Wisdom of the Rare One: My Mother’s Wisdom

By Chinedu Christie Nnamah Okoye PhD JP

Even though Oduko Na Mba didn’t attend a formal school, she was an inspirational woman who possessed wisdom that guided the educated and the powerful. In Wisdom of the Rare One, Oduko’s daughter, author Dr. Chinedu Christie Nnamah Okoye, offers an insightful look at her mother’s life.

In this memoir, Nnamah Okoye blends real-life events with fictional excerpts to share her mother’s story. Born around the year of 1925 and married off at the age of fourteen, Oduko, through her faith in God, raised nine children and left a legacy many envied and even emulated. She consistently exemplified her rarity at every level of her adult years of life, her character remaining consistent during times of peace, war, scarcity, and plenty.

Wisdom of the Rare One shares the author’s mother’s practical and everyday wisdom, rooted in Biblical principles, that helped others build positive and healthful relationships. It pays tribute to Oduko while offering a host of anecdotes and stories that highlight the vision and acumen of a woman born at a time and in a country that placed little value on a female’s existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532082924

Chinedu Christie Nnamah Okoye PhD JP

Chinedu Christie Nnamah Okoye, PhD, JP is a retired educator who earned her doctorate in administration, policy, and urban education from Fordham University. As assistant professor of counseling, she taught various post-graduate courses at Montclair State University in New Jersey. She now oversees a not-for-profit foundation. Nnamah Okoye has five children and six grandchildren; she is retired from active teaching, and currently lives in New Jersey. She is the author of The Names of God, The Names of God Journal, and A Handy Booklet of the Names and Attributes of God.

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Copyright © 2019 Chinedu Christie Nnamah Okoye, PhD, JP.

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Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

All quotations in this book, except where otherwise indicated, are taken from The King James Version (KJV), by Zondervan (2000). The following versions of the Holy Bible were also consulted for this work: The New International Version (NIV) by Biblica (1984) and The New American Standard Bible (NASB) by Lockman Foundation (1995).

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-8291-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8290-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8292-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019913795

iUniverse rev. date:   09/24/2019

FOR POSTERITY

In memory of my very sweet mother, the rare one!

She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: And happy is everyone that retaineth her (Proverbs 3:18 KJV).

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Part 1 Oduko Na Mba, the Rare One!

Introduction Dream Deferred

Chapter 1 The Life of Oduko, the Rare One!

1.1: She riseth also while it is yet night (Proverbs 31:15)

1.2: Prevention is better than cure

1.3: Oduko took out burial and funeral insurance

1.4: She considereth a field, and buyeth it (Proverbs 31:16)

1.5: She will do him good and not evil (Proverbs 31:12)

1.6: Oduko becomes Ochiora General General Commander

1.7: And let her own works praise her in the city gates (Proverbs 31:31)

1.8: Alufuo-aku, orulu gaba! (If you pierce the fountain of wealth, it flows ceaselessly!)

1.9: You are what you eat

1.10: Even a tiny voice has a message

Chapter 2 Ezinne Josephine Elderly Care and Support (EJECS) Foundation

2.1: Origin: For who hath despised the day of small things? (Zechariah 4:10)

2.2: Further inspiration: Where are your elderly ones?

Part 2 The Wisdom of Oduko Na Mba

Introduction Wisdom Is the Principal Thing

Chapter 3 On Relationships

3.1: A child who calls his/her parent a goat is the child of a goat, a kid

3.2: Keep on loving and praying for that child that causes you great pain; one day he will fall at your feet

Chapter 4 On Faith

4.1: God knows how I came into the world; He knows how I will leave the world

4.2: Nobody can consume all the food in my pot

Chapter 5 On Food and Health

5.1: Don’t waste food! Take just how much you need

5.2: Good cooking starts with wise shopping—Awalawa (smashed or rotten) tomatoes will never make good stew

5.3: Good food chases away illness (Ezigbo nni n’achu oya)

Chapter 6 On Marriage

6.1: A man who hates his wife, the mother of his children, curses his heritage

6.2: The husband plants the seed of love; the wife waters it

6.3: Fight for what is yours without fear

6.4: A wicked man breeds wicked children

6.5: He will not marry you! (O yakwa anu gi)

Chapter 7 On Finances

7:1 Money demands to be counted each time it changes hands (Ego si, gua m, ma aka felu aka)

7.2: My money should take the heat while I am in the shade (Egom nolu n’anwu, kam nolu nando)

7.3: Never start a business you cannot personally supervise

Chapter 8 To the Youth in General

8.1: Don’t say people who went to school have no jobs

8.2: Every young person should be very busy (Okolobia, adighi enwe efe)

8.3: If you have the money, use it to bring only good things into your home

8.4: Never take advice from someone who has never been there

8.5: What I see sitting down, you cannot see standing up

8.6: Will you bury them alive? (A ga eni nandu?)

Chapter 9 Wisdom Cries to Everyone Who Has Ears to Hear

9.1: Action separates talkers from doers (Nwanya na ibeya ra n’okwu onu)

9.2 Beware of pessimistic counselors

9.3: Foolishness has no hospital

9.4: Let my enemy have children too

9.5: Lions don’t eat grass (Nwa agu adiro ata afifia)

9:6 Who will bell the cat? (Mba ana balu agu bu n’azu agu)

9.7: Shortcuts are not always short

Part 3 When a Will Is Discriminatory!

