Would You Eat Kola Nuts Blessed and Broken by a Woman?

[Okey Iheduru]

I just finished teaching "Women and Politics in Contemporary Africa" as part of my African Politics and Society course this Spring 2014 semester. Among other things, we watched and debated Chimamanda Adichie's TED Talk, "We Should All Be Feminists" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc). The class had previously read both Achebe's Things Fall Apart and A Man of the People. In the context of the on-going debate/campaigns regarding anti-LGBT laws and and environments in most African countries, you can guess the fun the class has had this semester.

Last night, I read Dr. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's interesting re-statement of long-running scholarly discourses of the power and leadership dynamics in Achebe's Arrow of God that VC Aluko graciously posted on this list.  Suddenly, I woke up this morning from a dream in which a highly accomplished Igbo woman stood up, blessed and broke kola nuts at an Igbo village assembly and everyone ate in silence. As anyone with a faint knowledge of the Igbo knows, this is a NO! NO! In fact, women's gathering would even go to the extent of inviting even a 10-year old boy to break the kola nuts if a much older lad/man is not around. Women simply are not allowed to perform this ritual; not even the most powerful female chiefs that are becoming ubiquitous in Igboland today!

Since then, I've been re-evaluating the main thrust of Ms. Adichie's TED Talk: she offers "solutions" to gender inequality among Igbos, nay in Africa. Adichie shows that people often use culture as an excuse to maintain the status quo; however, she states that culture can change. "Culture does not make people. Rather, people make culture", she quipped. Her solution centers on raising respectable human beings that do not focus on being "manly" or worry about seeming "feminine." By doing so, she argues, we will create a new generation of adults who will respect their female counterparts. This got me thinking: Of what use are changes in socialization practices if the institutions in which these nicely-raised children will operate remain in tact? Is it even possible to "behave well" or respect differences if the institutions that set these expectations give a different mandate? If you ask me, I'll always lean, first, towards changing the property rights regimes that sustain these gendered institutions.

I've therefore posed the following questions, especially to our esteemed Igbo men and women in this and other fora, with the hope that I could be more educated on these conflicting dynamics of Igbo, nay African societies today.

1) For (Igbo) Men: (a) Would you invite a woman in your home or in a formal setting to bless and break kola nuts with men and women present? (b) Would you allow/permit/encourage your wife and/or your daughter(s) to bless and break kola nuts in your home and/or in a formal setting with men and women present? (c) Would you eat kola nuts blessed and broken by a woman?

2) For (Igbo) Women: (a) Would you bless and break kola nuts in your home and/or in a formal setting in which both men and women are present? (b) Would you allow/permit/encourage another woman (including your daughter/s) to bless and break kola nuts at home or in a formal setting where men are present?

Peace as always!

--

Okey Iheduru, PhD
You can access some of my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=2131462.

[kenneth harrow]

thanks okey, for your posting.
a small reflection here: it seems to me that i t isn't simply conscious decisions to change culture that make change happen. there are material conditions that shape or frame or influence, if not determine, cultural change.
think about how our relations, our culture, has changed simply because we use mobile phones? that's the thrust of pius's wonderful piece on his father's palmwine tapper. enormous changes, piece by piece.
i don't see how these customs you evoke won't change as well.
in judaism, when i grew up, women didn't "come to the bima," which means, did not participate in the service.
now we have women rabbis!
this change came quickly, not slowly. many among the orthodox still put the women and children upstairs, at services, apart from the men. but one day their children will read adichie and wonder about the old days; they'll get on their cell phones and text their friends with strange symbols like LOL, or god knows what, and the walls of the old synagogue will become memorials to the past, while new virtual borders will be crisscrossed. adichie speaks of a new day coming. who can doubt it?
ken

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kenneth w. harrow 
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[Abidogun, Jamaine M]

Actually,  here in Nsukka I was with a group of people, Christian and Traditionalists, who discussed this very issue. There was quite a lively conversation as there were some female and male Traditional leaders in the group who said most pointedly that female Traditional leaders often offer kola within their groups and it is not seen as offensive or outside the cultural norm.  I think it depends on where you are at and who you are with. The mainstay maybe male, but Igboland is very diverse, so perhaps we should look at it with open eyes.  Achebe wrote in his day from his view and he was here at Nsukka, but one man cannot be everywhere. He especially cannot be everywhere that women are in Igboland.  Food for thought.

