Chapter 3 three

Okonkwo did not have the starting point in life that young people usually have.He did not inherit a warehouse from his father, because there was no warehouse to inherit.In Umm Ofia there is a legend that his father Unoka once went to the god of hills and caves to know why his harvests were so often bad. The name of this god was Agbala, and people from far and near came to him.When calamity after calamity befalls them, or when they quarrel with their neighbors, they come to Him.They also come to him for a foretelling of the future, or to pray to the spirits of their dead ancestors. The entrance of the shrine is a round hole on the side of the mountain, only slightly larger than the hole of the chicken coop.Those who come to worship and those who pray to God will crawl into the hole, and then come to a dark and endless place, and Agbala is here.No one ever saw Him except the priestesses of Agbara.But all those who have climbed into that dreadful temple came out without fear of his power.The priestess lit a fire in the middle of the cave, and she stood beside the fire and announced the will of the gods.The fire did not burst into flames.The burning logs could only vaguely reveal the swarthy figure of the priestess.

Sometimes, someone comes to ask the spirit of his dead ancestor or relative for guidance.It is said that when the spirit appears, the person can see it dimly in the dark, but cannot hear its voice.Some people even said that they heard the sound of wings flapping the ceiling of the cave when the spirit came. Many years ago, when Okonkwo was a boy, his father, Unoka, had gone to Agbala for advice.The priestess at that time was a woman named Sheka.She is full of the power of God, and people are afraid of her.Unoka came up to her and began to tell his story. Every year, he said sadly, I give a rooster to Arnie, the owner of all the land, before the crops are planted in the fields.This is the rule of our parents.I also slaughtered a rooster in the shrine of the cassava god Ifgeoku.I cut down the undergrowth, dried it, and set it on fire.After the first rain, I planted cassava.When the tender seedlings grew, I put up stakes to support them.i hoeed the weeds

shut up!cried the priestess sharply, the voice echoing in the darkness of the void, terribly, you have offended neither gods nor your father.As long as a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest depends on the strength of his arms.Throughout the clan, your Unoka's machete and shovel are known to be weak.When your neighbors go out to cut down the primeval forest with axes, you plant cassava on barren land where you don't have to work hard to open up wasteland.They crossed the Qidao River to farm, but you stayed at home and offered sacrifices to the land that would not have a good harvest.Go back and go to work like a man.

Unoka was an unfortunate man, he had a very bad Patronus, and bad luck followed him to his grave, or rather, to his death, for he had no grave.He died of bulging disease, which is a kind of blasphemy to the mother earth.A man is not allowed to die in a house with a sickly stomach and swollen limbs.They carried him to the fierce forest and let him die there.It is said that there was a very stubborn patient who staggered back to his home, and people had to carry him to the fierce forest and tie him to a tree trunk.The disease is a desecration of the earth, so one cannot bury the stomach of the victim.After his death, let him rot on the ground, and you cannot give him a first burial or a second burial.Such was Unoka's fate.He still had his flute with him when they carried him away.

With a father like Unoka's, Okonkwo did not have the kind of start in life that many young people have.He had inherited neither a warehouse nor a title, not even a young wife.But despite these disadvantages, he had begun to lay the foundations for his own prosperity even before his father's lifetime.It's slow and painful.But he went all out like a maniac.Indeed, the dread of his father's despicable life and ignominious death had indeed possessed him. In the village of Okonkwo, there was a very rich man who had three big storehouses, nine wives, and thirty children.His name was Nwakibi, and he had all the titles available to a man of the clan except the highest title.Okonkwo came to this man in order to get his first batch of cassava seeds.

He brought a jug of toddy and a rooster to Nwakibi, and invited two of his elderly neighbors.Nwakibi's two grown sons are also in his main house.Okonkwo took out a kola fruit and a bit of pepper, passed them around, and returned them to him.He opened the kola fruit and said: We shall all live.We pray for long life, many children, good harvests and happiness.You can get good things, and I can get good things too.Let goshawks perch, and egrets perch.If this one says no to that, let it break its wings. After eating the kola fruit, Okonkwo fetched the palm wine he had kept in the corner of the room and placed it among the crowd.He then spoke to Nwakibi, calling him our father.

Enna｜Ayi (our father), he said, I bring you this little kola fruit.Our people often say that to show respect to a great man is to pave the way for one's own greatness.I have come to salute you and ask you to grant me your favor.Let's have a drink first. Everyone thanked Okonkwo, and the neighbors took their drinking horns from the sheepskin bags they had brought.Nwakibi also removed his own horn, which was fastened to the rafters.His second son, the youngest of the group, put the jug on his left knee and began pouring, the first glass being given to Okonkwo, who was supposed to taste himself before anyone else drank the wine of the elders, and then the rest; the oldest drink first.After everyone had drunk two or three horns, Nwakibi sent for his wives.Several wives were away, so only four came.

Is Annecy not home?Nwakibi asked them.They replied that she would be right there.Anansi was his first wife, and the other wives were not allowed to drink before her, so they all stood and waited. Anansi was a middle-aged woman, tall and strong.She was very dignified in her appearance and carried herself like the most powerful woman in a large and prosperous family.She wears an anklet bearing her husband's title, which only first wives can wear. She walked up to her husband, took the horn from his hand, knelt on one knee, took a sip of wine, then returned the glass to him, stood up, called his name, and went back to her own room. to go.The other wives in turn drank like this and left.

