[Pictures] Performing Visual Artist &Teacher Princess Omaa Adaobi Ume-Ezeoke Excites Greenwich High School Students With Igbo Folk Tales.

 Before she began recounting a folk tale from her Igbo heritage in Nigeria, Princess Omaa Adaobi Ume-Ezeoke warned her audience at Greenwich High School on Monday not to expect a happy ending.
Students would have to adjust their expectations if they were to understand Nigerian storytelling, as explained by a member of the country’s royalty who grew up in Lagos and her family’s ancestral town in eastern Nigeria before and during the west African nation’s civil war in the late 1960s.

The visit of Ume-Ezeoke, a performing and visual artist and teacher, was one of the highlights of a day of discussions organized at Greenwich High as part of the school’s participation this month in the townwide literacy initiative Greenwich Reads Together. This year, the book anchoring the program is “Americanah,” a novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which chronicles a Nigerian woman’s immigration to the U.S.

“Igbo stories are not fair tales,” Ume-Ezeoke told students. “These are people who come from a precarious state. Life is hard. Their folktales are meant to teach, so they don’t always end up happily ever after.”

Ume-Ezeoke’s repetoire included the parable of a pregnant woman who steals a python’s egg while scavenging for firewood in a forest. When the woman tries to boil the egg, the water refuses to boil. When she puts it in the fire, the egg does not roast. Finally, the woman smothers it in ground-up okra and swallows it.

But that is not the last of the egg. The serpentine mother returns to find the egg missing and starts to sing for its return. The young snake responds with its own lament. Ume-Ezeoke narrated the call-and-response with a song she accompanied with a calabash drum.

Finally, the ingested snake ends up biting its way out of the woman’s stomach to reunite with its mother. The snake represents fertility, while the egg is a metaphor for avarice in Igbo storytelling, because the Igbo people have traditionally lacked protein in their diets. The grim ending is supposed to illustrate the pitfalls of greed, she said.

Some Greenwich High teachers are featuring “Americanah” in their classes’ coursework, while many students are reading the book independently. Middle-schoolers and elementary students are reading companion books and participating in events at their schools.

Ume-Ezeoke’s story parallels in some ways the trajectory of the novel’s protagonist. She moved to the U.S. in 1979 and lived in Bridgeport and Trumbull until 2013. She earned a master’s degree from the University of Bridgeport, helped to found the Igbo Women’s Association of Connecticut and became a university lecturer. She now lives in Houston.

Ume-Ezeoke spoke of her love of American culture. She grew up watching TV westerns including “Bonanza,” listened to American standards like “Oh! Susanna” and kept a scrapbook of Jackie Kennedy pictures. The first Americans she met worked for the Peace Corps in Nigeria.

“It doesn’t matter the culture we come from, the themes are the same,” Ume-Ezeoke said. “We tell different stories, but they converge on our understanding of being human.”

In Igbo culture, audience members do not hesitate to tell the storyteller if they are dissatisfied with the narrative, Ume-Ezeoke said.

She did not have to worry about such a fate at the high school.

“It was really interesting,” said ninth-grader Blerta Shala. “It was a really good opportunity to hear a different kind of story and hear what a good storyteller she was.”

Greenwich High media specialist Alexandra Stevens, the school district’s Greenwich Reads Together coordinator, said media specialists have not had a lot of time this year to promote the initiative because of their involvement in launching the latest phase of the district’s digital learning initiative. But she said she was still encouraged by students’ and faculty members’ participation.

“Even if people haven’t read the book, having everyone in the town talking about common themes and a common book gets people interested,” Stevens said.


Sources

Greewichtime.com
pschott@scni.com; 203-625-4439; twitter: @paulschott