The Children of the Iroko Gods

By Dr. Kenneth Enyi

The Children of The Iroko Gods is a partial fictionalization of an African story, it is ridden with history, mystery and suspense, treachery and tragedy, and African culture and traditions all humorously conjured to appease the mind.
It is an intriguing fictional narration of the intimacy between a people and their gods, the betrayal of that intimacy, the impending doom on the people as a consequence of that betrayal, and the peoples quest and stampede to avert those consequences.
This is a fictional narrative of the intimacy between a people and their gods, yet the essential
portions of it contain grains of history and humor, mystery and drama, treachery and tragedy, all baked, wrapped, and served to entice and to intrigue the minds of those who yawn for old time African stories.
A nostalgia for the lovers of old time African stories, night time stories: stories told under the moonlights.
This is a work of fiction with few anecdotes. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482877076

Dr. Kenneth Enyi

The author Dr. Kenneth Enyi was born on the tenth of January 1966, in a little rural village of Umuorgi- Orji Uratta, Imo- State, in the eastern part of Nigeria. He attended Ereko Methodist School in Lagos and Ihitaoha primary school in Owerri. Then Government college Owerri and university of Havana Cuba where he studied medicine. He is presently practicing medicine in primary care and dermatology in Falmouth Trelawny Jamaica West- Indies where he resides with his family.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Dr. Kenneth Enyi.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4828-7708-3

                eBook           978-1-4828-7707-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

‘The dimensions of the true interests of the natives at heart are algebraically equal to the length, breadth, and depth of the Whiteman’s pocket.’ Herbert Macaulay (1864–1946)

‘The dimensions of the true interest of the Nigerians at heart are algebraically equal to the length, breadth, and depth of the pockets of their so proclaimed rulers.’ Today________.

To our ancestors, bowls of pounded yam to them who came and gone before us; more bowls of pounded yam in abundance to us. The living, and many more bowls of pounded yam in abundance for those that will come after us.

Chapter One

‘When a snake stops behaving like a snake, the children will see it as a waist or a wristband. Our ancestors let their guards down, and the white men tricked them like little children.’

He dashed into the compound panting and heaving, his eyes wild, his mouth wide open, and all parts of his body drenched with his own sweat.

She heard the noise; the heavy breathing sounds. She heard it from inside the tiny thatched hut. She rushed out from that tiny hut, endeavouring to find out what the noise was all about; and to her surprise, at a few distance from the doorway, she saw him with his hands clenched to his knees and leaning forward, soaked in his own sweat, his mouth was wide open, and was exuding out a cloudy vapour in that early morning. To her, he was panting like one being chased by a panther.

In a frantic mood, she looked at him, looked beyond him. She could see no other soul but him. She yelled, ‘Agunwa, why are you in such a haste? You ran into this compound breathing and panting like one who has just seen a mad and ravaging phantom in a broad daylight. What is it that is chasing you? Is it that one of your nemesis is chasing after you? I warned you. Yes, I warned you that one day the retributions from all the atrocities that you have been committing in this land will catch up with you. Have you seen it now? Have you seen how you are now running around in the broad daylight like someone who the gods had struck with madness? Can someone run away from his own shadow? No, no, Agunwa, you cannot escape from the rage of the atrocities you have been committing in this land. They have become your shadows, and they will follow you wherever you go even to your grave.’

‘Shut up your mouth, woman. You should be heading into the house to get me a cup of water to quench my thirst first. Rather, you are standing in front of me barraging me with questions like I am your mate or your child,’ he cautioned her.

She left his presence and headed to the house. He continued labouring in his breathing while murmuring to himself, ‘I have warned this woman on many occasions not be asking me unnecessary questions. Is there anything one cannot tolerate in this house? From this woman came into this household, one can no longer have a peace of mind.’

She returned from the house, and handed over to him the cup of water. She stood there and watched as he guzzled it in like a camel that had just seen an oasis after a long journey across the length and under the sweltering heat of the arid land up north.

After he had gulped the water and let out an ‘ah’—the sound of relief and of satisfaction. He handed back to her the empty clay cup without showing any sign of appreciation. She lashed out at him, ‘You ungrateful child, you evil child. Although you are few years older than I am, I am your stepmother, and you are my stepson, or should I say my son. I am married to your father, and I demand from you all the respects that a son should give to his mother. I do not see anything wrong in a mother asking her son who ran into the compound like a thief being chased by an angry village mob what the matter was.’

‘Adaku, Adaku, Adaku, hmm! I have told you to leave me alone. Please let me be. I will answer your questions whenever I am ready to do so, but for the moment, let me just catch my breath,’ he said to her.

‘From I married into this family, from the moment I married to your father, it has been one insult or the other from you for no reasons whatsoever. You have sworn an oath to the devil that I will not drink water and settle the cup kindly, that I will never have peace in this house.’

‘There will be no peace between you and I in this house. For a child who insists that the mother will not sleep, neither will he nor she get even an iota of sleep for the night. There will be no peace until you come to your senses, agree to my terms, and give me that my heart desires most.’

