Ududu iyine e ta ma?
Ududu olele ne oh…
I escorted the Akatakpa for the first time at about age 13.
My elder brother and I had gone to spend the holiday at our Uncle Moses’ house in Makurdi and he decided to take us to the village for one the festivals.
I can’t remember if it was the Egbedogwu Akatakpa or the new yam festival (Ujo) but it turned out to be an epiphany of a place I’d thought I knew so well.
That was the first time I would be feeling the village real time in its raw, natural and undiluted form.
It was then I realized that the glam of the Christmas/New Year day periods, when we used to go to the village, were mere window dressings which did not portray its natural feel.
What happened during such periods, were nothing next to natural as everyone was in festive mood.
Folks from the cities came with their sophistication, money, glitz, colours and victuals to make their stay enjoyable, while the villagers try to put up appearances to make up for the sophistication they thought they were lacking thereby creating an artificial ambience in the end.
The village is abuzz with aplenty. Even the meals are recalibrated to include breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Akpu is suspended from the menu and replaced with rice, plantain, stew etc and everyone puts on new clothes covering otherwise bumpkin ruggedness with fragrant new looks.
But when Uncle Moses took us to the village this time, we caught the village red handed in its unadulterated form: the artificial ambience created during Christmas stripped to its raw form and we saw the village for what it was!
We saw people waking up at dawn to walk miles to get water; men and women disappearing from their houses to the farms at the first crow of the cock and not returning till dusk; leaving the village empty during the day.
There was no lazying about, everyone, including children and the elderly, were up and doing.
No tea and bread for breakfast. For breakfast, you have to make do with a réchaufé. No lunch. Rice disappeared from the menu and no one comes to ask you if you’ve had anything to eat.
No one gave us bread for breakfast because they didn’t have. To eat, you have to follow them to the farm to get a share of roasted ikpir’isi with palm oil.
I made the mistake of staying at home one day and no one had to tell me it was a wrong decision when during lunch hour I walked to the kitchen only to behold empty pots and pans, sitting coldly on the ódan.
That was it! I decided to go to the farm the next day.
The distance to the farm on foot was like from Lagos to Maiduguri, as we walked through narrow paths which endlessly stretches into the bushes and curving at every end.
I wondered how they were able to tell where we were going as there were no signposts or marks to guide, only leaves of agbaha waving at us at every point.
Alas! We finally got there.
The walk was enough stress for me. I went to sit under a tree immediately we got to the farm while the others started weeding. It must have been the exhaustion from the walk, I fell asleep immediately!
At the close of business, I was assigned to carry a log of wood on my head back home. Grandma would use it for fuel while cooking.
I almost somersaulted with the long wood placed on my head. With my head in the middle, the log would tilt from the front and when I move forward to make sure it stays on my head, the back end would also behave in a similar manner and I saw myself running to and fro under the log until someone coached me on how to make it ‘stay in one place.’
For a place I had been to more than a dozen times, this new experience was perplexing.
The traditional festivals are indeed totally different from the Christmas and New Year celebrations.
Around the Christmas period, one hardly gets to see the Akatakpa which in my estimation is the most entertaining of the masquerades.
Its colourful appearance, giddy gait, breathtaking speed, pulsating dance steps, and shrill cries make it stand out.
The masquerades were all over the place during this period so I followed a group of boys my age to escort one.
We were singing as we moved from one Ofpu to the other:
Ududu iyine e ta ma?
Ududu olele ne oh,
Ududu olele ne oh,
akanya golu Pharaoh,
Pharaoh, Pharaoh mamu water,
Oye olele le likpo daje kwo!
Whenever the Akatakpa retreats to a corner, the boys following him closely would announce that any one that has not seen an Arekwu should move away.
It was then I realized I was different.
The boys would all of a sudden become hostile when such an announcement is made as they begin to search for those among us they suspected had not seen the Arekwu.
Seeing the Arekwu is a term used to to refer to initiation of boys into manhood.
I had not seen the Arekwu at that time as I feared that it might be a gargoyle-faced ogre hiding in the dark to scare little children.
I moved back before the boys could spot me out and push me away as they were doing to others in my category.
My grandfather, I recalled, once asked me a similar question years back.
He was standing by the fence of his vast compound at Unogwu while I was walking towards Ofpu Akpoge and an Akatakpa had ran towards my direction.
He was surprised to see my reaction: how I ran back to the compound, screaming as if the world was coming to an end.
He called me after I stopped crying. “Odang,” he said, “a m’arekwu wen ne?”
In the village, even boys of eight of nine have seen the Arekwu and here I was at age 13 wondering what it was all about.
The blame was not entirely mine though. It was some of my friends and relations that discouraged me with what they were saying about the Arekwu. They said if I go to the Inekwu to see the Arekwu that I would be flogged until I pledge not to disclose it to women and children.
The idea of being flogged for what I was not even willing to see in the first place made me avoid the Inekwu even more.
But the humiliation of being told to move back anytime the Akatakpa retreated made me decide to man up and go with them to the Inekwu.
As Agila celebrates the Ujoh festival with pomp, I can’t help but reminisce over the good old times and to rue how so many things have changed in that village that gave us joy and happiness when the dreariness of urban life exerts its toll.
Happy Ujo.
