A Tree’s Tongue

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.”