Growing up, I noticed that uncle Bryan played daddy to my father and his younger brothers. My father said that uncle Bryan assumed the role of a father as their parents aged, as expected in their culture. It was customary for older siblings and members of the community to take care of younger ones. I saw my parents care for my grandparents, and I also witnessed my grandparents caring for my great grandparents. There was not, and there is not such a thing as elderly people’s homes like we have in the United States. People live together till old age, and they pass away still living with their kith and kin. As such, I was not just my father’s son. I was also the son of my uncles and all of the elderly members of my extended family.
So, I cheerfully respected and ran errands for all elderly male or female members of our family. Respect was a crucial principle in the community. As kids, being respectful was expected of us; it was non-negotiable. Age seemed to earn people respect; the older you were, the more your chances were of being respected. However, everyone expected more respect from male family members than females. Such expectation was important because males were believed to be responsible for advancing the family legacy. Male family members worked more on family farms and businesses. Our sisters were respected, but the boys were groomed to become the breadwinners and authority figures of their future families.
Out of respect and my family’s expectation of a higher standard of character, my male cousins and I followed instructions without hesitation. We respected all older adults, including aunts, elder brothers, elder sisters, grandparents, great grandparents, fathers, inlaws, mothers, and uncles in the village, no questions asked. Our elders deemed us as respectful if we did whatever they asked of us without hesitation or grumbling. Elders often asked us to bring firewood from forests. On some occasions, elders asked us to go to the village stream and fetch water for childless widows. The elders would also ask us to work in the family farmlands. Sometimes, they requested us to write letters for family members whose sons and daughters resided in cities that were far away from our community.
The most critical way of showing respect was by following the family’s belief systems. Like other members of our community, my immediate and extended family members had many essential traditions that were centered on belief. Some followed the Christian faith. Others followed Hinduism and Islam. Uncle Bryan was a hardcore ancestral worshiper, which I did not understand until after about 20 years of studying him. The remainder of uncle Bryan’s brothers belonged to four organizations, which family members termed “Secret Societies.” My older cousin, a Hindu, applauds himself as being among the first set of Krishna devotees in West Africa. His entire family follows the Hindu faith.
My mother taught me to stay away from family members who were Hindus, members of the Islamic faith, and those who belonged to secret societies. Mom took her adherence to the Christian faith a step further by identifying as born-again Christian. To respect my mom, I stayed away from family members who were Hindus and those who belonged to secret societies, but not Islam. Besides the motherly admonition, I was not too fond of the restrictive lifestyles led by those who identified as members of secret societies. Also, I did not like my older cousin’s hairstyle. He shaved his head, leaving a little at the back, which made him stand out from everyone in the community. His dress style was also different from ours. So, as a child, I overlooked such family members.
I participated in the belief systems of family members who were of the Anglican Communion, Roman Catholic, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. I also exchanged ideas with those who were Born-again Christians or Pentecostals, Cherubim and Seraphim members, Muslims, and those tagged secret society members, at a tender age, of course without my mother’s knowledge.
I did not understand much about the ancestral worship of uncle Bryan even though he was the most open-minded of my uncles and a consistent practitioner of his faith. He coordinated an event often slated for early April. Although I now possess a doctorate and have been teaching for over 25 years, I am unable to name or explain the precise meaning of that April ceremony in the English language. Each time I asked, I was told that it was just a family tradition. However, I have a vivid recollection of what occurred during the ceremony. I witnessed the occasion four times when I was between the ages of seven and ten. After that, I left home for a boarding school in the city and lost the opportunity to witness more of the event.
Uncle Bryan believes in ancestral worship with everything in him. To him and his cohorts, belief is essential in life, and we become what we believe, think and what we do. While I want to concur, I have seen that sometimes in life, what we neither believed nor thought or did, determines what we become.
CHAPTER 2
Ancestral Worship of Uncle Bryan
What we see contributes to the shaping process of our future.
Uncle Bryan yells out like a town crier around three in the afternoon of his chosen day of worship: “The time has come! Everybody should come out! Let us commune with our ancestors! Let us use our brain to solve our problems! Let us fellowship with those who own us and those we own!”
Upon hearing his voice, we rush out to see him holding a chicken (or rooster, I am not sure) in his left hand and a kitchen knife in his right. The legs of the rooster are tied together. Uncle Bryan buries the head of the rooster backward in between the wings as if he wants to suffocate the fowl. You can hear the cock panting as we gather in front of uncle Bryan, but he does not care. He swings the chicken above everyone’s head, saying things like:
“Everybody will be alive. May God protect us. No evil shall befall any of us! If early death is coming, it will take this cock. Death will not seek for any member of our family. May those who will tell us one thing and do another thing never come our way! May the eyes of our enemies be blind towards our progress. May the spirits who own our land eat this rooster! May we continue to escape automobile accidents because that is not how we will die! Because life moves in cycles, may the cycles of our market days protect us. May we be in harmony with the periods that separate our market cycles. May our activities revolve around the rhythms of those cycles! May we have a bountiful harvest! May the forces that maintain the rhythms in all the big trees around us defend us!”
He then calls the names of people in the family tree who have died, asking them to protect us. Upon completion of his utterances, he kills the cock by slashing the throat. He sprinkles its blood on a particular spot at the center of our family premises. There are four buildings on the premises of our immediate family. The most conspicuous is my father’s duplex surrounded by three of his brothers’ bungalows built in a circular form. Our family reserved the spot where uncle Bryan poured the blood of the rooster, for that purpose. No one steps on the spot or gets close to it in the morning while sweeping, no matter how clean you want to sweep the compound. Some dirty looking white chalks and moth-infested carved wooden objects surround the spot like trash. A raggedy looking piece of zinc covers the place so well that a visitor can overlook it for a garbage dump. In short, the spot appears like a disposal site.
Someone is delegated to cook the cock, probably uncle Bryan’s wife or one of my cousins’ mom. It always turns out to be very spicy but delicious chicken soup. That is my favorite part of the event because everyone eats the food, no matter how little you get.
While eating, uncle Bryan describes how everything around us has a rhythm and moves in cycles. He teaches us this point by encouraging us to place one of our hands on our chest to feel our heartbeat. My grandfather often added that we could become whatever