Akuezue: The Story

It was after the severe flogging that followed our failed raid on ‘mango Dom’ that grandma told us the story of Akuezue, the man who thought that having it all, by any means necessary, would bring him fulfilment.

Dominic’s mango tree was to us what the tree in the Garden of Eden must have been to Adam and Eve; mysteriously aloof yet temptingly and tantalisingly near. At that time of the year the tree was heavily laden with irresistible ripe juicy fruits, its branches lowered heavily under the burden of the yet to be plucked mangoes. The tree itself was smack in the middle of a deserted compound as Dom (as he was known to the locals) had relocated from his homestead, locked and barricaded the gate while the lawn had since become overrun by weeds. From our vantage point perched on top his derelict perimeter fence we could see swarms of flies and bees buzzing around the mounds of fallen yellow (some red), fruits rotting amidst the knee high overgrowth.

I can’t remember who first came up with the idea of the raid, our cousins or my elder brother and I. What I remember however is that my brother and I provided the strategic and tactical input, borrowing heavily from skills gleaned from voraciously devouring several editions of ‘Commando’ war comics, especially a particular edition that revolved around ‘Operation Barbarossa’, Germany’s World War II invasion of the Soviet Union.

We had the raid planned down to a T...or we thought we did. For how could we have factored in that Onyebuchi’s mother, whose house bordered Dominic’s perimeter fence, would be down with a fever on that day, a fever strong enough to keep her away from the Eke Market. Even if, by some strange stroke of genius or luck, we managed to factor this in, none of us could have conceived the idea that she would be out spreading her washing on the line at the very moment our raiding team, Commando like, scaled Dominic’s fence and assaulted his temptress of a mango tree.

As planned, the invading force scaled the fence, darted from cover to cover behind various objects en route the tree and final assault; crouching behind a derelict hen-run, and for the final approach, skirting over an abandoned oil barrel that must have served as a component of a local water reticulation system at some point in time. The first sign of trouble was when we got to the tree itself. Menacingly adorning its stem, ostensibly to ward of intruders like us, was a deadly looking juju encrusted with what looked like dried animal blood and consisting principally of multicoloured parrot feathers, and red and white stripes of cloth. I immediately froze in fear and remember wondering to myself that whatever could look so brutishly ugly must be extremely deadly. My cousin Uche Tua-Tua paused only briefly before scooping a handful of dry sand, spat on it three times, sprinkled the resultant gooey mess of sand and saliva on the juju, and unceremoniously ripped it off the tree. Till today I still don’t know if this was a sheer act of braggadocio or if dry sand and spit does truly neutralise the efficacy of ‘mango tree guarding juju’. 

With the juju thoroughly dealt with, the invading force scrambled up the tree like a bunch of hungry circus monkeys. We were barely aloft when what appeared to be a picture perfect plan disintegrated completely. The second sign, or rather the second sound of trouble was when Nne Onyebuchi’s shrill voice rent the air with ‘Ndi ori mango oh! Nekwanu ndi ori mango oh!!’. Come and see mango thieves oh! Come and see mango thieves oh! Our team of four invaders came slipping and sliding down the tree, almost on top of each, and somehow managed to make it, scrambling and running, our tails between our legs, to our respective homes. But Nne Onyebuchi was not done with us just yet. So as we cowered behind closed doors, under staircases, inside clay water pots or in the latrine, we could hear the woman reeling off our names and the names of our parents to all that cared to listen. It wasn’t long before a small posse was organised to fetch the four of us.

Till today I don’t know what happened to the other two invaders. All I recollect is what happened to my elder brother and I. The posse’s timing was the worst that one could imagine. They arrived the gate to my house just as my father was coming back from a leisurely evening stroll. I could only but imagine the consternation on his face when he learnt why the posse was waiting. The next we heard was his gruff voice sternly calling out to us. As if we were under some kind of mind control, despite the fact that we knew the fate (or thought we knew the fate) that awaited us, we both meekly emerged from our different hiding places, teeth chattering in fear, like two little lambs to the slaughter. The beating we received that day remains legendary in our village. Some of the beating apparatus include the knobbed spine of a raffia palm frond, the stem of an old golf club, and, irony of all ironies, a cane improvised from the branch of a mango tree. Almost the whole neighbourhood came out to watch the flogging circus, including our two cousins who followed us on that doomed raid. It was sufficiently painful and humiliating that my father, blue in the face, huffing, puffing and panting, flogged and humiliated us before the entire village, what was most painful was the fact that our co-conspirators where to be seen amongst the jeering and leering crowd. Even the pleas of my grandma fell on deaf ears as my father could not accept...no, did not understand, why his two sons would covet a neighbour’s mango fruits. His hyperactive mind must have assumed an exponential explosion of thievery, from the first little step of mango stealing to armed robbery and then probably gold bullion heists.

