The Woodchopper: An African Cultural Autobiography

By WILLIAM C. ONYEBEKE

The Woodchopper paints a vivid picture of the devastation heaped upon one family by the destructive Biafran War in Nigeria. However, the strength of the autobiographical work is its portrayal of the lives of common people in the twelve small villages of Achi in southeastern Nigeria prior to and after the Biafran War. Their worship of idols and deities; the ferocity of Igbo warriors in hand-to-hand combat; the emergency night meetings of village elders, fetish priests, and others with spiritual powers when danger threatened; and the ever-present European missionaries who were bent on saving the pagans from their superstitious patterns of worship are all covered in an accessible literary style.
The Woodchopper is strongly recommended to anyone who is interested in gaining a better understanding of the Biafran War and, perhaps more importantly, to those who are interested in learning more about Nigeria, the nation that has the largest and most diverse population in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781465319388

WILLIAM C. ONYEBEKE

William Chukwukeziri Onyebeke was born on August 7, 1957 in Awgu, a small town in the Eastern part of Nigeria. William was the seventh child and youngest boy in a family of nine children. His father worked for the tax collection agency of the then Eastern Nigerian government. His occupation resulted in the family being transferred throughout the Eastern Region as the job dictated. The frequent transfers were disruptive to the children’s education, but it also brought them closer to each other and gave them the opportunity to travel throughout Eastern Nigeria. The author’s hometown is Achi, the birthplace of his parents, James and Joanah Onyebeke. He is happily married with three lovely children and has an active OB-GYN practice in Bayshore, New York. He loves practicing medicine, reading, writing, teaching, dancing, dining, and playing games.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by William C. Onyebeke.

All rights reserved under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Web contact: Onyebeke.com

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

58260

Contents

Acknowledgments 

Introduction 

Chapter 1 

Chapter 3 

Chapter 4 

Chapter 5 

Chapter 6 

Chapter 7 

Chapter 8 

Chapter 9 

Chapter 10 

Chapter 11 

Chapter 12 

Chapter 13 

Chapter 14 

Chapter 15 

Chapter 16 

Chapter 17 

GLOSSARY 

Endnotes 

List of Illustrations

The Woodchopper. William Onyebeke at age six

Earliest picture of author’s parents

Drying ncha

Inyiagu stream

Palm wine tapper with his climbing rope

Group of men on the path to the Inyiagu stream

Candidates for ozo and ada ozo titles marching to Obu Achi

James Onyebeke being escorted by an elder

Procession of the candidates

Ozo title being conferred

The Eze Ala congratulates Jameson Onyebeke

Celebration after taking the ozo title

Path to Uncle Igboekwe’s homestead

Henry Odenigbo Onyebeke

To my love, Chieme, who has made life so wonderful. Without her love and unquestionable support, I would not have been able to accomplish much.

To the greatest gifts of all—my children: Chukwuma, Adaora, and Kenenna. I love them dearly, and their energy and curiosity keep me young.

To my siblings—Rachel, Bessie, Grace, Henry, Jameson, Ezekiel, Victoria, and Agbomma—whose love and support made everything possible. Thanks for allowing me to use you in making the story come alive.

To my parents, James Mbamalu and Joanah Ogenwa, without whom there would be nothing. The greatest parents that ever walked the earth. They taught me and my siblings the value of education, honesty, teamwork, hard work, and fair play.

14_a_ramz.jpg

The Woodchopper. William C. Onyebeke at age six.

Foreword

The Woodchopper paints a vivid picture of the devastation heaped upon one family by the destructive Biafran War in Nigeria. However, the strength of the autobiographical work is its portrayal of the lives of common people in the twelve small villages of Achi in southeastern Nigeria prior to and after the Biafran War. Their worship of idols and deities; the ferocity of Igbo warriors in hand-to-hand combat; the emergency night meetings of village elders, fetish priests, and others with spiritual powers when danger threatened; and the ever-present European missionaries who were bent on saving the pagans from their superstitious patterns of worship are all covered in an accessible literary style.

The Woodchopper is strongly recommended to anyone who is interested in gaining a better understanding of the Biafran War and, perhaps more importantly, to those who are interested in learning more about Nigeria, the nation that has the largest and most diverse population in sub-Saharan Africa.

Willie F. Page

Professor Emeritus

Department of Africana Studies

Brooklyn College

Acknowledgments 

I will be the first to admit it; I had a lot of great help in making this book a reality.

I have to thank my nephew Dr. Ogonna Orjiekwe, for typing all my initial manuscripts despite his heavy schedule as a student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dentistry.

I want to thank my niece Dr. Tochi Iroku Malize who, despite her pregnancy and residency demands at Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, New York, found time to retype my corrected manuscripts.

I am grateful to Mr. Ben Onyeachonam, without whom there would be no book; I am convinced of that. He read the original manuscripts and, just like magic, presented it in the format that made sense.