Introduction Author’s note

Chapter 10 Ojiefi’s Will

10.1: Ojiefi wrote a will

10.2: Caring for aged parents is a shared responsibility

10.3: Don’t delay your repentance

10.4: What happens when a will is discriminatory

10.5: Land is a serious issue

10.6: Having an aged parent is a serious responsibility

10.7: Spiritual and material blessings are both valuable

10.8: Loneliness and aging make the case for senior centers

10.9: Families with disabilities face additional responsibilities

Chapter 11 Burying the Dead

11.1: All hands must be on deck

11.2: Make it happen the E-Z way

11.3: Beware of free offers

11.4: Expect disorientation during grieving

11.5: Wait for the conqueror with confidence

11.6: Guard against demonic attacks

11.7: The Lion of the Tribe of Judah is in residence

11.8: Prayer coverings—don’t set out without them

11.9: Resist the devil

11.10: No weapon fashioned against me prospered

11.11: The enemy became more desperate.

11.12: God pulled me out of the net

Chapter 12 Ojiefi’s Funeral Events

12.1: Ojiefi is honored at a befitting burial

12.2: The narcissists came to town

12.3: Visit the morgue once in your lifetime; it will be your rest stop before …

Epilogue Dysfunction Is the Norm, Not the Exception

Appendix More about the EJECS Foundation

A.1: Mission of the EJECS Foundation

A.2: EJECS goals and structure

A.3: Appeals to philanthropists (groups and individuals)

Author’s Biography

FOREWORD

Wisdom of the Rare One: My Mother’s Wisdom is a personal memoir. The author, however, interposes personal experiences with fictional narratives. And yet the entire story does not lose its import.

Based on the life experiences, wisdom, and influence of her mother, Ezinne Josephine Nnamah, also variously known as Oduko Na Mba, Ochiora General, and Alufuo-Aku, the author deftly surveys many of the cultural and traditional and even sexist attitudes and practices of her background in the southeastern region of Nigeria before the turn of the century. In some instances, these attitudes have persisted into the second decade of the twenty-first century. The author surveys these practices from the threshold of marriage, family life and relationships, aging and attitudes towards the aged, beliefs concerning death and burial as well as social engagements. She boldly and unapologetically points out the disabling and destructive practices against the female child that have persisted despite education, travels, and upward social and political mobility of the female. The author however hinges her discussions on what she considers the supreme biblical tenets of her Christian faith and uses this basis to explain, to condemn, and to reprimand the perpetrators, while at the same time offering hope to the victims of these practices. For the author, the Word of God, as revealed in the Bible, has answers for every human situation and challenge. Many people, male and female, will find their own lives or the lives of people they know very well x-rayed in the pages of Wisdom of the Rare One: My Mother’s Wisdom.

The author proves to be a seasoned master of the English language and its usage. She applies the nuances of the language with comfort and confidence. The fictional short stories and anecdotes, though satirical at times, are truly funny and educative. She seems to be saying, if you have ears, borrow the experience; don’t buy it to own it.

Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko

Retired Doctor of Music, University of Lagos, Nigeria

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I call on family, friends, and well-wishers to continue to cherish the legacy of my mother, Oduko Na Mba, that is embedded in their hearts and lives and captured and documented in these pages. I appreciate and respect you all, whether you agree or disagree with all or some of my evaluations of Oduko in Wisdom of the Rare One: My Mother’s Wisdom. Hence, the use of the first-person possessive pronoun My in the title is deliberate.

Lady Rose Obiegbu Mmimmi MuoNso, thank you for letting me know that you expected me to immortalize Oduko’s life in some manner. I appreciate your generous and selfless recognition of my special attachment to Oduko. I also appreciate those others who are delighted that Oduko’s passage through this earth is not marked only by her tombstone.

I thank you, Sister Sharon Brown, coordinator of the Global Prayer Line. In 2016, when I shared on the prayer line that I was writing a book to honor my mother’s life, you promptly assured me you would be among the first to read it. Authors can be seriously motivated by the slightest knowledge that somebody out there will be interested in what they are writing. For me, your spur-of-the-moment comment was an energy booster; it was hugely encouraging.

I thank you, Professor Mmutakaego Chukwuanu, for reading through parts of the original draft and giving me very useful tips on organization and structure. You were bold and brutal in your comments, and I respect you for that.

I also thank you, Dr. Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko, for reading the original draft and making insightful comments. When you observed that Oduko would be proud of the final product, you bolstered my morale and gave me the needed assurance that this work was real. I appreciate your patient guidance, and I appreciate the foreword you wrote.

Apostle (Dr.) Patience Oti, I want to express to you my deep appreciation. When you declared on the Tribe Prayer Line while under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that June 2018 was the month of Coming out of the Cocoon, you urged members of the tribe to fast and pray God to help them come out of the cocoon. Surely, you did not know the full import of that prayer theme! After seven years of being in the author’s cocoon, I was finally able to complete the draft of this work by the end of June 2018; that prophetic theme of yours was my motivation. I had promised and engaged my publishers seven years earlier in 2011 to publish my memoir. It didn’t happen until I came out of the cocoon. I also want to thank my publisher, iUniverse, for their patience and for not giving up on me.

