The Masquerades

The children start running at the clacking of hard seed pods from the road.

The men pause in their conversations. The women suspend their wooden spoons over the soup they are stirring to keep it from spoiling and lift the pots off the fire.

I join the adults who are gathering in front of our house in Nanka, my husband’s village. We have finished our lunch of rice, plantain, and chicken stew. It is New Year’s Day and the masquerades are coming. I spot our two older children nearby, but Sam, the youngest at 15, is nowhere to be seen.

I love the Igbo word for masquerade, mmo. And I love knowing that every time we are in the village for the Christmas holidays, the masquerades will appear on New Year’s Day.

The bolder children run toward the gate, while adults cluster, talking in soft voices. My husband who has been napping upstairs comes down and reminds me to get Naira notes to have ready. “You need plenty of fifty and hundred Naira bills, nothing larger,” he says, as if I haven’t done this dozens of times before.

When I come back downstairs with my cache of notes in my pocket, the first masquerade has entered our compound. One of his followers plays an Igbo flute producing a melodic woody sound.

My eyes are on the masquerade as he moves forward with rapid steps, his body covered head to toe in faded dark blue rough-woven cotton fabric. His wooden mask is a dusty red, with a black chevron design surrounding small eye holes. Rows of yellow lines outline the eyes and indicate a nose and mouth. Long feathers protrude from the top of the mask. On his legs and around his waist he wears raffia bands with the rattles attached.

The adults move back, the women cowering behind the posts on our front veranda, as he comes toward us. Suddenly he leaps in the air and turns away, then turns swiftly and advances again, each step resonant with the rattles. His followers wave their whips, just missing the children hovering nearby.

He pauses, legs apart, and calls out in a high-pitched reedy mmo voice, “Mama Chinaku.” I realize my husband is trembling with fear. I move forward, though he tries to pull me back. “Show respect; don’t look at him directly,” my husband whispers as he realizes I’m not hesitating.

He is not alone in his dread. The obvious fright always surprises me. Surely the adults know these are just young men we see every day. Maybe it’s the whip, which can slash fiercely. But I think there is a more visceral fear, the childhood memory of being told these were spirits. And grown-ups used masquerades as threats.

I walk to a spot a few feet in front of the masquerade, my eyes on the ground. I bow my head, and say, “Mmo,” the way I have been told I must address him. He turns and moves around the compound in rhythm to the flute for several minutes, varying his stride between long steps and short jumps, while we watch his every move. He stops in front of me and again I bow and mutter, “Mmo.”

One of his followers approaches, whip held high, and holds out a raffia fan. As I look up to place a hundred Naira note on the fan, I see it is Sam. He tries to stifle a grin but can’t stop himself from enjoying my sudden recognition that he has been allowed to be a helper to the masquerade. He lowers his whip, pulls back the fan with the Naira note, and turns abruptly to follow the parade out of our compound and down the road, the sound echoing and finally fading away.

I was singled out by the mmo because I am a noticeable outsider – the only white person for miles around. Everyone knows who I am, and everyone knows I like Igbo customs and traditions. And perhaps the mmo thought I would be more generous than others!

Masquerades are a fundamental part of Igbo culture. They are members of secret societies, with the membership known only to them, and appear during the New Yam Festival, at New Year’s holidays, and often at funerals.

They are said to emerge from a hole in the ground.  They form the link between the world of the spirits and the humans. Women are not supposed to look at them directly. My husband even as a grown-up does like to get too close to a masquerade and cautioned our children, when they were little, not to approach.

On another occasion a masquerade was in our compound stamping around and making noise in his mmo voice. He abruptly came near me and spoke quietly in a human voice.  “Do you know who I am?” I recognized Okeke, our cousin from the next compound. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said as he moved away. He need not have worried. I knew that I was privileged to be spoken to and that I was not to reveal his identity.

During 1968, the early part of Nigerian civil war, we lived in the village with my husband’s parents. One night my mother-in-law stopped me as I was going upstairs to bed. “The night masquerades are coming,” she said. “Do not show any light when they approach.” Since we had no electricity in our house at the time, I told her I wouldn’t. But she still said, “Don’t use your torch. Don’t try to look at them.”

I heard them coming sometime after midnight. The familiar rattle of the seed pods was accompanied by a flute and drums. Soon I heard their eerie voices calling my name. I didn’t look out while they were below my window, but I did dare to peek as their sound receded. In the blackness I could see nothing.

Many Igbo traditions and customs have faded through the years. No one goes to the village shrine today; it fell into disrepair a few years ago and has been removed. Few people consult a dibia or shaman. Polygamy is less common.

Some customs were opposed by the British colonizers, missionaries, and teachers. Others have become less relevant with modern life. But I hope the masquerades will remain forever.

I want to see the masks, hear the rattling seed-pods, and see people run next time we are in the village for New Years.