I began this series with the intent for it to;
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- serve as a store of cultural & historical knowledge
- bring back pleasant memories of years gone by to some and teach those who do not know
I have had this idea for more than a year now. It began from the days of dealing with Chemo fog and all I did was write out the titles in a book each time any dropped.
Then this week while praising at dawn, a particular name of God dropped off my lips and I quickly hurried to seek out the book. After writing it down, I went back to prayers. But heard the words “start now”. And here we are.
This series is about some of the idioms we as a people use in our daily interactions.
Some we use in songs. Others are inscribed on trucks.
Those passengers and trucks-carrying trucks which traverse our roads daily.
Trucks like Bolekaja, Gwongworo, Hakorankura, Tipper, Molue, 1414 amongst others.
We kick off this with ‘Oke Mmiri N’ebu Ogbe’ = the hurricane which carries off landmarks
Back in the villages, our streams served the same function as the ancient Roman baths. Besides the basic functions of bathing and laundromat, they also provided a safe space where women bonded. All kinds of information passed through a stream similar to a hairdressing salon today. The Washing machine usually was a boulder or a fallen tree trunk positioned at the shallow ends of the water.
Boulders or trunks [Ogbe] eventually become like ancient landmarks. They are that basic feature of the stream that you grew up seeing and well into your adulthood, they remain.
Irrespective of the tides, storm, rain and all, those boulder remain across generations. They serve as a store of memories, mostly fond memories.
Now, imagine you go to the stream one day and those boulders are no longer there!
Who moved them? Certainly not any Earth moving equipment. And not the men either. So what happened to that trunk then? Something that has remained fixed in that position for decades? How did it move?
Enter the hurricane!
From what you know of a hurricane, it should have decimated most if not the entire village, right?
Wrong!
This particular hurricane only removed the ancient landmarks. Left everything else untouched.
How?
Simply for the fact that he can.
When we tag God as ‘Oke Mmiri N’ebu Ogbe’, it is a call to war. A reminder to ourselves, God and our situations about his powers. We reaffirm that he alone does the impossible.
However, unlike a hurricane, God’s feisty winds leaves no collateral damage.
He simply swoops in and sweeps away that which needs to go. That thing which had spurned every attempt at resolution.
Next time you listen to an Igbo song and hear Oke mmiri n’ebu Ogbe; remember that there is a higher power who intervenes in the affairs of men and does the seemingly impossible.