation of the life of an autistic child named Egbuna. He was born to indigent parents in an underprivileged African village, but he later became a legendary herbalist. The story describes the challenges he faced and the strategies he used to overcome those challenges; it includes the tales of how he ascended to power from nowhere.

It is a story that will engage, ensnare, and enthrall you and will take you to the intriguing pinnacles of African cultures. The tales were crafted to revive your interest in African cultures and inform you why certain things are done orthodoxly in conformity with the cultural and traditional norms.

On the cusp of adolescence, Egbuna gained mystical powers to cure demonic attacks and make rain in a culture where the gods were blamed for evil occurrences but on the same hand glorified for feats. He lived in a community where the fears of the gods, illiteracy, and poverty were interwoven with the keen desire to preserve the nature and culture and the zeal to survive. This led to a state where the people vehemently admonished any infraction of the culture and tradition.

Unapologetically, the story interlaces divergent tales, including female genital mutilation, polygamy, the rejection and infanticide of twin babies, and the creation of osu and ohu caste system. These intertwined accounts vividly and brazenly bring to life amazing inexpressible tales where cultural norms, which include shared expectations and the rules that guide people’s behavior and the fears of the conjectural gods, were dogmatically exercised to restrain people’s behavior for a wholesome community.

Chapter 01

The Introduction

A red earth hut with puffs of smoke emitting chiefly from the corners of its thatch stood at the center of Okwe village, puffs of smoke which formed various images in the open air never seized to emit primarily from the corners of the red earth hut both at day and night times as if it had four chimneys. The smoke sometimes formed cloudy and imaginary figures of old witches and other nightmare images, including a devil holding an ax and black flying medieval-era war horses with cutlasses and arrows. Children were always besieged by fears around the area. Therefore, they did not go close to the compound. Many people speculated on what the oracular priest who lived in the hut was always cooking.

However, the children alleged that the oracular priest was always cooking badly behaved kids whole in a large forged metal pot that was covered in black smoke residue with an oversized lid. The forged metal pot had two large handles for carrying it down from a huge fire stand. The size of the pot coupled with its large handles were evident that whatever the oracular priest cooked with the pot must be hefty and had to be carried down from fire stand by two or more able-bodied persons.

Around the hut were hedges and plants with large leaves that tend to develop flapping ears in the middle of the day when people had gone out to their farms and markets and everywhere was dead quiet and when invisible strange beings made breezy noises as they frolicked around. The hut was the village’s landmark and stood at the center of the village, far away in the Southeast. There were well-sized and arranged piles of log firewood and an ax with a wobbly wooden handle beside the hut. The ax usually changed positions and colors in the rain and transformed into tongues of fire in lightning and thunder. Egbuna the medicine man, also known as Oke-Debia (the great healer) in the village and neighboring ones, lived in the hut. They called him Oke-Debia because he had answers and prescriptions for all sicknesses, made rain, and exorcized demons.

They named the village after a big rubber (okwe) tree in the area. The okwe tree used to be where people from the neighboring hamlets and villages assembled to exchange goods for goods. At the beginning, physical cash was not involved in the trade, as hunters and local farmers brought what they had for exchange with one another. It was in a pattern of reciprocity as they contributed to one another’s welfare at whim, even without the interposition of an immediate quid pro quo. It was what economists later referred to as trade by barter, as hunters brought their kills for exchange with the farmers’ farm produce and vice versa. Farmers also brought and exchanged farm produce among themselves. The exchange enabled those with different farm produce to exchange them for other crops.

In those days, whilst men cultivated yams, which were regarded as the chief crop and commanded more in exchange value than the other crops, women cultivated those other crops, including cocoyam, maize, and trifoliate yam. The okwe tree became a meeting place where the people assembled for the exchange of goods for goods. The site later became ‘the great nkwo’ market.

The surrounding villages included Amaocha, Obiocha, and Udoocha. Four brothers formed the four villages. As the people traded, some built huts in the area. The settlers from these neighboring villages and those farther away also traded farm produce and hunters’ kill at the site, which became a key market in the region.