That evening happened to be another night of a full moon so after my grandmother had bathed us, and applied her cure-all poultice, an admixture of kerosene and warm palm oil, on our burning welts, she offered to tell us the story of Akuezue, a man who thought that possessing all the wealth in the world would bring him fulfilment.

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Akuezue was known far and wide as an ethical and principled man. Truly this is a man the god’s bestowed their favour on for he had enough wealth to take care of his needs. He had a thriving trading business, travelling to obodo Eze Idu na Oba, the great Bini Kingdom, to buy exotic items that where retailed in almost all markets across Igbo land. He also had a thriving fish business, as fishermen in his employ trawled the town’s great Omabara river, harvesting fish that were subsequently smoked, and sold at the Eke market. It was said that customers came from as far flung as Ijebu and Igalla land, just to buy Akuezue’s smoked fish. Yes Akuezue was very rich, but even at that he shunned ostentatious living, expending a significant portion of his wealth on philanthropy.  Over time Akuezue became a sage of sorts, for who best to learn about success than the man who has achieved success over and over again. However there was a problem. His beautiful wife had been without child for over 10 years of marriage. Many a time and by many, Akuezue had been overhead bemoaning his fate, and was known to have once said that he would accept any child, even if he had to make a deal with the devil. The pressure was mounting for tongues had started to wag. ‘Are you sure his wealth is not as a result of a covenant with the same devil?’, ‘Can’t you see that he has traded his wife’s womb in a deal with the devil for wealth’, ‘He must be a member of one of those secret cults where you are made to sell your future seeds to the devil’.  The common denominator in all the stories was the devil and a pact that Akuezue was alleged to have made.

In Akuezue’s village lived an old woman known to all as Arude, she whose skin is flawlessly beautiful and is as smooth as a body cream. Nobody seemed to know how old Arude was however all the elderly people of the town had come to know Arude as an adult and knew that she had always been stunningly beautiful. There was something surreal about her beauty, she had never been known to fall ill, suffer from any ailment whatsoever, and was also reputed to know all the healing herbs for some of the most intractable ailments. There were even rumours that she came from the land of the water spirits but no one dared confront her which such absurdities.

So that it was that one day, Akuezue, while making his evening rounds of the village ran into Arude. ‘I am not even asking for a son, if only I can have a daughter, not just the average daughter, but one more beautiful than the combined beauty of all the maidens in the village. Surely that would fetch me a very large dowry’ moaned Akuezue, ‘then my fulfilment would be complete’. Don’t bet on that replied Arude, for there is more to life than owning and garnering all worldly possessions including children but Akuezue insisted, for he was clearly distraught, though he never lost sight of the material gains he could make from having a well-sought-after daughter. So Arude put a direct question to him, ‘what are you willing to give to have this child and how far are you willing to go?’ ‘Everything and anything’ responded Akuezue, ‘I am willing to go to the end of the earth to get this daughter, by any means necessary’. To which Arude responded with an iconic smile, so be it, and briskly walked away. Akuezue found this statement and ensuing behaviour rather strange but found it even stranger when one month later his wife told him that she was with child. Thus eight months later a child was born, who the parents gladly named Adaku, a daughter born to abundant wealth.

On the day she was born, Akuezue dashed off to the home of Arude to inform her that her prediction had come to pass only to meet a group of mourners, for Arude had passed on that morning. It became uncanny when Akuezue realised that Arude most have passed on about the same time that Adaku was born, but after awhile, even this he brushed asides as mere coincidence.

Adaku soon grew to be an extremely beautiful child but at four years old it became clear that she couldn’t or simply refused to talk. She understood what people were saying quite alright but whenever she opened her mouth, all that came out was a guttural garble....she was extremely industrious, even for her tender age, as beautiful as the rising run and a flower in full blossom combined. Something even stranger was the fact that she seemed to react negatively to the name Adaku, in a number of instances out rightly falling sick after being so addressed.

