1
The detachment I felt towards my last name began when I was 13. I was newly admitted into Junior Secondary School. I sat somewhere in front of a classroom with cream-colored walls that peeled in flakes when touched, sardined between students whose faces wore radiant smiles tinged with anxiety. The class was filled with the babble of voices, which immediately dropped into a low hum of panic as a towering lady walked in. She held my gaze and saliva ran down my throat at intervals; before now, I had never seen such a tall, buxom woman before. My name is Miss Ronke, she said. I’ll be your acting form mistress. A few minutes later, she announced the need for a class prefect. At once hands flew above heads, the students’ eyes shimmering with delight in the hope of being selected by the form mistress.
We don’t need just anyone. Only capable hands, she bellowed in a cough-ridden tone, above the rancorous voices of the students. Now, a veil of silence swept over us as she scanned the class. I crumbled into myself—an attempt to escape visibility. She shot a finger in my direction.
Me? I said, feigning ignorance, while trying to steady the drumming in my chest.
Yes, you.
I stood up and almost at the same time, she asked for my name.
Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi, I said. She cocked her eyebrows, and at once I knew she wanted me to repeat it. I did.
You mean Ewa, like beans?
A boisterous laughter erupted among the students.
No, ma. I managed to hold onto myself, cuddling the frayed edge of my nerve, as everything around me kept spiralling into shame.
Then, pronounce it. Her voice bled with impatience.
Because she was so particular about my last name, she made me pronounce it again and again, cutting me off midsentence, and I wondered if these interruptions came from a need to be enlightened or a deliberate attempt to deride the name. To modulate it. To prevail over its natural flow, and make it shrink away from its linguistic order.
Ewa, I said, pronouncing it the way it should be, without modulations, and she looked me over. The corners of her mouth twitched and ridges spread across her forehead; I couldn’t decode their message. Was it contempt or pity that I bore a last name only I could pronounce?
Na wao, she uttered finally. The cape of leadership was placed on my shoulders.
2
Ewa is my last name. A name larger than me. A name whose history predates me, transcending generations before me. I am Ewa, which means “first son,” like Diokpara is used in most Igbo speaking states in the east. I am a young shoot branching off a single root forged by many feet; I am Ewa and my root thrives because of those who came before me, in whose fortified steps I now tread on. Unlike my father, I am Ewa because my grandfather first was. He was a man known for his resilience, his unyielding to the vicissitudes of life no matter how much they wilted him.
Ewa, a disyllabic word, is pronounced with a stress crested on the first letter with the mouth slightly curved, and the next two letters taking a downward journey. Not ẹwa as in beans.
What does it even mean? This sort of question pops up from people each time I say my name. This could happen sometimes on the bus, in church, or at work. And in each instance I make a mental note of my answer and say Beauty. Ewa means beauty. This was what my mother told me, years ago.
There were too many bridges between my father and me. It wasn’t natural for me to sit with him and ask questions that outstripped certain borders, into terrains that permitted intimate conversations. Instead I carried my question to my mother, who proffered only one response. Beauty. It was difficult to tell if she was telling the truth but who was I to challenge her? I was merely a child whose questions were permitted so long as an adult leased enough space for them.
Over the years Ewa has assumed different things. Sometimes it really is like beauty, a garment I wear with raised shoulders. A regalia concealing my insecurities and doubts. Other times it’s phlegm I am eager to spit out and watch wriggle away in the dust, a helpless thing, unshielded from the sun.
3
In the “Calendar and the Clock: the Relevance of Names to African Identity,” Nzube Nlebedim posits that a name goes beyond mere Identification. It makes the man, influences his worldview and to a great extent, his perception of himself.
Growing up, Ewa shaped my existence, altered the lens through which others viewed me. To strangers, I was supposed to embody the kaleidoscopic versions of Ewa, to surrender whatever I was told to them, to accept their narratives. But to my parents I was different. Ewa bred intimacy—which came with a price. It meant shouldering the responsibilities that came with the name, whether I was prepared for them or not. It entailed stretching myself to make room for others, their needs, sometimes, at the expense of mine.
Nzube further places a name on the same scale with the ethereal. He believes a person’s name is as sacred as the God they serve. Where I come from, a name is considered to house both the physical and spiritual forms of a person. And perhaps that’s the reason diverse cultural groups in Africa attach deep spiritual connotations to naming a child.
Afikpo, formally called Ehugbo, is one of the societies in Igbo land with unique names and naming conventions which proposes that a child should have a name before being born.
Child naming in Ehugbo is more than just a ceremonial function but a rite of passage. It’s a connection to the spiritual systems of the land: to give honor to whom honor is due; to recognize the ancestors who are sentinels of the land, whose sacrifices still echo through the ethereal fabric of a name. And I have wrestled with this part, this vast spiritual landscape of a name, and the responsibilities hoisted on it.
4
I was 15 when my brothers and I were initiated into manhood. We arrived in Afikpo for Christmas and nobody asked if we wanted to be initiated or not. I’d like to think that my father and his older (now late) brother prevailed upon us because they were adults. My uncle whispered, It’s a mild process, after I protested and threatened to inform the priest back home in Kogi State.
Nothing that demands shedding of blood, I nugo?
He listed the implications of not being initiated, especially as the Ewa: among my peers, I’d become a nondescript entity, a thing floating off course, a loner whom no body cares about. An outcast.
