Continuation of Ezeigbo’s Do Not Burn My Bones & Other Stories
By Lechi Eke
Nneka is a student of Birbeck College, University of London. She works part-time at the Institute of Social Work as a receptionist in a public library after the regular workers have left. For two weeks, she notices that when it’s about 8.30pm, an old lady visits her. The first time, she sees her standing in the reception dressed like a Nigerian woman of Igbo extraction. She feels fright.
Stranger than fiction, the old lady says she’s her late aunt. Her name is Uloaku and that she joined her ancestors when Nneka was ten. Nneka is not hallucinating. Someone catches her apparently talking to herself and gives her pitiful glances like she has lost her mind. The following day he asks her with concern if she’s lonely sitting alone in the reception in the evenings. Nneka realises that the ghost of her aunt is only visible to her. The old woman visits Nneka a couple of times.
The ghost desires Nneka to travel to Nigeria, to their hometown in the east and pleads with their people not to harm her remains! She tells Nneka that she’s the only one that can help her because she’s the only one they can listen to.
Nneka gets permission from her boss at the Institute, and without warning her parents, she comes to Lagos. In Nigeria, Nneka’s family wants to burn the bones of her Aunt Uloaku because a cousin says she’s disturbing her. Nneka’s parents are surprised when she reveals why she has come from England. The issue is on their table at the moment and they have not discussed it with anyone.
So, the family travels to their village in the east where Nneka’s uncle (her father’s elder brother) and his family are already waiting with one of the village traditional priests who will perform the rites. Nneka’s uncle’s joy at seeing them turns into anger when Nneka explains her reason for coming home. And in defiance to them, she runs to her aunt’s grave and lays on it declaring that whoever wants to hurt her kind aunt’s bones will kill her first.
Her father’s elder brother is very wroth asking Nneka’s father if it is a conspiracy. But Nneka maintains that her dead aunt was a good woman and doesn’t want to hurt anyone as her uncle’s daughter claims. Nneka offers to sleep with the girl that night to prove it’s all a lie. The priest agrees to let Nneka prove it and leaves.
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Examining Akachi Ezeigbo’s Do Not Burn My Bones, other stories
Nneka sleeps with her cousin who claims their aunt has been attacking her in a dream and wants to kill her. That night, they spend time reflecting over the good times they had with the dead woman as children. Nneka’s cousin at last agrees that it cannot be their aunt that wants to kill her. When they sleep, Nneka dreams of her aunt waving her goodbye with gratitude.
Analysis
These things happen. And they are not hallucinations. Dead people’s ghosts appear to loved ones with a message. But when you truly consider the message, they do not make any sense – a ghost leaves where it was buried and travels through space and time just to tell the living to remove them from where they were buried. Or, take them out of the morgue because it’s very cold, or as in the case study we have at hand, Uloaku, Nneka’s aunt, is demanding that someone in London should travel the distance to Nigeria to stop her family from burning her bones.
My question has always been, if they could leave wherever they are laid to go to some living to complain or make demands, why can’t they move to a more comfortable place? Uloaku can carry her bones with her and relocate, can’t she? I mean, she went to London from Nigeria!
Okay, let’s talk cremation. In Italy, at the height of Covid-19 pandemic, Italians were cremating their dead because they were so many. In the Bible, they cremated some dead including kings. Bible records that they made a great burning for some kings. What about all the cremated dead; are they not resting? Uloaku says, allow her to rest.
Pondering over this situation that we may write off as superstitious belief, I realised that we cannot sweep it under the carpet. Nneka saw the ghost of her aunt, someone she knew when she was younger. Are we going to say she did not see her, that it was all in her head? To crown it all, when she returns to Nigeria and explains why she is back, her parents confirm that the matter is on their table as they speak. These two facts make the story authentic, right?
I have also pondered over what message the author wants to pass to her readers. Is there life after death? Is there a place where dead people live outside this earth and thrive? Does death bequeath supernatural powers on dead men that can enable them to hurt the living?
Nneka’s cousin says she sees her late aunt in her dream disturbing her. For that, the family wants to burn her bones in order to stop her from coming out. But her aunt says it’s not her. And I say, what’s going on? Is it possible for a physical burning of bones to stop a spirit being (someone without tangibility), someone that’s no longer in the ephemeral world?
On page 56, Nneka says, “There’s no fear in love.” This is a Bible quotation from 1John 4:18. I ask, why is the author quoting Bible in a matter the Bible does not support? I know some people will say that King Saul went to consult Prophet Samuel after his death and he gave the king a message. In 1Samuel 28 from verse 7, the witch of Endor brought up an old man, supposedly Samuel, who prophesied to Saul that he and his sons would be with him by tomorrow.
This brings us to the question; do the righteous and sinners go to the same place after death? Samuel died a righteous man; Saul is going to die in disobedience, a sinner. Is it possible that the Being that put together an orderly world would throw them all together into the same place?
My take on this is what the Bible says in Hebrews 9:27: “It’s appointed unto man once to die, after that judgement.” Does this not follow that dead people are waiting in the place where they will be judged? And from what the Bible says, it is not an enjoyable place for a sinner – they’re in hell – they cannot come out! And I doubt if someone in hell or heaven would be concerned about pieces of bones. Aren’t bones for the material world? Do ghosts that pass through walls and concrete things need bones?
For the righteous, they’re in heaven: they can’t be making random trips to earth either. Both the righteous and the sinners seem to be held where they are: they’ve cut ties with the living, with the ephemeral world. They’re in an everlasting place; a place eternal that can never come to an end according to Bible.
Therefore, I strongly believe that what we see in this story and every such claims of the dead appearing, are demonic activities. Demons are fallen angels. They can put on different appearances to appear to the living. Bible says that even Satan masquerades as the angel of light (in pretence, to deceive) in 2 Corinthians 11:14.
These demons that appear in the similitude of the bodies of dead men have a mission. Their mission is to deceive the living into thinking that there’s a form of traffic in the world-after where dead people move about, are endued with power, can harm, or protect the living. Sometimes, you hear people talk about their dead loved ones watching over them as seen in Jude Idada’s Boom Boom. I don’t know where they got this intelligence; certainly not from the Bible. Some people even call on their dead for help in time of need!
Curiously, no Born-Again Christian has ever received any such guests (ghosts in the forms of dead loved ones). Why? This is because the demons know that these set of Christians know the truth. The Bible says in John 8:32 that the truth shall make you free. The Christians know that these are demons, fallen angels whose intent is to cause confusion and turn the living away from believing God. Such Christians will take authority over them and bind them.
So, I don’t know the purpose of this story; the meaning it sells, but in my own little corner as a Christian, I will set the record straight.
So, if the author’s purpose is to establish that there’s life after life, it’s achieved, however, what kind of life? The wrong superstition has to be dispelled by the reviewer: me.
I see in this story that punctuation is taken for granted and paragraphing is not observed in a handful of places. I believe it’s the fault of the editors at the publishing house.
Infidelity in Ezeigbo’s Do Not Burn My Bones and Other Stories (2)