Egbuna’s family hailed from Amaocha, a village that was known for its witchery to settle in Okwe Village. Oke-Debia, as he was later called, provided the much-needed charms, divinations, and other primeval protections for hunters and farmers alike who brought their kills and farm produce in the area for exchange. He also cured diseases and exorcized spiritual demons, including ‘ogbanje’ and ‘agwuisi’ spirits out of children. Ogbanje and agwuisi babies were those children with a short breezy lifespan.

Whereas ‘agwuisi’ spirits were primarily associated with the male children, ‘ogbanje’ spirits were associated with the female children. Both classes of evil spirits were responsible for sudden deaths and child mortality, including sudden infant death. Ogbanje and agwuisi children did not live long before they were struck by child mortality.

The hunters needed charms and other primordial protective gears and mystical powers they believed would keep them safe as they hunted in the peril jungle. They also wanted the charms that would abet them to hunt and kill large wild games. It was normal for hunters who killed big and strong wild animals, such as elephants, leopards, tigers, and buffalos, and others gave the credits to their charms and expounded on how the charms made them invisible rather than their personal prowess. They believed that having the charms in their pockets or hunting bags turned their clothes into invisible cloaks and wearing the invisible cloaks made them invisible. The charms provided them with spiritual sustenance in periods of danger.

The region was chancy due to the number of dangerous wild animals, including lions, chimpanzees, pythons, and other deadly animals that roamed the forest in search of prey. Many hunters became victims of those viciously strong and large animals. Therefore, whatever the hunters could pin their faith in whilst they hunted in the perilous jungle was a crucial element for their safety and survival.

The local farmers had comparable beliefs too, as those who had good yields from what they cultivated in their farms praised the Oke-Debia and his charms. When they had good yields from their farms, they sacrificed goats and fowls to their gods and gave hefty rewards to the Oke-Debia. In the same vein, those who could not obtain good harvests from what they had planted in their farms either borrowed or presented what they had saved in the past to the Oke-Debia as they readied for the next planting season.

In all the situations, they rewarded the Oke-Debia handsomely. When they had good outputs from their farms or hunt, they generously rewarded and praised him. Equally, when the farm yields or hunts were not generous, the villagers brought things that would be used to appease to their land and gods to the Oke-Debia who had answers to all their problems. He understood the people quite well. Therefore, through gas-lighting, he used their naivetés to his advantage.

Egbuna was one of the two survived children of his parents – Nnaji and Ulimma. The latter had six pregnancies, but most of the babies died before their second birthdays and her two sets of twins were dropped in anthills, which were in the evil forest.

In those days, the people did not accept twin babies because they regarded twin babies as evil babies. That is the reason it is unrealistic today to find an adult who might be over seventy years old in the region and who was born a twin. They would either leave the twin babies to die or they put them in anthills for the ants. In those days, it was common to hear babies’ bawling from anthills as people walked along the village trails and the woods in the region. They were moaning in pains and sobbing for help, but the villagers and the passersby were inured to the whimpering.

They left twin babies to their fate, which was nothing short of death because no one would come to their rescue. Most of the twin babies who were born in the village had not opened their eyes before their parents or relatives, including those who helped to deliver the babies, snuffed their life out of them. Those babies did not stand a chance of survival.

It was a shared practice among the people for the most elderly persons in the families to pick twin babies up at nighttime and drop them in anthills for the termites, although some of them did the evil and criminal act during the day. The deed was not only accepted but also encouraged. At daybreak, everyone acted as if nothing had happened, and they were neither sensitive nor secretive about it. Sometimes, it was as if they would win a medal for doing it.

Even though the birth mothers knew what had befallen their babies, they could do nothing but accept their fate and the situations and, as usual, blame the gods. Sometimes, the birth mothers carried out the killing by themselves in their desperate efforts to show rage and anger and prove to their families that they condemned the births and played no parts to the coming of the twins. If they could not do the killing immediately, they would intentionally starve those babies to death.

