THE LITERACY OF BELIEF. Uju C. Ukwuoma
at school. I was always the one everyone expected to see at home because of troubles at school, but I never returned home.
I had a habit of hiding in one of the bushes behind the school to wait for school to be over in the afternoon. I always joined other students on their way home as if nothing had happened. No one ever saw me at home during school hours or even knew about my punishment for fighting at school. Fighting was a sign of disrespect and it brought insult to our family. Unfortunately, no matter how I concealed what happened at school, the news always reached my aunts, father, mother, or uncles. As a result, my father spanked me regularly for fighting at school. Spanking was a reasonable kind of corporal punishment at home and in school, which I received on an almost daily basis during my formative years. The unbelievable part was that my dad never allowed me to explain how or why the altercation ensued at school. While spanking me, my dad always said that I disrespected our family at school or that I threw the family name to the mud by fighting.
Usually, the spanking began before he finished the sentence. In spite of the spanking, I considered him a good father who, more often than not, listened to me with a compassionate heart. All the same, his heart (or mind) did not have any room to hear explanations about why fighting was a compelling option at school. In spite of that, elementary school was fun for me. We sang songs and played a lot. We also cut grass in the school field, which we called manual labor. Sometimes, we worked at the school farm. Our teachers were helpful and told us folktales. We also learned how to speak, write, and develop communication skills in the English and Igbo languages. Igbo was the language of social interaction, while English was the language of classroom instruction. Because almost all of us struggled to speak English, those who included English into their regular speech were respected in class.
Our teacher once asked us to explain the meaning of breakfast in class. I remember how everyone laughed at me when I described it as food eaten by English people. A smarter boy in my class described it as the food consumed in the morning. He received a standing ovation. However, we never called our morning food by that name. Perhaps, the main point of the answer should have been food, which I pointed out in my description. Some people see breakfast as the food people eat at a particular time of the day, which British people call breakfast in their language. Others view breakfast as whatever you eat first after sleeping, akin to breaking your fast. Somehow, my teacher should have given me credit for describing breakfast as food. Silly me! I sound defensive. I goofed, yet many years later, I am rationalizing my answer. However, if such an incident occurred in my classroom today, I would give some credit to the student who mentioned food first in his or her description. No student would have laughed at or ridiculed any student in my class.
I trace my desire and love for teaching to my elementary school experience and the question about breakfast. Although my teacher and fellow students jeered at me in class, I was not worried. I believed that there were others in the class who did not mock or laugh at me. Those people were not my classmates. They were the people whose names uncle Bryan recited before he killed the rooster. I believed they were in the class with me, smiling and saying, “You are doing a great job.” I considered them my fans and cheerleaders. That was the same impression I got from listening to discussions during that April family ceremony discussed in a previous chapter. I sincerely believed that I was not alone, even when I was by myself. I felt that those people who uncle Bryan called upon were always with me, although I did not see them physically. Such a notion taught me that our personal beliefs determine the outcomes we encounter. The things I witnessed and heard from uncle Bryan influenced the thoughts I had in the classroom under entirely different circumstances.
Unfortunately, I did not feel the presence of my fans and cheerleaders while in church on Sunday mornings. Each time I walked into Sunday school, I felt an emptiness, which reminded me that my cheerleaders were absent. Their presence reemerged when I stepped out of the church. It was fun, but I was not able to explain such feelings or why I sensed the presence of some people named during the April family event. At the successful completion of elementary school, I headed to secondary school. The formal education structure was called the 6-3-3-4 system. You put in six years in elementary school, three years in junior secondary, another three in the senior secondary school, including a minimum of four years for a college degree. Similar to elementary school, secondary school was fun. I enjoyed the academic challenges and enjoyed English literature, a subject that introduced me to the importance of printed words. Secondary school also brought the opportunity for smoking cigarettes and fighting when situations called for settling scores using violence.
The most exciting part of that stage of my schooling process was that family members did not hear much about the fights that took place at school. I lived at a boarding school in a faraway city about one hundred miles away. The fun part about fighting was that you waited for whoever you planned to fight on his way home. Upon seeing him, you would yell a question. Am I the one you are insulting? At the same time, you would point your finger at him and invade his personal space by getting very close. The culprit would either apologize or scream back at you. Apologies often came in a quiet and gentle tone, but they bolstered my ego and made me yell more before walking away. If he yelled questions at me, we had no other option but to fight. What will you do if I insult you? Or What. Will. You. Do? Upon hearing such a question, I knew that the person was as delirious as I was or even more insane. Such responses also indicated that he was ready to fight. So, I would shove him immediately, and we would start throwing punches. The principle objective was to be the first to get the other person to the ground. Once somebody is on the ground, a winner and a loser have emerged, marking the end of the brawl.
Most times, they beat the crap out of me, but I enjoyed the experience. There were times I apologized when I noticed that the person I wanted to fight had more troubles brewing in his head than I did. In spite of my foolishness at enjoying my combative display of violence through fighting, I continued to be a respectful child. I attended church every Sunday. It had to be any church, not my family church, because I was far from home. My fans and cheerleaders continued to disappoint me by not revealing themselves physically to help me fight. These unseen fans and cheerleaders relentlessly deserted me each time I walked into a church, as I stated at the start of this chapter. Ironically, I felt confident that I was not alone.
On a Tuesday afternoon at the school hostel, my hand began to shake profusely. It was probably my right hand, and it continued to swing until my fellow students noticed. Mortified, I covered my hand with my blanket. Silently, I repeated the same poetic recitals of uncle Bryan and, instantaneously, my hand calmed.
With that immediate relief, I realized that my family’s April event was not just about killing a rooster or sounding too philosophical for seven-year-old me. It was a powerful ceremony that offered protection to members of our family in line with uncle Bryan’s assertions. A few weeks later, my hand began to shake again while I was with a group of classmates. With confidence, I recited uncle Bryan’s poetic recitations, but my hand continued to shake. So, I bid my hostel mates goodnight and walked into my room. The next day my hand functioned like nothing had happened the previous night. During the holidays, I traveled with Henry, one of my classmates, to his village. On our first night, my hand began to shake again. I looked worried. So, Henry’s father consoled me. He told me not to worry about my hand. To him, it was not a problem or any form of sickness.
With confidence, he explained that my hand shook because of my Ikenga (hereafter, a deity, family deity, or idol).
“What is that?” I asked in a distraught voice.
“It is about your power and strength,” he responded. According to him, the deity was a good thing and not something to cause me unhappiness. The idol was the mediator between my personal God (known as Chi in Igbo mythology) and I. Such perspective emanates from many Afro-traditional religions. Subscribers of such belief systems view various objects and statues as intermediaries between human beings and gods. Some adherents of such faith, like my uncle, exalt carved images because they consider those images as offering a quicker route to the gods. Belief Literacy Steps counters such reasoning.