I have to thank my father-in-law, Mr. Geoffrey Ikedinma, for reading and rereading this book and making necessary corrections.

I reserve a special thanks to Prof. Willie Page and Régine Latortue who, despite their busy schedules, found time to read through this book and make constructive suggestions. Prof. Page’s enthusiasm was very helpful in my seeing the first edition through to completion.

I would like to thank my lovely wife, Chieme, for her encouragement, understanding, and help in typing a portion of my corrected manuscripts without complaint. I also thank my beautiful children—Chukwuma, Adaora, and Kenenna—for listening to me read portions of this book over and over again to them even when they were tired of listening.

Finally, I thank the entire Onyebeke family, both here in America and back in Nigeria, for their valuable contributions in making this book a reality.

Introduction 

Several years ago, my colleague at Brooklyn College, Professor Willie Page, told me about a friend of his, Dr. William C. Onyebeke, who had written the story of his childhood and family back home in Nigeria and who needed assistance with editing. Intrigued by the idea of a medical doctor who had written a cultural autobiography, I met with him and was soon treated to this extraordinary tale of the Onyebeke family, their friends, and relatives from the early days of colonial conquest to the late 1960s. From the outset of this narrative, I was quickly drawn into the lush landscape of Dr. Onyebeke’s childhood. His tales of good-natured sibling rivalry, thought-provoking first days at school, busy holiday family gatherings, and his father’s stern but loving discipline were surprisingly familiar and accessible, though set in a faraway place and time. The book’s whimsical title refers to the author who on his first day of school nearly severed his finger showing off his father’s heavy axe to his new friends. This youngest boy and seventh of nine children was forever affectionately known by his brothers and sisters as the Woodchopper.

But intruding on the happiness and security of this childhood was the devastating civil conflict in eastern Nigeria in the late 1960s. The greater part of Dr. Onyebeke’s autobiography describes how the well-ordered structure of his close-knit Igbo family was battered by the destruction, chaos, deprivation, and tragedy of war. Vividly drawn are the deep cultural traditions and strong family values that helped the author and his relatives survive and ultimately thrive. The rhythms of Igbo music, its rich food, poetic language, and religious rituals are beautifully captured by the author’s fresh, luxuriant English prose. Like Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, and Flora Nwapa, author of Efuru, Dr. Onyebeke transports the reader into the fascinating world of Igbo culture through their proverbs, history, and religious customs.

The antecedents of the modern-day Igbo-speaking people, whose homeland is situated south of the Benue River, between the Niger and Cross rivers, stretch back more than a thousand years. The earliest known Igbo state, named Nri, was located around the confluence of the Benue and Niger rivers with a capital at the archeological site of the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes.¹ These excavated bronze castings indicate the existence of a wealthy, well-developed state dating from the eighth and ninth centuries CE. However, by the time of the first European exploration in the seventeenth century, the Nri state had been replaced by a diffuse system of clans, villages, and town-states connected by a regional network of trade in a variety of products including copper, iron, cotton cloth, raffia cloth, salt, and dried fish. Relying on their oil palm, raffia palm, and yam cultivation for sustenance and their busy markets for other goods, by the nineteenth century, the Igbo people were known for their fierce independence and resistance to any authority beyond that of their elders, customs, and deities.²

The cultural traditions of the Igbo people encouraged their adaptability to new ideas but not to externally imposed political authority. The British, for example, experienced great difficulty conquering the Igbo people given their diffuse political organization and lack of a central authority through which to impose the colonial administrative structure.³ Though the great Igbo-speaking nationalist leader Nnamdi Azikiwe had been the strongest advocate of a unitary Nigerian state, the Igbo people’s shared and deeply felt cultural traditions allowed them to envision a unitary state of their own when the national government of the new Nigeria failed to protect them from their Hausa-Fulani neighbors.⁴

The Woodchopper is the newest literary response to Nigeria’s civil war and the overwhelming losses and broken dreams of the Igbo and other ethnic groups of southeastern Nigeria who attempted to form the breakaway state of Biafra in 1967.⁵ The country’s crisis of national unity can be directly linked to the British imposition of colonial rule in the late nineteenth century when the huge territory which became Nigeria was divided into a northern region dominated by the Hausa-Fulani, a western region dominated by the Yoruba, and an eastern region dominated by the Igbo. In 1956, the Federation of Nigeria was established with each region having a semi-autonomous status. These semi-autonomous regions agreed to come together to form the independent state of Nigeria in October 1960. But after numerous political missteps, a military coup, a bloody countercoup and the massacre of thousands of Igbo residents in the northern region, the Igbo people of the eastern region felt they had to secede from the unwieldy state of Nigeria to survive.⁶