On her 18th birthday when the state of speechlessness continued Akuezue decided to seek out a seer, ‘ka a cho ana ife na eme Adaku’. His search took him to the doorsteps of dibia kacha dibia, the greatest and most powerful of all medicine men in the land, for it was said that dibia kacha dibia wined and dined with the dead, that anything that he could not divine was beyond divination. Yet initially, when dibia kacha dibia cast his divining beads on a raffia mat laid out in front of Adaku, and listened to the voice of his ancestors, he was transported to the banks of the great Omabara river, and all he could hear was the river’s waves repeatedly crashing on the shore, the rhythm of the surf resonating ‘Ude! Ude! Ude! Perplexed dibia kacha dibia came crashing back from the impromptu astral travel, turned to Akuezue and asked, ‘do you have any ancestor by the name Ude?’ So Akuebue recounted his encounter with Arude nine months before the birth of Adaku. Aha! grunted dibia kacha dibia, ‘O bu Arude nnoro Adaku’. Arude has reincarnated as Adaku. For he could clearly see that both Arude and Adaku ‘si na mmiri’, are the great Omabara river’s children, water kindred spirits. Turning to Adaku he hollered Ude O bu mu bu dibia kacha dibia na ekene gi’,  ‘I the greatest of all native doctors salute you’ and to her parents astonishment Adaku responded, dibia kacha dibia, I Ude heartily return your salute. At this point dibia kacha dibia turned to Adaku’s parents and said, you have saddled your daughter with the wrong name; her name is Arude or Ude if you like, so I suggest that henceforth you refer to her by that name. Akuezue’s response was that ‘agaghim agbaha ndi mmou okwu’ I am not about to challenge the wisdom of our ancestors’. At this response the sky let loose a torrential downpour of cascading rain while the sun unleashed laser rays of sunlight creating a rainbow through the sheets of rain...steam could be seen rising from the earth...as the heat of the sun forced the soaked earth skywards in inverted rain. This strange phenomenon perplexed the village elders who quickly summoned dibia kacha dibia. ‘Kedu ka mmiri ga esi na ezo, nnukwu anwu ana eke’ How can there be such torrential downpour and great heat at the same time, something must be wrong...but the great dibia could only shake his head in bewilderment, for even he had never witnessed such an event in his entire life.

Soon after, suitors started pouring in from far and wide. What struck everyone was Adaku’s, (now known as Ude) humility. She was never haughty or rude like some daughters of other rich men in the village, and these are men whose wealth paled in comparison to Akuezue’s vast possessions. Her body transformed the inexpensive fabric that she always chose to wear into velvet befitting Kings and Queens as her skin glowed with the radiance of a thousand suns. Her beauty? Well  there were some who claimed that her beauty was so divine that all other women in the village appeared ugly beside her.

Yet Ude did not find any of the men in the long train of suitors to her liking. This kept her up many a night for she knew how much her father wanted her to get married and she truly wanted to please him...make him happy, yet something inside of her rejected all of them; handsome; ugly, plain, rich, educated even some who professed great healing powers and theological knowledge. The reason for this was soon to be revealed to her, for one day as she dozed under a mango tree shielding her from the mid-day heat, she found herself on the banks of the Omabara river watching a band of exquisitely beautiful and ornamented siren like damsels singing and dancing on what appeared to be the river’s surface. Their skins where covered beautifully with green Uli skin art, a skin ornament that Ude suddenly realised that she had a great craving for. She also wasn’t surprised when she realised that they were singing for her. In their chorus they admonished Ude to hurry up and come back home as she was merely a loan to her earthly parents. Ude learnt from their singing that Omabara had heard Akueezu’s desperation for a child and loaned him one of its daughters thus no human was fit to take her as a bride. But what she found most saddening was when she learnt that if she insisted on staying with her earthly parents and marrying a human it will trigger her death as well as the death of all the maidens in her village. The only man who can possibly marry her has to be a male fellow water spirit currently living either amongst the water spirits or amongst humans. The alternative was simply to return to the land of water spirits, in essence to die and give up her human form.

Ude woke up from this dream screaming, her forehead beaded in perspiration, the sweat soaking though the wrapper that covered her beautiful frame. Despite the initial apprehension, within her she knew that the dream was somehow real. The affinity she felt to the Omabara river, a river she had never visited in real life, was simply too compelling, the flood of memories that hit her...she realised that she knew every nook and cranny of the river’s banks including places in the river’s depths that no mere mortal could possibly know...and the dancing maidens...she had immediately recognised them as her sisters, for she knew them all by name.