O Holy Spirit of light and enlightenment, my very dear friend and guide, what could I ever have done without Your leading and guidance? I thank You, mighty counselor and lover of my soul. I bow in reverence. Please, continue to hold me by my hand and never let go.

PART ONE

ODUKO NA MBA, THE RARE ONE!

INTRODUCTION

DREAM DEFERRED

My mother, Ezinne Josephine Chinwude (a.k.a. Oduko Na Mba) was born to Ogbuefi Okonkwo and Ojiefi Nwaku Dike of the Uruogbo village in Enugwu Ukwu in what is now Anambra State in Nigeria. Her family estimates that she was born around 1925. When Oduko was married off as a fourteen-year old, Papa’s brother, Anaebe, who had negotiated the marriage, had promised that she would enroll in formal education. It never happened. This was because Oduko had proved as a child to be very sharp, very intelligent.

Mama had grown up close to her paternal uncle, Nwanakwuo Onyiokwu of Enugwu Ukwu. This uncle recognized that Oduko was a rare gem and did what men did not do in his time: he often took his little niece to the meetings of elders. The Enugwu Ukwu community, like other Igbo communities, was ruled by elders and titled men. When such elders went to their meetings, their young sons or grandsons carried their stools to the venues for them, and these young ones often sat around and listened to the goings-on. Mama was about three or four years old when her uncle began taking her to these meetings. Because of her tender age, no one objected to seeing her at the meeting of men and elders, so Mama often lay at the feet of her uncle, listening. At home, she would recount to her mother, Nwaku—to the amazement of everyone, including her uncle—what had transpired at the meeting. She was even able to recall the names of those who spoke and what they said. Soon, her uncle made her his tape recorder of the meetings. She seldom played childhood games and grew up extremely smart and knowledgeable about many adult matters.

When she married, things changed. She was seen as a threat by the men. So, rather than enhance her qualities, the men who had power over her destiny as a woman tried to curb, cage, and stifle that destiny. That single myopic, lack-of-foresight decision by a few robbed humanity of the indescribable, hard-to-imagine contributions Oduko would have made to the world in the areas of leadership and governance, organizational dynamics, community development, commerce and finance, and health and nutrition. It is clear to me that humanity was stultified because a few men were ruled by their fear of a budding woman leader in the world of men. But her Maker, the designer of her fate, had other plans. So, in the darkness of their cage, God let Oduko shine so brightly that the glory of the light of God she exhibited traversed the oceans to faraway lands. That glory continues in Wisdom of the Rare One: My Mother’s Wisdom.

CHAPTER 1

THE LIFE OF ODUKO, THE RARE ONE!

1.1: She riseth also while it is yet night (Proverbs 31:15)

In the late 1940s as a young woman at the police barracks at Eket in the present-day Akwa Ibom State, Oduko quickly observed that every morning her neighbors sent their houseboys across the street to purchase akara (fried black-eyed-bean balls), agidi (steamed corn meal wrapped in green plantain leaves), and akamu (hot corn meal, also called pap) for breakfast for their masters and mistresses. Before anybody knew what was happening, Oduko set up a small business selling early morning pap and akara in her small kitchen. Very soon, the trips to the street vendors dwindled. Unless she exhausted her supplies for the morning, no one else sold anything.

Oduko consistently won the monthly police barracks inspections for cleanliness, orderliness, and beauty. In the 1960s, among the Igbo community at Ikot Ekpene, Oduko was known for her outstanding leadership. Unschooled, she often stood shoulder to shoulder with women who had formal education; some of these women were teachers to her children. Since her husband was a policeman and was often detailed to outposts like Oron, Uyo, and Itu, the young family decided to settle at Ikot Ekpene so that the children could have a stable academic life.

Number 14 Alderton Road, where we lived in Ikot Ekpene, faced the eastern border of the Ikot Ekpene main market where trucks from Port Harcourt, Aba, Onitsha, Asaba, and Abakaliki parked early in the morning when seasonal crops were in surplus. Oduko’s soft and sweet voice would wake me up: "Kisiana, ngwa, chi efogo!" (Christiana, get up—day has broken.) Even as a child, my days began in those years as early as four o’clock in the morning. Oduko and I would walk across the street to the parked Bedford trucks locally known as gwongworo. She would help me climb onto the trucks so I could colonize the twenty to thirty baskets of fresh produce in each lorry. I did this by tying a string of omu nkwu (palm fronds) to each basket—and many a time I did not even know what the baskets contained. On such days, within one hour we would have colonized three to four trucks before we retired to prepare for the day. By six o’clock, when retailers hurried to buy baskets of fresh okra, mangoes, local black pear, periwinkles, snails, and green bananas, they bought directly from Oduko, who was then the middle person in this business. Many retailers in those days never knew the original suppliers of the produce they bought. They transacted their business with Oduko, whom they called