So the men continued drinking and chatting.Ogbu Effie.Idigo spoke of Obiako, a palm wine harvester who had recently quit the trade. There must be some reason for this, he said while wiping the wine foam off his beard with the back of his left hand, there must be some reason for this.Toads jump around during the day, not without reason. Some say that God warned him that he was going to fall from a palm tree and die.Akukaria said. Obiako was always an odd guy, said Nwakibi, and I heard that many years ago, not long after his father died, he went to pray to God.God said to him: Your dead father wants you to offer him a goat.How do you think he answered God?He said: "Ask my dead father if he ever had a poultry when he was alive.Everyone laughed, except Okonkwo who laughed reluctantly, because, as the saying goes, old women feel uncomfortable when dry bones are mentioned in aphorisms.Okonkwo thought of his own father.

In the end, the young man who was pouring the wine held up the milk white wine dregs with a thick half horn and said: We are done eating.Everyone replied: We have all seen it.The young man asked again: Who will drink the dregs of this wine?Whoever is working gets the drink, Idigo said, winking mischievously at Nwakibi's eldest son, Igwilo. Everyone agrees that Igvilo should drink the scum.He took the half horn wine from his younger brother and drank it all in one gulp.As Idigo said, Igweilo is working. He just married his first wife a month or two ago.The thick dregs of palm wine are thought to be good for a man in contact with his wife.

After drinking, Okonkwo stated his difficulties to Nwakibi. I have come to you for help, he said, and you may have guessed what it is.I have cleared a field but no cassava seeds.I know what it's like to ask one person to lend another person his cassava, especially today when young people are afraid of hard work.I am not afraid of labor.The lizard jumped from the tall Iloco tree to the ground and said that if others do not praise it, it will praise itself.At an age when many people are still breastfeeding from their mothers, I have begun to take care of myself.If you will give me some cassava seeds, I will not disappoint you. Nwakibi cleared his throat.Today, our youth are all weak, and it makes me happy to see young people like you.Many young people came to me asking for cassava, but I refused because I knew they would just dump it on the ground and let the weeds choke it off.I said no to them, and they thought I was too hard-hearted.But I am not.There is a bird named Inaki, who said that since people learn to shoot without fail, it learns to fly for a long time.I have learned to be stingy with my cassava, but I can trust you.That's what I thought when I saw your face.As our fathers said, you can recognize a ripe grain just by looking at it.I will give you eight hundred cassava.Go to work and prepare your fields. Okonkwo thanked him repeatedly and returned home happily.He knew that Nwakibi would not refuse him, but he did not expect him to be so generous.He didn't expect to get more cassava seeds than four hundred.Now he needs to work a bigger field.He hoped to get four hundred more cassava from a friend of his father's in Yixin Wushao. To build your own warehouse, renting fields and farming is a slow way.After all the hard work, what I get is only one-third of the harvest.But for a young man, since his father has no cassava, he has no other choice but to rent a field and cultivate it.To make matters worse in Okonkwo's case, he had to support his mother and two younger sisters with his meager harvest.Supporting his mother means supporting his father.She cannot be expected to just cook for herself while her husband starves.In this way, when Okonkwo was very young, he rented someone's land and desperately tried to build his own warehouse, but at the same time he had to support his father's family.It's like pouring grain into a sack full of holes.His mother and sister worked hard, too, but they grew women's crops, such as cacao cassava, beans and cassava. 】such as.Cassava, the king of the valley, is a manly crop. The year Okonkwo borrowed eight hundred cassava seeds from Nwakibi was the worst year in living memory.Everything came at the wrong time.It's either too early or too late.The world seems to have gone mad.The first rain came too late and stopped after a short while.The sun was burning like never before, scorching the little shallots that appeared after the rain.The land scorched the planted cassava like hot coals.Okonkwo, like all good farmers, started planting at the first rains.By the time the rain stopped and the sun rose, he had planted four hundred cassava seeds.He watched the sky all day, looking forward to the appearance of dark clouds, and could not sleep at night.Early in the morning, he came to his field and saw that the cassava shoots had turned yellow.He used the thick leaves of sisal to make rings around the shoots, trying to protect them from the baking of the earth.But in the evening, the circles of sisal leaves are also dried and turned yellow.He changes new leaves every day and prays for rain at night.But the drought lasted for eight market weeks, and the cassava died. Some farmers have not yet planted their cassava.They're lazy, so-so, and they don't plow as long as they can.This year, they became smart people.They shook their heads in sympathy for their neighbors, and secretly thanked themselves for their foresight. When it finally rained again, Okonkwo planted the rest of the cassava seeds.He takes comfort in the fact that the cassava he planted before the drought was his own, from the previous year's harvest.Now he still has 800 cassava he borrowed from Nwakibi and 400 cassava from his father's friend.This way he can start over. But this year was really crazy. It rained, but I have never seen such rain.Day and night, the rain poured down, washing away the piles of cassava.Trees were uprooted and there were deep trenches everywhere.Later, although the rain weakened, it continued to fall day after day.The bursts of sunlight that usually occur during the rainy season did not appear.The cassava is covered in brilliant green leaves, but the farmers know that the tubers cannot grow without sunlight. The harvest that year was as sad as a funeral, and many farmers shed tears when digging up the rotten cassava that looked sad.A man tied his clothes to a branch and hanged himself. For the rest of his life, Okonkwo could not help but shudder whenever he thought of this tragic year.Whenever he later thought that he had not sunk into the abyss of despair, he was also a little surprised.He believed he was a strong warrior, but that year, the lion was also heartbroken. He often said: Since I survived that year, I can survive no matter what I encounter.He believed it depended on his indomitable will. His father, Unoka, was already very ill by then, and when the sad harvest came, he told Okonkwo: Don't despair.I know you won't be disappointed.You have a brave and proud heart.A proud heart can withstand a general defeat, because such a defeat does not sting its pride.It is more painful and unbearable when a person suffers failure alone. Thus Unoka spent his later years.The older he gets and the sicker he is, the more he loves to nag.Okonkwo bore him to death.