By Okey Anueyiagu
During this past New Year’s celebration, I did something that has been on my bucket list for ages. I took a long six-hour drive from Atlanta to St. Simons Island in the State of Georgia, in the USA. The arduous task of the long drive was made bearable and pleasant, because I was accompanied by my wife Hadiza, and our twin sons, Aka and Arize. Our destination was the heritage and monument site named The Igbo Landing in St. Simons Island near the seaport of Savannah, Georgia.
Over the years, I have read and listened to stories about this legendary story, and the vast and deeper meaning of the shared history to this global event of great tapestry and implication. I was intrigued and fascinated about this historical event and began to wonder why such an epoch event and its relevance to world history has been denied to most people. As I began to engage myself in some research and study about The Igbo Landing, I thought it was necessary to visit this site and dip the sole of my feet in the waters that swallowed the souls of those brave Igbo.
This sacred site that we visited, holds the nerve-shattering historical story of how in May of 1803, a large group of captured, kidnapped and enslaved Igbo resisted their enslavement in the most brave and dramatic way, when, inspired by a noble chief among them, they rose up in unison, and martyred themselves at Dunbar Creek on the Island of St. Simons. The slaves marching into the ocean were singing Igbo war songs, and chanting: “The Water brought us here… The Water will take us away…”. They all walked into the river and drowned. These Igbo slaves embodied the mantra and the message that: You may enslave my body, but you will never be able to enslave my spirit and my soul. They all chose to die honourable deaths, instead of living lives worse than dying, in the cold cotton fields of the wicked and cruel white slave owners who in humiliating and dehumanizing them, profited from their blood, sweat and tears.
Upon arriving at the exact spot where this epic history took place, I was instantly overcome with an indescribable feeling of anxiety, my heart was beating with such rapidity that the pulsation sounded like a war-like drumbeat. The sound of my heartbeat filled the entire space in our car, alerting me to the fear that I may have betrayed my apparent lack of control of my emotions to my children. We stood transfixed at the entry point of the river, with my mind conjuring what may have transpired at the moment those brave Igbo fearlessly walked into their known demise. It is impossible to accurately write down the countenance I felt. I had a mixed feeling of sadness and pride, as I fought back tears that had begun to well up in my eyes. I began to compose and conjure silent prayers for the repose of the souls of those brave Igbo slaves. I asked God why he allowed so much sorrow and pain to befall the Igbo since creation, and why these horrors have persisted? I received no answers, but I kept praying, and pondering, and trying my best to conceal and contain the pain and tears that I have harboured for this day, and many, decades.
As we stood in a trance at this historical point, with a sign on the top of a pier on the river boldly written with the inscription: “EBO LANDING 1803″, there stood an older white man. His name was Thomas, the owner of the property on which this historic site is situated. We had apparently trespassed on his property. We apologized to him and explained our mission. My wife was more expressive as she told him that we are Igbo people who travelled for hours to come and see where our ancestors took their lives and drowned in honour and pride. Mr. Thomas was very welcoming. He knew the entire history of Igbo Landing. He began to narrate the entire story in detail. One of my sons interrupted Mr. Thomas’s tales by pointing out that the word Igbo was misspelled as Ebo, to which Mr. Thomas retorted sharply that that was how the slaves pronounced it, and their owners spelled the word.
We were held spell-bound by Mr. Thomas’s education. We listened to him with rapt attention, asking questions intermittently as he reeled off details about slavery in the South and the role of all the parties that were involved in the heinous and atrocious trade.
At a point in our interaction with Mr. Thomas, I was anxious to resolve the legendary tales of the appearance of the ghosts of these Igbo slaves on the Island, so I asked him if he had encountered the ghosts of the dead slaves. He confirmed that many have heard the strange singing and wailing voices of these slaves and the clanking and jangling of chains and shackles at odd times. He also confirmed that at many instances, he had experienced many unexplained odd happenings on his property, like finding the lights in his home coming on. These stories gave me goose bumps, as I felt instantly the presence of these brave Igbo slaves around. The feeling was, indeed, real, and eerie too.
Over many years, I have come to the very painful realisation that there is a deadly plague or affliction that characterizes tribal and ethnic disturbances around the world that have senselessly consumed millions of lives. From the hundreds of millions killed by Belgium’s King Leopold in Congo, the millions that Germany’s Hitler incinerated, the millions that were starved and killed by bullets and bombs in Biafra, and many other atrocities around the world. Not to mention the millions that died en route to slavery in the white man’s land, and particularly those Igbo slaves that died to uphold their rights to freedom and dignity. At this point I began to realise the meaning of being Igbo, and of being a part and parcel of the pain and agony that comes with that affinity or affiliation.
