I always have been interested in cultures around the world, especially the ones who are very different from our
own culture. That’s why when in the Literature class the teacher talked about
the book Things Fall Apart, I put my eyes on the Igbo tribe in order to know more
about it.
The Igbo tribe is a one of the three ethnic
groups from Nigeria in Africa, Chinua referred to them as “ibos” because that
is how they called before the colonial period, but today they are
called “igbo”.
In the sense of religion, they a polytheists and believe in reincarnation as transition of life. Also, they have many rituals leaded by priests and priestesses and as we saw in class, they strongly believe that life is controlled by a power they call "Chi", in order to predict the future or the destiny of a member.
In the sense of religion, they a polytheists and believe in reincarnation as transition of life. Also, they have many rituals leaded by priests and priestesses and as we saw in class, they strongly believe that life is controlled by a power they call "Chi", in order to predict the future or the destiny of a member.
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| "Igbo Drummers" (1999) by Bode Fowotade |
One of the aspects of their culture that call
my attention is that as they live in villages, there no exists a king or a
ruler that controls the tribe, because all the decisions are made by all the
members of the community even if there are groups of elder people as a council
or women groups, because they believe in the individual actions as part of a
community.
This sense of community is shown in Things Fall Apart, when Okonkwo is exiled when he didn’t respect the rules and
traditions of the tribe in order to keep the harmony of the community and the peace
between their members.
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| "Igbo dancers" Africa painting |
In my opinion this sense of community have been
changed since the British colony colonized Nigeria, because as one of my
classmate posted before, even if the woman role before the colony was shown as weak,
women were important in Igbo religion and procreation for the community, but
after they were colonized until today, women have to study “womanly” subjects
in school in order to being under the man control, they also are treated as slaves and considered second-class citizens. That's the reason why I think that the Igbo community broke up in part when the
white men came and settled their ideas.
I totally agree with you, Valentina, since as you well explained I also believe that the Igbo culture was highly affected by the colonialism. To start with, they were grouped together with the other two ethnic communities, the Hausa and Yoruba culture by the European colonizers and missionaries in order to form Nigeria, and that led to a deeper and stronger feeling of belonging to each one of the cultures which caused a civil war between them since they want independence since they felt identify with their own culture not with the other two. Secondly, the Igbo culture had to end their decentralized system and they were forced to set up a new system with an Eze, a sort of traditional rulers. Finally, their living conditions changed and they passed from constructing houses of mud and tatched roofs to cement blocks and zinc, loosing their taditions in terms of architecture and how they managed to built up their houses with their own hand, therefore and because of all those facts, I strongly believe that the imperialism and colonization changed the sense of community of the Igbo culture in a wide range of aspects.
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