Blessed with rich oil reserves; agricultural resources; and industrious, well-educated citizens, the people of the Southeast were sure that they could successfully manage a cohesive and productive state. Primarily Christian and animist in contrast to the overwhelmingly Muslim North, the secessionist Biafran state boasted 13, 500,000 people, their own currency, and a nimble and determined fighting force. However, their hopes for independence were crushed by the Federal Government of Nigeria which mobilized well-armed ground troops, a naval blockade, and air power to defeat the brave but ultimately outmatched Biafran nationalists. In 1970, after three years of destructive warfare carried out against a largely defenseless civilian population, the government of Biafra conceded defeat and rejoined the Nigerian State.⁷

The hardships, starvation, and dislocations suffered by the Igbo people during the three years of the war made international headlines in the late 1960s. In my junior high school on Long Island, we mounted fund-raising efforts to send money and supplies to the starving children of Biafra. Though we did not understand the full ramifications of the politics involved, we saw, on a Life Magazine cover, the huge eyes and ragged clothing of children thousands of miles away and knew that we had to try to help them in some way.

This book allows us to understand the pain and confusion behind the eyes of those children. Dr. Onyebeke, now a successful ob-gyn on Long Island, was one of those millions of young people who, along with their families, struggled to survive that war. He was one child, of many, who suffered privations and lost loved ones, including his eldest brother and his mother: his brother to an artillery shell fired at innocent shoppers in an open-air market and his mother to a heart broken by the senseless death of her first-born son.

While the Biafran struggle for independence has been largely forgotten by the West , it remains an example of the human costs of national disunity in postcolonial Africa. Whether in the Sudan or the Congo, defenseless civilians have too often been victims of state-sanctioned violence and warfare. With this powerful narrative, the author reveals the story behind the headlines of war and puts a personal face on the resilient spirit of an entire region. Furthermore, told as it is through the lens of childhood, it serves as an important reminder of how war impacts the youngest and most innocent of a country’s citizens.

Lynda R. Day

Department of Africana Studies

Brooklyn College

Chapter 1 

My Parents

My parents grew up in a period of unprecedented painful changes in the town of Achi, Enugu State, Nigeria. These changes penetrated all the way down to the smallest unit of the town—our own village of Umuakpu in the Isikwe cluster of villages. British invaders descended on Achi around the first decade of the twentieth century and began to ravage the land, the people, and their way of life.

There was trouble throughout the town. As the armed invaders marched through the villages, they left a trail of destruction. They burnt residential houses, yam barns, sacred shrines of the villages, and town idols and deities. They killed goats, sheep, cows, and chickens and carried some away for their own sustenance.

Before the arrival of the alien invaders, the deities enjoyed implicit obedience and veneration from all men and women in the town. Nobody dared lift a finger against the gods of the villages and their shrines or their temples. The invading army changed all that. Not only did they burn down the homes of Achi people, they also toppled and violated the altars where the people worshipped their gods. Achi people had expected their gods to rise in anger—justified anger—against the unwarranted invasion by striking the soldiers dead, but it did not happen. They were disappointed.

Achi warriors had a reputation for hand-to-hand combat in battle. As a result, they were victorious in every war with the kingdoms and principalities around Achi town. They thought that the alien invaders would be an easy target. The weak and feeble appearance of the British invaders accentuated by the bloody spots of insect bites on their ripe banana yellow skin created the impression that the invading forces could not withstand the assault of Achi warriors. Surprisingly, they outmaneuvered and defeated Achi warriors in every battle. What Achi warriors hated most about the invaders was their sneaky craftiness in battle. The British soldiers avoided hand-to-hand combat, which would have given an advantage to Achi warriors. Instead, from safe and comfortable distances, they would fire their long-range guns, often with devastating accuracy, at Achi warriors in battle. They also assaulted local markets in session killing and maiming hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent Achi people.

Achi warriors were not accustomed to this kind of battle pattern. How could they face an enemy who was out of sight, out of hearing, and out of touch and who fought nevertheless with the long sword and guns of unknown gods?

In those circumstances, Achi warriors and the people generally retreated and fled, taking cover in the thick forests. They had expected that without further resistance, the invading foes would pass, go to another town, or return to their native soil. To their horror, the invaders made preparations and dug in. They were in the town to stay.

The village elders, native doctors, juju priests, soothsayers, and diviners met in emergency nocturnal meetings. Their decision was unanimous: the invading forces were evil and represented a plague of unspeakable disaster. They vowed to drive out the enemy from Achi town by any means humanly possible. As a result, a small team of powerful native doctors and diviners were assembled and mandated to speak to the ancestral spirit of Achi to find a permanent solution to the evil posed by the British invaders.