As we stood at the site of Igbo Landing, I began to wonder how and where the Igbo people find the tolerance and resilience to bear the long suffering that they have faced in this unkind world. I began to ponder about how they acquire the forbearance to face all the adversities that have become their burden for centuries. I am starting to imagine that the longanimity, which the Igbo have borne for uncountable years, must be an important or a special trait domiciled by God in their DNA. It must be, otherwise how have they been able to withstand and survive the near obliteration of their tribe through slavery, wars, ethnic cleansing, tribal crisis, and many other rebarbative attritions targeted toward them in as many years as our memories can recount.
After about 200 years since the Igbo Landing incident, the ever-deepening account of how our ways of life and our cultures have become so decadent is very concerning. Almost everything about our world has fallen off the cliff, and hitherto remains anchored in hate, prejudices and timidities in such blinding and harmful ways. The wicked impulses of members of God’s creation, and the repulsiveness therefrom, can be traced down to greed, hatred, petty envy, covetousness, insatiability and the lust for domination of certain races, tribes or ethnic groups by others. There are in fact, a million good reasons why we must all find a way out of these wicked malfeasance and immorality that predated slavery, and is still subsisting today, and that which are steeped in false and bewildering piety, infecting the entire world with pure evil and tyranny.
Our groundbreaking trip to St. Simons Island brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the world it helps me to unearth a part of the many lost stories of the heinous sins of slavery, while equally exposing me to questions about what have become of the descendants of the Igbo slaves who took their own lives by drowning. What is still baffling to me, is the insidious legacy of tribal animosities that reverberate today against the Igbo. It shames and grieves me as a descendant of people who suffer for absolutely no fault of theirs. We must all recoil and be embarrassed that we all remain and wallow under the cruelty of slavery and other forms of persecution that have pervaded the world and eaten deep into the fabric of our soul.
In my many writings, I have attempted to invoke the Igbo conundrum as an incubus that has scarred and haunted many since creation. But I do not write exclusively about the Igbo pains and agonies, even as I have made explicit insertions into our everyday lives of the signs and symbols that have put and placed mankind to the lowest levels of discrimination and prosecution.
My writings, often as depressing and emotional as they may appear, are fundamentally optimistic, even when they are ferociously and courageously critical of those who perpetrate evil and crimes that unfortunately point us to repeatedly insist that racism and tribalism with the other evils of the world will never end.
I write because I believe that the time has come for us to speak up and counter the hegemonic tribal or even the racial hatred and fill them with the passion of historical remembrance and resistance. I believe that the time has come when all our words are needed and must be strongly spoken to help us move past these horrors, these pains, and to collectively feel the power of change, and of transformation, redemption and revolution in all that we do.
I feel very deeply that I may have become a temple dedicated to acknowledging our pain now, and stand to claim it as a voice for atonement and freedom. When I listened to one of the descendants and direct beneficiaries of slavery, a rich white man, justify the slave trade and the dehumanizing of the black slaves, I was repulsed, and felt an aversion to retch and vomit on his pale and pugnacious face. When this white man in his regurgitation of his revisionist history of slavery, told me the tales of how the white slave traders preferred Igbo slaves to others because they were strong, hardworking, and survivalists, but also equally detested the rebellious nature and tendencies of the Igbo slaves who were very proud and less subservient to their masters that they did not tolerate nonsense, I was elated. Those two distinguishing and distinct attributes and virtues of the Igbo slaves made me very proud to be Igbo.
Standing tall in front of The Igbo Landing site, with my chest proudly kissing the blue skies casting ominous shadows over the waters where my proud ancestors martyred themselves, it became clear to me, that I, and some members of my immediate family present at this site, have become part of an epic history. It was also painfully clear to me that we may not make reparations to the casualties, or to the descendants of these callous and wicked acts; be they the ones committed at St. Simons Islands, or in Biafra. But it is never too late to hold our collective breath and inquire about what happened and why. We have a sacred duty, I believe, to reflect on the meaning of these atrocities and ask what became of our humanity.
Looking back, we can indeed, must- attempt to process the dehumanization of a people; and we also ought to ask why these atrocities were, and are still being committed, why no contrition has been demonstrated or compunction shown, why no formal amends have been made. These questions will continue to reverberate for generations to come. And they are reasons why I keep writing and hoping that the perpetrators of these crimes will be held accountable and will repent and become reconnected to a peaceful sempiternal universe.