The next day she told her mother that she wanted to ornament her skin with Uli skin art, that only after this will she get married. But even she knew that at the time, Uli skin art was alien to her village, in fact Uli skin art was then alien to man, for it was a beauty practise of the water kindred spirits. Her mother searched for the Uli high and low to no avail, she visited all local markets, markets of adjourning towns still no result. Her father soon joined in the search, sending his emissaries to as far flung kingdoms as obodo Eze Idu Na Oba,  Igalla and Ijebu land, even as far as Nupe and the Fulani Kingdoms to no avail. When this failed Akuezue announced that whoever brings Uli for his daughter will be rewarded with a fattened cock...he was soon to increase the reward to a goat, then a cow, then a herd of cows but the Uli remained elusive.

Early one morning, 12 full moons into the search, Ude woke up as if in a trance, adorned herself in her best attire and set off for the great Omabara river. The usually courteous and amiable Ude did not respond to the greetings of Ada anyi e putakwalu ula, “our daughter I hope you slept well”, chorused by the women sweeping the village square. This was the first sign that something was very wrong and it wasn’t long before one of the concerned women sent her young son to alert Ude’s mother.

A distraught Nne Ude, who had set out early in her continued search for the elusive Uli, tore along the village paths in the general direction that people had seen her daughter, until she caught up with her on the banks of Omabara river. And what a sight it was. Hundreds of exquisitely beautiful maidens, all ornamented with Uli skin art, where singing and dancing on the surface of the Omabara river, stomping their feet to the choruses, without causing as much as a ripple, as if the river was hard earth. And then in the midst of them she saw her daughter Ude more resplendent than she had ever seen her, as she if she had finally found her elements...found her home. More shocking was that Ude had the most beautiful of Uli skin art adorning her skin, the Uli shimmered and slithered with an amphibious quality as she moved her body to the singing, as if the very design itself had come alive on her skin. Despair...panic...tears...Nne Ude tore off her wrapper, wailing and wringing her hands, but she being a mere mortal could not walk on the river surface, and dared not wade into the Omabara for its currents were renown as fierce and strong. So she sang;

Nwam biko puta oh! (My daughter please leave the river)

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

Nne gi ji efie acho Uli na afia (Your mother has pledged a cow to anyone who can get you the Uli you seek)

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

Nna gi ji efie acho Uli na afia (Your father has pledged a cow to anyone who can get you the Uli you seek)

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

On hearing her distraught human mother’s cry, Ude turned to her with tears in her eyes and gave a response that tore Nne Ude’s heart to shreds.

Nnem biko naba oh! (Mother please go home)

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

Omabara esechagom uli oma (Omabara river has given me all the Uli I want)

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

Ude ndele Uli, Uli, Uli Oma

With this song the sky let loose a torrential downpour of cascading rain while the sun unleashed laser rays of sunlight creating a rainbow through the sheets of rain...steam could be seen raising from the earth...as the heat of the sun forced the soaked earth skywards in inverted rain.

The downpour stopped as quickly as it started, and with it went the exquisitely beautiful dancing daughters of Omabara river, Ude inclusive.

It was a broken hearted Nne Ude that dejectedly trudged back home and reported to Akuezue what she had encountered at the banks of Omabara River.

Akuezue’s response was quite philosophical, that maybe the gods wanted to use him to teach the world that one should covet what one does not have, and that nothing in life is worth owning by any means necessary. The good that came out of this was that Nne Ude, having seen the Uli skin art on the water maidens, introduced the concept to the maidens of the village, a fashion that soon swept to neighbouring towns and villages. For Nne Ude swore that the town will never again lose a child to lack of Uli. It is even whispered, though it has never been confirmed, that Igbo slaves sold to the Americas eventually introduced to that continent a version of Nne Ude’s popular Uli skin art and rechristened it ‘tattoo’.

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Suffice it to say that the effect of either the legendary flogging that followed our failed raid of ‘mango Dom’ or the travails of Ude as shared by my grandmother, or a combination of both, ensured that from that day on, I never again coveted ‘mango Dom’ or  for that matter, any other person’s mango or property.

©Jekwu Ozoemene 2013