Post date: Aug 11, 2014 1:09:52 AM
Independence Day 1 October 1964
I have been-busy this week. It started on Monday—good time for a week to start—when I came into the compound to find it full of masqueraders from the village. They danced and masqueraded and begged for money. The drummer was good, but that is about all. The dancers had no spirit. This is the season of Ikeji, the New Yam Festival.
On Wednesday the towns-folk had sacrifices. Two of the boys took me into the town to see their villages. In one compound in Obinkita there must have been at least thirty fowls sacrificed that day. On each doorstep were at least three—some times five or six—chickens with their throats slit. In the main juju shrine of that compound there were three goats sacrificed. There seems to be no ceremony about it and the people are very casual, but each chicken they slaughter has its blood poured over the shrine, which seems to be just a mess of chicken feathers on top of some junk. Every new bottle of bush gin and jug of palm-wine has a bit poured over this mass for the juju, also. After all this the fowls and goats are eaten by the whole compound—men, women, and children—but only the men do the sacrifices. Everyone says that the Long Juju priests sacrificed one to three humans and ate their flesh on that day. It seems possible.
Thursday there were masquerades in Obinkita. These are men dressed in charcoal and raffia, usually with a carved wooden mask, who dance. They are supposed to be fearsome—a remnant of old Ekpo days when they dealt out punishment and so every one runs. Often they carry whips or swords, and they do use them. Friday was wrestling, but that was postponed, and we recorded some plays instead. Plays are song-and-dances, each play representing a style of music. Saturday, the last day of the festival, is the big day for plays. Each village (there are nineteen in Arochuku) brings a play to Obinkita market square and presents it to the crowd, after first touching the stone over the grave of the first great warrior. This is the day to memorialize the ancestors, and God.
Ikeji has become less and less each year, as traditional religion becomes less important to the people. Many of the traditional customs and juju rituals are just an empty corpse, and have been for many years, since the power of the juju was first broken by the English [1904]. Very few openly avoid the Ikeji celebrations, as the church elders do—but they also put less spirit into it. Only two of the dancing groups had any fire, and only one of the dancers. A student helped me record all of the songs that day. On the way home we stopped at Ibom, where they were wrestling—to music, of course.
Sunday I went again to Itam for some home cooking. The road was flooded between Atan and Itu—8 miles but I was able to get through as the river was still rising. I didn't think I would be able to get back, so I stayed in Ikot Ekpene with Bob Richberg, and returned by the other road. I tried again today (2 Oct, Friday) but the water was even higher, 18", so l turned around and went by the other road.
Tuesday Mick and I and 8 or 9 students took the day off from school and went exploring a cave on Okoroji's plantation. This required a ten-mile trek. It is a very large sandstone cave, full of bats and water. We only saw a small part of it, and there are other caves nearby that we didn't see. The village near this was populated by Okoroji's excess slaves, as slaves were a form of wealth, but the village was not big enough to contain them all. So Okoroji set up three or four plantations where the slaves could advance on their own merits. Almost all of these have moved away now and Innocent says that in two years the village will disappear. There are only ten houses there now. Really bush, with no tin roofs; and only one house had a door, but two of the six or eight people we saw speak English. They all come back to 0koroji‘s compound for Ikeji. Okoroji is the chief of Ujari, has a museum there, and at one time had 3000 slaves.
Yesterday the teacher’s strike started. That means that Mick and Nancy and I are out of work for a while. Oh, the Principal has given us a token job, as we really shouldn’t strike against the gov’t, but we can finish that in a day or less.
Meanwhile I have to go to Enugu for my annual medical exam. Today I went shopping in the township and tried to get my Honda fixed. It had piston trouble and I replaced one, but now the crankshaft is bad, and that is going to cost me $50! I will try to get the company to pay, but they are very bad about that sort of thing, and really don‘t care if they get the business or not. Next thing is to write to Mr. Honda. Anyway, they didn‘t have the part in stock, so I will try again on Monday on my way to Enugu.
Meanwhile I am learning German. I get two German magazines, and I am trying to work through a grammar. One of the magazines has seven ads for organ-builders. David Dahl was offered a job as Asst. Prof at a College in Spokane, Wash. Don't know if he took it or not, as the organ and auditorium there are terrible. I wrote another epistle to All Saints, Watsonville [about a pipe organ in the new church building], this one is fifteen pages, but my English-teaching friends are editing it and I don't have it typed yet. I have a book in my closet called The Organ in Church Design. Who wrote it? [Blanton]