It was an abomination to keep twin babies in the region. Any mother who resisted the decision to murder their twin babies was banished from the family and the village. Therefore, she must seek shelter somewhere else so she would not bring curse and evil to her family and the village. But no mother had the effrontery to resist such a cultural practice, which was not only familiar to them but also institutionalized and normalized by the people. The neighboring communities and villages, including their maternal homes, had similar practices so they would not provide succor to those mothers. Moreover, given that it was a patriarchal society, the women did not have a say in the family’s deeds, including the decisions on their babies. Instead, they blamed the gods whom they alleged placed them in such a predicament.

Nevertheless, even in the spiteful practical ethics and quandary values the people espoused, a few resolute and independent women who gave birth to twin babies sometimes did arrange with the persons they could confide with to have one of the babies removed. They could only do this before people, especially the elderly persons in the families would know that they have had babies. Those mothers would keep one baby and put the other in the bush or anthill for the ants, as they could not keep both babies.

There was a baby named ‘Odikemdoro,’ which means what did I cause, because she was always crying. She was a twin. Therefore, the family did not accept her. But when their mother was starving the twins to death as they usually did, another woman from the kindred who had lost her two sets of twins in a similar manner picked her up and nursed her. The woman thought that the baby was too cute to die, but the other twin was left to die. The woman did this act of benevolence because she regretted having lost her sets of twins in a similar manner. It was gathered that the baby’s mother secretively visited the woman’s house incessantly to privately nurse the baby.

It was so abhorrent that no one considered naming twin babies before they were killed. Since the baby had no name and the woman who rescued her always said ‘odikemdoro’ whenever the baby was crying, Odikemdoro eventually became the baby’s name. Even when the baby was a toddler, they maltreated and excluded her from their family’s activities. Her elder sister who was married in another community took the child to her husband’s house as a helper. It was the family’s secret. Through this strategy, they removed her from the sustained hate, neglect, and stigmatization.

Therefore, although Ulimma was more convivial and tougher than her husband was, nonetheless, her two sets of twins suffered the same atrocious fate as other twin babies that were born in the village. They removed the babies from her and put them in anthills for the ants.

Nnaji and Ulimma later moved from the village and sought refuge in a neighboring community. They moved a day after they buried their sixth child and were advised by an elderly relative who was a medicine man (witchdoctor) in the village that they must relocate to avoid the ire of the gods. Nnaji and Ulimma packed their belongings and moved to Okwe Village. The witchdoctor was well respected and known for his ability to prognosticate the future and make rain in the village. He was a good rainmaker.

Every year, women in the village contributed basins of farm produce, including yams, cocoyam, and maize for the rainmaker to allow the rain to fall. They usually did this during planting season so that what they had planted in their farms would not roast and rot in the soil from heat due to the lack of rainfall. Even after contributing the basins of yam, cocoyam, and maize for the rainmaker, if the rain did not fall, the rainmaker would counsel the women with a sort of fantastic farce that their contributions were not enough. Therefore, they were not accepted by the gods and that was the reason the rain did not fall. Like Simone de Beauvoir wrote, Her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly, he collected what they had, even though he could not deliver, but still blamed them. In his attempt to buy time for the rain, he would dispel the women and make them to rally around more times for more contributions. In their frantic efforts to meet the demands of the gods, sometimes they blamed and taxed those who donated a lesser amount for the rainmaker for more contributions.

Even during important occasions in the village, such as the bestowment of chieftain titles and marriages, the people consulted the rainmaker to hold rain. He would make demands of what the gods needed to hold rain and would only hold rain after those demands were met. If the demands were not met, the gods would send down the rain. But after providing all he had requested and the rain still fell, he would blame the clients for being too stingy and economical, and would declare that what they had brought were not adequate to hold rain. Therefore, they were not accepted by the gods. He would request