 

Comments offered with kola and palm wine.

 

Jamaine Abidogun

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[Nkolika Ebele]

If today we eat the gizzard which was the preserve of men in Igboland, I do not see the reason why we cannot break the kola nut rule. In fact Kola blessed and broken by a woman may bring more blessings.  The Igbos should learn to improve on the aspect of  their culture that put women down. I remember some years back when Joy Emodi nursed the ambition of becoming the governor of Anambra State, it was rumored that the traditional rulers (Igwes) in Anambra state were opposed to her candidacy because they  will find it difficult to present kolanut to  female governor. Sounds silly but it may have been true.

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From: Okey Iheduru <okeyi...@gmail.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Cc: akw...@gmail.com; "ih...@email.com" <ih...@email.com>; "RNj...@aol.com" <rnj...@aol.com>; Prof. E. Onwudiwe <eonw...@futeliv.com>; obi iheduru <ihe...@gmail.com>; Ezenwa Iheduru <jik...@yahoo.com>; Okezie Iheduru <ihed...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 7, 2014 8:04 AM

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Would You Eat Kola Nuts Blessed and Broken by a Woman?

[Okwy Okeke]

Interesting, the Joy Emordi story, heard a slightly different version - that it would be easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than the Onitsha man (read Uchenna Emordi in 2002/3) or woman to become governor - I suppose that too just got disproved by Obiano's emergence.

Back to the matter of kola-nut breaking etc, I will like to go back to Onwuejiogwu; kola nut breaking is actually the duty of a priest because it does include (maybe not so often these days) offering of a piece to the ancestors, and only priests played that role.

As in most natural orders, alternatives were built into the system - if there is no priest, the next "possible' priest which is usually the oldest man in the assembly. Note that an Ozo man in a gathering will take precedence over an older man because his Ozo oath already made him not just a priest but an ancestor.

Priestesses do break kola nuts just like titled women, and that is not a new practice as it was made out for in the uncomfortable exchanges between Pete Edochie and Chief Edith Ike Mark-Odu several years ago, then they defer to a titled man in the assembly.

The underlining principle here is the nwa-Amadi culture which automatically makes every free-born male (a matter for another day) a priest while remaining silent on the girl child. For this reason every man (the moment he joins the masquerade cult) can offer food to the gods and ancestors and by extension can break the kola nut which is same as leading public prayers/ performing the Christian eucharist, a role still largely closed to women in many if not most Christian denomination, and all Muslim and Judaic sects i know.

The reforms of the 70s that among other things "defanged" the Ozo cult also reformed the breaking of the kola nut to the level of just offering the Lord's prayer over the nuts and you are done. Unfortunately, that reform was carried out by another historical oppressor of the female gender, so until the church, that runs the social lives of that group, elevates the status of women to be equal to men, that public role may remain closed and/or foggy for women.

Will I eat a nut broken by a woman, have I accepted eucharist from a gay female priest,…seriously this is 2014.

Okwy

 

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We face forward,...we face neither East or West: we face forward.......Kwame Nkrumah

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From: Nkolika Ebele <nkol...@yahoo.com>
To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, 11 April 2014, 3:39
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Would You Eat Kola Nuts Blessed and Broken by a Woman?

[Abidogun, Jamaine M]

Yes, exactly my point a priestess would not need a male presence and most men would never be witnessed to it.  So lack of experience is also lack of knowledge in this case.  I was recently at a VC meeting where no women were offered kola nut. This also happened to me in 2004 in a different VC’s meeting. These two occurrences stand out, as I have attended several mixed gender meetings on campus and in the towns where women were offered kola nut and where a female priestess and a female dibia broke kola nut.  I think maybe there is some “big man” syndrome attached to the current issue; i.e. a postmodern imposition of male hierarchy onto a traditionally differentiated gendered practice. 

 

My observations; not enough available data to triangulate this theory.

 

Cheers,

Jamaine