THE WAY WE WERE

 

In Alayi tradition, Ihe ngwoha is defined as a gift from a teenager to his parents. It is a teenager’s expression of love and appreciation. Like much of our tradition, Ihe ngwoha is an aspect of our culture designed to teach a child the discipline for managing money and the responsibilities of earning a living. This tradition allows a teenager an opportunity to earn and keep his money for a period of one year, However, from the income he earns by performing odd jobs outside the family, he is expected to secretly save a portion of it to give to his parents as a gift at a specific time in the year, usually during the New Yam Festival.

 

In our culture, the yardstick for measuring a child’s character is very long. A good child must respect and greet his parents and his elders. He must show appreciation anytime he receives anything from his parents or from an outsider. He must be sincere in all his dealings. He must be willing to run errands for anyone who is his senior, especially the elders. He must not be engaged in any shouting match with his parents nor with anyone older than him outside the family. He must not be a thief. His respect for the elders is not only measured by his responsive ability to run errands for them, but also by the expression on his face each time he is asked to do something.

 

In our tradition, a teenager can earn money by doing many things, especially by performing tasks considered to be either too hard for an older person or services that females are prohibited from doing, such as climbing and harvesting palm fruits. However, our tradition has a set of rules and standards governing how a teenager or any person performing climbing-related services should be compensated for jobs like wine tapping of raffia palms and the harvesting of other tree bearing fruits. For example, the climbing of the following tree-bearing fruits does not earn a person money; instead, the climber will receive a proportionate share which he has an option of selling to raise money: Akibekee [coconut], Ujiri [orange], Mmimi [pepper-fruit or pepper kola], Oji [kola nut], Ochicha, Ukpakiri, Akwofo, Ukpa and others. But a raffia wine taper gets one day’s worth of wine in a week. The only climber who gets paid is a palm tree harvester. Ikpata-aki [kernel searching] is a process in which a teenager searches a palm plantation for fallen fruits, which he gathers, processes and sells. Other jobs which teenagers can do to earn money are: Igbaonya [trap setting or trapping animals] and Nta Oru [job hunting or searching].

 

Of all the odd jobs available when I was a youth, the one that I liked most was Nta Oru. Before the influx in the late fifties of Nde Ogu-ukwu/Mpakwu [immigrant farm workers], a person could earn as much as fifteen shillings for a day’s work. I like Nta Oru because it offered an opportunity for competition among teenaged boys and girls. It was a means of displaying strength among the youths. The strongest always received the lion’s share. But most of all, Nta Oru is designed to teach teenagers our traditional methods of farming, while at the same time being rewarded with pay.

 

This is how it worked: Teenagers, usually friends, formed a team of three or four for job hunting. It was the responsibility and the obligation of each person to obtain permission from his parents to go for job hunting. Each teenager had to have his hoe and machete sharpened. On the day of Nta Oru, we would leave our homes very early in the morning, at about six o’clock. We would meet and decide which farm location to go to for job hunting. Upon arriving at the desired farm, we would announce our presence by shouting the signature tune of Nta Oru, Okokoroé onye siri koru ya? While alternating the signature tune to Oru ego onye siri koru ya [work for fee, who needs a worker]? At this time any person who needs a worker or workers will respond by calling out Onye Nta Oru bia woo [job hunter, come]. Upon arriving, the price will be discussed, although the condition of the soil must be taken into consideration: the general rule for pricing was based on how many individual mounds a person would have to make for one shilling. During a full day’s work, our tradition mandated that employer of a farm worker must provide three meals to the employee: breakfast, lunch and dinner. In a case where the worker is from a different town or distant village, the employer must provide him with food to be cooked at home. To make a mound for planting yams, we must dig with our hoes a hole that was almost sixteen inches in circumference by nine inches deep, which was then covered with eighteen inches of soil. In those days, 100 mounds were made for four or five British shillings. Sometimes we would work from seven in the morning until nine o’clock, before having a breakfast of food brought from home by the farm owner, usually Utara akpu [cassava foo-foo]. For lunch we were treated with roasted yams with manu la Utazi [palm oil and bitter leaf stew]. At about two o’clock in the afternoon we were served with boiled yams with any of our numerous traditional stews or gravies.

 

At the end of a working day the mounds are counted. Counting mounds is tricky, because the farm field looked like a giant checkerboard and confuses the eyes, thus making counting difficult. To count mounds, our tradition devised a method of using one hundred cut pieces of palm fronds to pin on top of each mound, thereby  obtaining its total. We would walk down to the valley and have a bath in a small creek flowing along the farm’s edge, sometimes stopping on our way home to swim in the stream.

 

Sometimes we were paid on the spot at the farm; other times we would visit the farm owner’s home on a market day to collect our money. Although we traveled as a team while hunting for jobs, each one was independent: worked separately and only got paid for how many individual mounds he was able to make.

 

The portion of my earnings intended for savings was always given to my grandmother for safekeeping. On the eve of Ihe Ngwoha night, grandmother would call me to her house where she would bring out an old hairscarf knotted in segments, each knot containing an amount that I had given her to keep. As she held the hairscarf in front of me, she would count the knots and say “son, this is how many times you gave me money to keep for you.” She loosened a knot and counted the amount that it contained. After untying and counting each knot she would come up with the total sum and asked me to double count. Grandmother then asked me how I would like the money to be divided between my father and my mother. I replied, one half to my father and one half to my mother. She congratulated me and shook my hand. On Ihe Ngwoha day, she presented the money to my parents according to my instructions.