|
Among the Kalabari people of the Niger Delta, specifically in Rivers State, the individual is conceived as consisting of four related aspects. These four classifications of the self, which characterize all human beings, are not independent categories, but inter-penetrating forces defining the field of being of the individual. In this framework, life and existence, self and body are not considered identical, and many lessons are drawn from the dissociation. The four categories of self identities by the Kalabari are called, in their language, duein (corpse), so (fate and fortune), oju (vital body) and teme (spirit of personality, the soul).
As regards the first aspect of man, as duein, a corpse, we find that the Kalabari do not consider it a mere physical waste that deserves quick disposal even before it deteriorates into a nuisance. To illustrate this, the Kalabari have elaborate funeral obsequies and have identified various forms of burial as well as ceremonies for various classes of people. The body, per se is an independent identity and nothing exemplifies this more that the Kalabari marriage system. The Kalabari have two main degrees of marriage showing the differing extents to which the woman belongs to the husband. In the second-degree marriage of iya, the wife has no claims any more on her family and she entirely belongs to her husband’s group in an indissoluble contract.
But, when she dies, a mock battle is fought between the two groups in which her purported coffin is dragged. Her husband’s family, who finally hands over her body to her parent’s people for burial, then suffers a conscious surrender. This little ceremony is backed by the Kalabari, saying that as a husband, “you only married a wife; you did not buy any bone”. Then, for older people or chiefs who die, the Kalabari have elaborate wake-keeping ceremonies at which the corpse is moved from bed to bed in rooms of increasing elaborate decoration. The man‘s daughters and wives as well as his closest female relatives then wait around the corpse singing tunes they have invented of his achievements in life. This honour for the body, which was the vehicle for so much that was achieved, is done before the final interment. Focus here is on the corpse, on the mere body of the individual, every individual, as a wonderful product of nature’s craftsmanship and its foremost exhibit of machinery for life’s fresh exploration of the universe. Here is a piece of sculpture (or better still, architecture) in which donor parents supply the building blocks and a supportive society provides the plaster of sustenance. But the original design and actual process of building result in a temple not made with hands, advancing methodically to completion.
There is more cause for amazement over this structure, the body of any one individual in the world today, than for any other object made by man. Your body and mine, as a form with its compactness, intricacy, delicacy and beauteous curves, surpasses all inventions and creations of man and belongs in its grandeur only to the class of storms, sunsets, oceanic expanses, earthquakes, growing trees and other wonders of nature. The body of any individual, even as corpse, presents before us one of the greatest wonders and spectacles of the world, as the culminating point of the history of the universe in the unfolding pageantry of life itself. This understanding, it is postulated, accounts for the elaborate funeral obsequies, which the Kalabari and other African societies attach to the corpse of the dead before burial. Elaborate laying in state ceremonies, elaborate myths affecting burial in the right soil (only in the land of one’s fathers, as a means of maintaining continuity with the life of one’s people and place).
The second aspect pertains to the truth, which has prompted the saying among the Kalabari that “oru so so” (to each his fate and fortune). It relates to the dimension or so of each individual’s destiny and calling. For under conditions of expanding trade, especially in palm oil, and of increasing rivalry with other Ijaw people such as the Okrika, Bonny and Nembe, the Kalabari have to recruit thousands of strangers into their society in order to increase their crop of manpower for defensive warfare. These men were also needed to help pull bigger and heavier trading boats as well as settle in outlying trade posts, which required adequate manning to serve as supply relay-stations with the hinterland. One is still at a loss to explain why the Kalabari people and others, who share their type of culture, show abhorrence for extra physical labour, but rather have a marked predilection for the “life of ease”. It may be partly explained by this perception of the benevolent thrust of nature in life – sustenance operating on its own impetus, with the contribution of man’s intelligence and effort counting for little.
Still, the Kalabari give much value to the place of individual achievements as persons. They do not anticipate that every one will rise to this status of self-exertion, but they honour all men and women, who transform themselves from the lofty mammalian dais to the cosmic sphere of deistic excellence. A man might make money, but not a name, and then, he is no hero to the Kalabari man. Money and all such resources (which may be physical beauty, talent, intelligence or otherwise) have their ultimate significance only to the extent that they issue forth in a name. Only then does man, as mammal, becomes a cultured man – a Kalabari man.
|
Tags
You must be logged in to add tags.
|
Writer Profile
Adeshola
Adeshola Komolafe
Founder/Researcher
SAVE OUR FUTURE
Abuja
Nigeria
www.desholakomolafe.com
Email: adesholakomolafe@yahoo.com
|
Comments
You must be a TakingITGlobal member to post a comment. Sign up for free or login.
|
|