The sun was gradually sinking into the belly of clouds and the women were forbade to wander the village to avoid being seen by the Igwugwu: a masquerade in thick mass of hair and leaves and bells hanging from tangled ropes that jingled as he scrambled around. I finally succumbed to the pressure. When we arrived at the dibia’s hut we removed our shirts as my father – in obedience to the dibia’s instruction –lifted the rosary slung around my youngest brother’s neck. In the vista of my mind I saw fear in my mother’s eyes, reminding me I was a Christian, a Catholic for that matter, and this whole ritual was wrong. Completely devilish. A hand pinched the veins on my legs and sides, urging me to wriggle away from the tight space and run. Yet I didn’t. I did not want to be seen as a weakling. It was a faux courage; but it was the only means through which I could be accepted by everyone.
5
Throughout my years in secondary school, I loathed my surname. I hated the questions (that did not arise from a need to be educated), the sheer curiosity, when I said my name means beauty. I didn’t know what beauty meant, given my life didn’t radiate so much of it.
With time, I began to parry conversations about my surname, especially the songs that rang through the air during recreational activities. Ewa nah beans o hey, nah beans o ewa. Even though this song was in jest, I couldn’t help but think otherwise; from the smiles stretched across the faces of my classmates each time they stared at me, to the wriggling of their waist in sync with the melody.
6
I come from a religious background. Although Christian, both my paternal and maternal families have their roots in traditions. My paternal grandparents were non-Christians and as such my mother brought Christianity—a religion passed down to her by her mother. Growing up, prayer was a staple of the family. My mother fasted and prayed for everything. She would cast and bind the demons that carried bad luck, her voice razor-sharp, pulling down strong holds and altars that held the destinies of young men in my father’s village. Men who only fed their lust for women and their stomachs.
I read somewhere that a person’s name is a transfer of spiritual realities enshrined within it to that individual. Perhaps this was why mama prayed the way she did. Perhaps that’s the reason she usually calls me by my middle name, Onyebuchi, Who’s God, rather than Ewa. Perhaps she thought by giving voice to this name it would automatically come alive, grow wings, and influence my destiny. Maybe she assumed that Onyebuchi drew me away from my ancestry and shrouded me in God’s light and in the knowledge of him.
With time I inherited my mother’s fear. I sought to alienate myself from my root. I was ashamed of Ewa, of allowing it to escape my lips. On campus, I was Gerald. Not Onyebuchi or Ewa.
All of a sudden we stopped spending our Christmas at the village and I was glad because I was scared of the ancient buildings with their rust-colored roofs, the many branchless trees standing in every compound, wound by white ropes and ọmu nkwu, the masquerades drunk with excitement, the rituals accompanying many of their festivals. I didn’t want to attach myself to cousins, aunties, and uncles I had no deep affiliations with.
7
The previous Christmas, my family and I were at the village and I could not find my way around. Ehugbo had refused to come on board the train of change and development. The junctions where roads connected to themselves were inches away from the closely-knitted houses. The trees were the same: some full, others naked and without leaves, their waists roped with ọmu nkwu. In the morning, the harmattan haze stung our noses, a welcome note to me—a sojourner who had at last found his way back home. The sun only crawled out of the clouds in the afternoon. Following my father’s instructions, I attended an age grade meeting. I arrived at the meeting venue and was immediately greeted by voices trying to out shout the other. After registration, there was a hammering in my chest, the voice in my head trying to invalidate my presence. I stepped forward to introduce myself before everyone.
Ọhụ unu kaa!
I stared at them, checking their faces for nonchalance or disgust. They began to murmur, and I thought that was the end, but they broke out in unison: Ha! Jokwaa! Welcome.
I sat down and didn’t feel the squirming in my chest. A wave of calm rushed through me. Maybe this had something to do with the decision I had made some time ago: to stop fighting my roots. Maybe it’s because I was finally home: to the earth which had housed the bodies of my ancestors. Men and women I may never know, but whose names are encoded in the loins of the land; whose spirits watch over me and lead the way through the convoluted pathways of life.
8
Sometimes fear and doubt still ripple through me, and attempt to shrivel my conviction in Ewa, to call it dirty and ungodly and disentangle myself from it. But again and again, I wrestle with the thought until I subdue it. Ewa is loosely translated as brave warrior. I constantly remind myself of this.
I am Ewa!
I am a brave warrior!
I am a brave warrior!
I wield Ewa as a shield against the arrows of prejudice, knowing I hail from a long line of warriors, brave men, whose backs do not give in to the growl of the wind. When I write my bio, it’s not in this format: Gerald Ewa. Not Gerald Onyebuchi Ewa. Not in a way that relegates my ancestors to the shadows. Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi is my name, and I am unafraid to wave it around like a flag because it’s my identity and I am proud of it.
EWA GERALD ONYEBUCHI is an Igbo storyteller from Nigeria. He writes short stories, essays and poems with special interest in feminism, sexuality, queerness and religion. He has been published in Decolonial Passage, Isele, Brittle paper, afritondo, Uncanny and elsewhere.
TODDY HOARE is trained as a sculptor, served as a soldier, spent 25 years as stipendiary rural parish priest in North Yorkshire, retired and retrieved pen to write poetry reflecting on experiences, scripture, theology, events, and about his sculptures over the years based on theological reflection.