When we returned from visiting St. Simons Island, I was emotionally exhausted, I was troubled by the sensibility and justification given to the inevitability of slavery, how the free labour of black slaves was necessary for the survival of the white man and his world. This much was, with a straight face, expressed by Mr. Thomas to us. Blacks were static components and expendable objects in the eyes of the white slave owners. White animosity towards blacks is almost emblematic to the poor treatment the Igbo receive daily in their own country. I could not sleep, as l kept pondering these paradoxes and the cycle upon cycle of the benevolent violence visited on people because of their race, tribe, religion or the colour of their skin.
As I struggle to shut my eyes and get some sleep, I fell into a trance, an out-of-body experience that transported me back to the shores of St. Simons Island, and right at the point of the Igbo slaves’ entry into the river. Behold, and arising out of the river, were ghosts of the slaves in their shining and glowing toned bodies with pulsating and intermittently thundering drums accompanied with melodious songs. I was frightened, but stood transfixed in a steady gaze, my lips trembling, and my jaws clasping.
They began to address me in familiar but ancient Igbo dialects. The leader spoke to me in a thunderous but soft and reassuring voice. His voice was unmistakably strong, and his face had a mixed expression of calmness, breaking his speech with a slight smile that exposed his clean and well-arranged set of pure white teeth. I was very attentive, even as my entire core was trembling not from the freezing winter temperature, but from being in the presence of my ancestors standing before our legends, and our pride and joy.
He began: “Nwam nwoke, ibia? Chukwu gozie gi”
– My son, you came? God bless you.
“Keda ka uno di? Asi na AnaIgbo ekpugo iru na ani”
– How is home? They say that Igboland has been destroyed.
“Unu na egbu onwe unu kaokuku… Obuife anyi ji nwuo … Alu emeee ooo”
– You people are killing each other like chickens… Is this what we died for… abomination …”
As he spoke, tears began to stream from his eyes, and I may have seen fumes of smoke coming out of his huge nostrils. He spoke for a long duration, lamenting the calamities that have befallen the Igbo mostly self-inflicted. I was so frightened to speak. I hung my head very low and avoided making any sustained eye contact with the Igbo leader by the shores of the powerful Atlantic Ocean. Our ancestors took turns in delivering valuable messages to the world, and to our people at home. They said much more, in some sort of je ne sais quoi; in inexplicable, indefinable and ineffable words so difficult to put into writing.
As I attempt to personalize the larger story of The Igbo Landing through my individual experiences, I have entered transformative eye opening and gut-wrenching conversations that will hopefully recall the horrors and sheer magnitude of the injustices of oppression be it in St. Simons Island or in Awka, Nigeria.
I was immersed in my dream with my trembling becoming more of a quake, accelerating with each word that my ancestors spoke. At that point, I began to wonder why these ghosts chose me as a messenger for their address of the many spectra of issues that have bedevilled the world, and particularly the trauma of the Igbo existence. Then, suddenly, from the back of the river rose a voice from a younger ghost who appeared to be the scribe of the group. He was a huge but well chiselled man with his entire face covered in a bushy beard. His eyes were bloodshot red, and with his long strong arms, he held up what appeared like a stone tablet from which he read out a long list of their communique to the world and Ndigbo. I instantly began to take mental note of the very perfectly articulated message that helped me not only to decolonize my mind, soul and body, but brought me to a deeper level of how I must be motivated to work for the demise of evil in this world. As I listened to the long catalogue of our problems, especially those of the Igbo in the present-day Nigeria from this scribe, whom I have now named Ojelilgbo Ozi, I found in his message, the decadence that has enveloped our people. I was enraged but I found in the rage and fierce anger, a healing source of love, strength and hope, and a catalyst for positive change and healing in our home.
All of a sudden, my dream that had lasted for many hours began to end. The Igbo ghosts of St. Simons Island had finished with me, and they turned their backs to me, and began to return to the water in slow, but measured gait, singing in loud sweet melodies of songs in Igbo that l have never heard before. l then noticed that all their backs were lacerated with swellings that came from the whippings received from the sharp and strong horsewhips, and the painful floggings they received from their wicked white slave owners. The deep wounds may have healed, but they left scarred evidence of the horror inflicted by our fellow humans on us. Crying, I was jolted out of my bed that has now been drenched in tears and cold sweat in a bloody cold Georgia winter night.
*Okey Anueyiagu, a Professor of Political Economy, Is the Author of Biafra, The Horrors of War, The Story of a Child Soldier*
