Godwin Inyang's Blog

 Abong knew the peasant farmers in the village didn't like, overtly or covertly, the arrival of these rich farmers. Their money helped them usurp the land from the fringes of village to the remotest parts of the jungle. Old farmers found it hard to cultivate new plots as the old ones were yielding less and less; hunters and trappers like Abong had to trek extremely far around the remaining forest to kill animals and because of plantains and bananas, age-old economic trees like bush mango, ekom, African oil bean and bitter kola were being cut and burnt to create the plantations. In the seasons of economic fruits, the villagers used to march into the jungle in droves to gather them and sell. With the threat of the economic trees disappearing from the forest in no distant time, every able and interested villager had joined the newcomers to hack down the trees for his or her personal farm plot. The race was on and the prices of items from the farms were good. But the peasant farmers al...

The urge to cough was so strong that it was hard for Abong to resist. It was quirky. In the situation he was in now, it was an unforgivable sin for him to make the slightest sound, say, with his feet walking or closed lips. His hands only brushed the leaves dangling on his path. Abong did everything possible to suppress his cough. With his palms, he covered his mouth to prevent any sound escaping from it. Then, the urge made him wriggle his feet about and he knelt down where he would not meet dead sticks or dry leaves to make them snap or rustle. With the back of his cupped hands on the ground, he coughed into them. Done coughing, he was somewhat relieved he had been able to muffle the sound as much as he could but he was perplexed at such an occurrence. It never happened to him before during any of his escapades. He sat down on the ground and stared at the bumper bunch of plantains with a few bitten by bush babies and pecked by the birds. One mind told him it was a bad omen while the ...

Times changed and the choirmaster saw some changes around the ekpo masquerade that made him cringe. He called one of the changes an idiotic display. Young people, mostly teenagers, were openly hooting at the masked men, jumping up to catch arrows the masked men shot at them and would race off as the ekpo chased them and shot arrows at their fleeing backs. Parents shouted themselves hoarse at their wards to stay away from the rowdy elements teeming through the streets. Now and then, one or two youngsters lost their eyes. As the aura around the masquerade was dimmed by the changing times, the choirmaster borrowed a beat or two from the masked folks into the songs he composed for his choir. That got the core traditionalists cross-carpeting. You would see them taking special seats on Sundays to nod their heads to the choirmaster's special anthems till the ekpo season returned. Then some got sucked up and left the shrine permanently for the altar. One even became an elder. Elder Uteh...

Can anyone put on a mask, rub the charcoal and pretend to be an ekpo? Definitely, not in Annang land. Where someone is suspected of doing that, an initiate would approach him and communicate. Not a mouth-to-mouth chat but by signs and symbols. He could scribble on the ground, jump to the side of the path and pluck a leaf or more and position them in special ways the other person would need to interpret. Failure to respond appropriately could lead to fatal consequences. The ekpo means of communication was known as 'Nsibidi' and it was the best kept secret of the cult. Not even the 'akwa ekpo' passed it down to his son, the choirmaster. Apart from the ekpo masquerade, the other plays in Annang land were: ekong, uta, abang, utu-ekpe and mbede Annang. The ekong players wore raffia masks, sang with a device hidden in their masks and which sounded like the call of a raven, ekong ebuk ayop, which they derived their name from. They preceded the ekpo masquerade as their season t...