‘Agunwa or Ajonwa, whatever they call you, may the gods of our forefathers seal that your mouth. That mouth which you are using to regurgitate those abominations. You want me to allow you to see my nakedness while your father, my husband, is still breathing? May the gods of our land forbid that abomination. Please, please do not involve me in that act of abomination, which you are conjuring in that you tinted and filthy mind, for I do not want to die an untimely death. That is all you are good for. Meandering, wallowing your time and energy stealing from people, peeping on the nakedness of women and girls, and wanting to deflower every maiden in this village and in the villages beyond. I have told you this before, and I am going to tell you again. Let not the mice munch on the charm master’s sack, so that the charm master will not put the mice’s ears to the flames. Let us stay away from each other’s ways in this house so that peace will reign.’

She left his presence and headed to the house with the empty cup in her hand, infuriated, while saying to him, ‘I have warned your father about you and all the atrocities you have being involving yourself with in this village. He is not taking my warnings seriously, and I will warn him again when he comes back later.’

‘That is if he comes back,’ he murmured to himself.

She heard a few words of what he said, but did not get it all. She abruptly asked him, ‘What? What did you say?’

He did not answer her. Rather, he stood rooted to the ground with a pale face like one who had just seen a ghost, like someone who had just remembered an unpleasant act that he had committed.

She turned and headed back to his direction to hear the answer, but he still did not give her any answer. Rather, he yelled at her after he had recovered from that state of trepidation. ‘Woman, get out from my face before I do the regrettable.’

She stood toe to toe with him, looked at him directly into the eyes, and said to him, ‘Agunwa, you cannot do anything, and if you continue in this manner, I will do you something in this house that you will not live to remember. I will cut off your manhood and make you swallow it. You think that you have grown tails, no? I will curtail those tails that you thought you have grown.’ She was furious, and left his presence. Before she could reach the doorstep to the house, she heard the voice of Mazi Ibe beckoning to her. She answered Mazi Ibe’s call and went to the direction of the entrance to the compound where he was entering the compound from.

On reaching Mazi Ibe’s presence, he said to her, ‘My daughter, I am on my way to the market when I heard your raised and beaming voice and utterances, which are not becoming of a woman, a married woman for that matter. A toad does not run hatter scatter in broad daylight. If it is not after something, then something must be after it. What or who troubled you in this early hours of the morning?’ he asked her.

Adaku pointed toward Agunwa’s direction. She was full of rage and anger like she was going to strangle Agunwa with her bare hands. Agunwa stood at a distance, innocently pretending and acting like he had no part to play in whatever that was troubling her. He had his back turned to them, while hurling aimlessly at the unripe fruits on the pear tree that stood in the middle of the compound.

Mazi Ibe, knowing the kind of person that Agunwa was and how cunning he could be, he did not buy into his pretence of innocence, uninvolved, and of unconcerned. He called him over to them.

While Agunwa was strolling down to them, Mazi Ibe asked Adaku, ‘Adaku, my daughter, what did Agunwa do this time?’

‘He was pelting insults on me because I saw him ran into the compound in panic a while ago, and I asked him about what was chasing after him. He went to the hunting ground this morning with his father and his brother, and I saw him ran back to the compound a while ago. I tried to inquire from him the reason and the whereabouts of his father and brother that went hunting with him, and he started insulting me. Even until this moment he has not been able to tell me anything assuredly.’

Agunwa had casually arrived in their midst. Mazi Ibe turned to him and asked, ‘My son, a toad does not run in vain at noon. What was after you, my son? You should be in the hunting grounds with your father and brother.’

‘Ask him, our elder, ask him,’ Adaku interjected angrily.

Agunwa looked at her with anger and said, ‘Mazi, have you seen what I am telling you? She cannot keep her mouth close for a while.’

‘It is all right my children. It is not good for you children to be raising your voices on each other, and wanting to bleed each other to death whenever my good friend, Dike, steps out of this compound. I know that you children know very much that my good friend, Dike, is a well-respected and a very important man in this our village. It is not proper for you, children, to be besmirching his reputation and his family name. I was on my way to the market when I heard you two barking at each other like two deranged dogs fighting over a bone. I will make sure that my friend, Dike, hears about this when he comes back from the hunting ground.’

Agunwa, in his mind, said to him, ‘That is if he returns.’

Immediately when he said that, his mind wandered away from his body and back to the incident that made him to dash out of the hunting ground like a scared squirrel. He was deeply reminiscing on that incident that he unknowingly extricated himself completely from the presence of Adaku and Mazi Ibe. The moment of his immersed preoccupation was interrupted when Mazi Ibe startled him, and brought him back to their presence when he asked him, for the second time, the reason he ran away from the hunting ground and to the compound without his father and brother.

When he did not answer him the first time, he asked the same question again. He said to him, ‘Agunwa, so from I was talking to you, I had my mouth full of water. I was talking to myself? I was talking in vain, and you were not listening to me. I ask you again, what chased you out from the hunting ground in these early hours of the morning when you should be with your father and brother hunting?’

‘Mazi Ibe, it was the white men. I saw them in the bushes walking alongside some people. Men, women, and children tired together just like in the stories we have heard coming from the far away villages and towns along the great river and the sea, and as they were told by the merchants and travelers who had visited those distant lands,’ he said to him.

Before he could finish answering his question, Mazi Ibe roared out and cautioned him. He waved his right hand across his head, snapped his right thumb and the right index finger together in front of him, and yelled to him, ‘Shut up that your mouth before the gods of our land slice out that your tongue, which you are using to utter such an abomination.’