A Tree’s Tongue

“A Tree’s Tongue” is part of the collection Indigenizing What It Means to Be Human. Read the introduction to the collection here.
Chorus of our forebears
In the ground
Speaking with one voice through the Ogbodu tree
[1]
[1]
Ogbodu is a village in the Eha-Alumona clan of the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria. In October 2020, there was the news that a tree that had previously fallen and a large portion of its trunk sawed off rose again without any human effort. The tree is a short drive from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where I work. One of the graduate students in the sociology and anthropology department who hails from the town took me to the site of the event. I interviewed the oldest man in the community who, in this gerontocratic system, is at once the priest and leader in customary matters. I also interviewed eyewitnesses and took photographs. At a later date, when the community held a feast on the event, they invited me, and I went with some of my graduate students. The tree is of the populous Ficus genus and is called ọjẹ [ɔ̀dʒɛ̀] in the dialect of Igbo language spoken in Ogbodu. I sought the help of botanists at the university, but they have not been able to identify this particular species that can grow to an impressive size.
Using a writing coded in action nem. con.
[2]
[2]
Nem. con. is short for nemine contradicente, a Latin fixed phrase meaning “no one contradicting.”
Bidding those who are literate
In their sacred song: “Tell them,
‘We sure shall rise again;
As Mzee spake,
We shall rise again.’”
[3]
[3]
Mzee is Swahili for the “old man,” but Kenyans use the term to reverently refer to their former president, Jomo Kenyatta. Kenyatta, also a social anthropologist, had in his magnum opus on his Native Gikuyu (or Kikuyu) written, in anticipation of the African traditional religious rebound, “[T]he dead, the living, and the unborn will unite to rebuild the destroyed shrines.”
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You may republish this article, either online and/or in print, under the Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 license. We ask that you follow these simple guidelines to comply with the requirements of the license.
In short, you may not make edits beyond minor stylistic changes, and you must credit the author and note that the article was originally published on SAPIENS.
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