Eventually, poisonous snakes, the viper variety, were brought from a neighboring town, Agbaja. The native doctors, using their magical powers, introduced the snakes into the camp of the invading British soldiers. Within seven days, a few enemy soldiers were dead. The commander had no immediate answer to the snakebites and the untimely deaths they brought. To save his soldiers from further losses, he ordered them to close and vacate the camp. They moved on to Udi, near Enugu, and set up a new camp.

Achi people rejoiced, but their joy did not last, for the enemy soldiers continued to visit Achi on what they called a pacification campaign. There was nothing peaceful or humane about the campaign. Rather it was a campaign of intimidation. The British soldiers extracted forced labor from Achi people to build roads from one town to another, enhancing control of the territory and exploitation of the resources of the land and the people.

Missionaries were brought in by the soldiers to preach peace and religion and the worship of the white man’s god. Schools were built to teach the young men and women of Achi how to read, write, and speak the language of the white man. Attendance at schools and churches was compulsory. Those who disobeyed were flogged, given a few whacks on their bare backs with a soldier’s belt or rope. For the good reason that the white invaders were a curious phenomenon, Achi warriors decided that it might just be a good idea to draw nearer to the enemy in the hope that his secret power might be discovered.

Some people, especially the miscreants, were allowed to fraternise with the enemy. The elders, however, did not see the wisdom in sending the town’s able-bodied young men and women to go and sit around in the white man’s schools and churches, doing nothing when they should be usefully engaged working in the farms or hunting in the forests. As a compromise, the elders advised every family to send their lazy, sickly, or useless children to the schools and churches. The strong children remained in the farms, out of reach of the white man’s religious influence. Meanwhile, the white man strengthened his hand on Achi by establishing a native authority council, a court, a tax collection agency, a police force, and a prison. Soon the schools began to produce literate men and women who were immediately employed to teach in mission schools, work as clerks in the councils, offices, tax agency, and courts and some in the police departments and prisons. The new working class was subject to transfers from one town to another when the need arose. They were no longer village bound, as were their brothers in the farms.

They were the children of change, encouraged to turn their backs on the customs and traditions of Achiland. A wave of social change, which the white invaders introduced, deepened and engulfed Achiland with the passage of time.

My father, the late Ozo James Mbamalu Onyebeke, was born at Umuakpu Isikwe Achi in the Oji-River local government area of Enugu State. Achi at the dawn of the twentieth century was a totally rural, agricultural community. My father, like many before him and during his early years, was born to live, work, and die on the farm. That was the pattern of life in those days. People were bound to the land, bound to their villages of birth. Population mobility was minimal if not virtually nonexistent. But when the British invaders began their destructive war on Achi town and its people, there were sudden movements of people from one village to another or from one town to another in search of security. The scrambling of populations was further reenforced with the establishment of schools and churches. Pupils had to travel great distances to get to the new schools and churches. Teachers, ministers, and clerks were frequently posted to teach, minister, or work in towns quite distant from the places of their birth.

Gradually the British invaders were breeding a new crop of Nigerians who did not depend on farming for a living. This new breed of Nigerians was taught to turn their backs to village gods, customs, and traditions and to embrace the strange beliefs and way of life the schools and churches were teaching and preaching.

My father, James Mbamalu, popularly called JM, belonged to the first generation of indigenous Achi men who learnt to read and write and speak the language of the white invaders and to worship their god, said to be three in one. That was a fairly hard concept to digest in those days, and JM did not voluntarily go to the school of the white invaders. My grandfather had vehemently opposed the idea of my father going to the school run by the invaders.

Before the advent of the British invaders, my grandfather, Ichie Onyebeke, was a wealthy man by the reckoning of his day; he had flocks of sheep and goats, broods of chickens, and one of the biggest yam barns in Achi town. After the invasion, he lost everything. The white invaders carried what they could carry and burnt what they could not carry. To him, the white invaders were lepers. Avoid them. Reject their gifts and their offers of friendship, he told his children. He believed that something malevolent was pursuing the white invaders, and having lost their own homes, the invaders now schemed to take the land and wealth of the good people of Achi.

Despite his father’s opposition, JM was compelled to go to school. As decreed by the district officer—Mr. Winterbottom, the general officer commanding the invading forces—and announced by town criers throughout the town, all young persons age seven years and above had to go to school to learn to read and write. The announcement was followed by a visitation from musclemen appointed by the district officer to enforce the decree even by strong-arm tactics. Ichie Onyebeke got the signal loud and clear when the man appointed as warrant chief of the village, Chief Uduanochie, warned him to comply or go to jail. And so my grandfather sent JM, his younger son, to the white man’s school, an Anglican mission school at Isikwe Achi. My father was still too tender in age for full-time farmwork. JM was a sort of spare part the white man could hold on to, but the stronger able-bodied sons, Igboekwe and Chukwujiofor, Ichie Onyebeke refused to let go.

After JM’s first day in school, Grandfather Ichie Onyebeke called him, sat him down, and