Dead Men’s Path

https://www.mediafire.com/download/ex…_Mens_Path.rar

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Michael Obi’s hopes were fulfilled much earlier than he had expected. He was
appointed headmaster of Ndume Central School in January 1949. It had always
been an unprogressive school, so the Mission authorities decided to send a
young and energetic man to run it. Obi accepted this responsibility with enthusiasm.
He had many wonderful ideas and this was an opportunity to put them
into practice. He had had sound secondary school education which designated
him a "pivotal teacher" in the official records and set him apart from the other
headmasters in the mission field. He was outspoken in his condemnation of the
narrow views of these older and often lesseducated
ones.
"We shall make a good job of it, shan’t we?" he asked his young wife when
they first heard the joyful news of his promotion.
"We shall do our best," she replied. "We shall have such beautiful gardens
and everything will be just modern and delightful . . . " In their two years of
married life she had become completely infected by his passion for "modern
methods" and his denigration of "these old and superannuated people in the
teaching field who would be better employed as traders in the Onitsha market."
She began to see herself already as the admired wife of the young headmaster,
the queen of the school.
The wives of the other teachers would envy her position. She would set
the fashion in everything . . . Then, suddenly, it occurred to her that there
might not be other wives. Wavering between hope and fear, she asked her
husband, looking anxiously at him.
"All our colleagues are young and unmarried," he said with enthusiasm
which for once she did not share. "Which is a good thing," he continued.
"Why?"
"Why? They will give all their time and energy to the school."
Nancy was downcast. For a few minutes she became skeptical about the
new school; but it was only for a few minutes. Her little personal misfortune
could not blind her to her husband’s happy prospects. She looked at him as he
sat folded up in a chair. He was stoopshouldered
and looked frail. But he
sometimes surprised people with sudden bursts of physical energy. In his present
posture, however, all his bodily strength seemed to have retired behind
his deepset
eyes, giving them an extraordinary power of penetration. He was
only twentysix,
but looked thirty or more. On the whole, he was not unhandsome.
"A penny for your thoughts, Mike," said Nancy after a while, imitating
the woman’s magazine she read.
"I was thinking what a grand opportunity we’ve got at last to show these
people how a school should be run."
Ndume School was backward in every sense of the word. Mr. Obi put his
whole life into the work, and his wife hers too. He had two aims. A high standard
of teaching was insisted upon, and the school compound was to be
turned into a place of beauty. Nancy’s dreamgardens
came to life with the
coming of the rains, and blossomed. Beautiful hibiscus and allamanda hedges
in brilliant red and yellow marked out the carefully tended school compound
from the rank neighborhood bushes.
One evening as Obi was admiring his work he was scandalized to see an
old woman from the village hobble right across the compound, through a
marigold flowerbed
and the hedges. On going up there he found faint signs
of an almost disused Path from the village across the school compound to the
bush on the other side.
"It amazes me," said Obi to one of his teachers who had been three years
in the school, "that you people allowed the villagers to make use of this footpath.
It is simply incredible." He shook his head.
"The path," said the teacher apologetically, "appears to be very important
to them. Although it is hardly used, it connects the village shrine with
their place of burial."
"And what has that got to do with the school?" asked the headmaster.
"Well, I don’t know," replied the other with a shrug of the shoulders.
"But I remember there was a big row some time ago when we attempted to
close it."
"That was some time ago. But it will not be used now," said Obi as he
walked away. "What will the Government Education Officer think of this
when he comes to inspect the school next week? The villagers might, for all I
know, decide to use the schoolroom for a pagan ritual during the inspection."
Heavy sticks were planted closely across the Path at the two places where
it entered and left the school premises. These were further strengthened with
barbed wire.
Three days later the village priest of Ani called on the headmaster. He was
an old man and walked with a slight stoop. He carried a stout walkingstick
which he usually tapped on the floor, by way of emphasis, each time he made
a new point in his argument.
"I have heard," he said after the usual exchange of cordialities, "that our
ancestral footpath has recently been closed . . . "
"Yes," replied Mr. Obi. "We cannot allow people to make a highway of
our school compound."
"Look here, my son," said the priest bringing down his walkingstick,
"this Path was here before you were born and before your father was born. The
whole life of this village depends on it. Our Dead relatives depart by it and our
ancestors visit us by it. But most important, it is the Path of children coming
in to be born . . . "
Mr. Obi listened with a satisfied smile on his face.
"The whole purpose of our school," he said finally, "is to eradicate just
such beliefs as that. Dead men do not require footpaths. The whole idea is
just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas."
"What you say may be true," replied the priest, "but we follow the practices
of our fathers. If you reopen the Path we shall have nothing to quarrel
about. What I always say is: let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch." He
rose to go.
"I am sorry," said the young headmaster. "But the school compound cannot
be a thoroughfare. It is against our regulations. I would suggest your constructing
another path, skirting our premises. We can even get our boys to
help in building it. I don’t suppose the ancestors will find the little detour too
burdensome."
"I have no more words Co say," said the old priest, already outside.
Two days later a young woman in the village died in childbed. A diviner
was immediately consulted and he prescribed heavy sacrifices to propitiate ancestors
insulted by the fence.
Obi woke up next morning among the ruins of his work. The beautiful
hedges were torn up not just near the Path but right round the school, the
flowers trampled to death and one of the school buildings pulled down . . .
That day, the white Supervisor came to inspect the school and wrote a nasty
report on the state of the premises but more seriously about the "tribalwar
situation
developing between the school and the village, arising in part from the
misguided zeal of the new headmaster."