All the years, for many Christians like me, the ‘August Meeting’ had only one meaning. What else but the gathering of women for the new yam festival? For many of us raised in the village, new yam celebration is celebrating the deities for the prolific harvest. August Meeting is a trouble shooter when wives demand expensive clothes and shoes for the ceremony. Husbands who cannot meet the bill are ‘strangulated’.
Famine period used to be intense, starting from May, when yams and cocoyams, the mainstay of the family, had been planted. Most families were sustained by fufu. Garri was foreign by then. Eating a bit of yam was like eating meat, the prerogative of the privileged class. The little piece of yam was served with a plate full of vegetables, and the more the children ate the vegetables, the healthier they were.
With excitement, we listened to our parents rehearsing to us the ceremonies preceding the new yam festival, which included: Gba-nko, Ichu mmo, Ahoji okoro, Iku mmanu, et cetera. Umodinja village was prominent because of the rituals they performed, without which, nobody would harvest his yams. Nobody also ventured into his farm for the new yam until Ahaba people had eaten it. On our school road, we would see the sacrifices made to appease the fertility gods.
In recent times, some Ovim women, who are born-again, started talking about their participation in August Meeting. ‘So believers are now compromising their faith by associating with the new yam festival?’ I wondered. One of them is Chy, a lady that came to Lagos because of me. In 1986, we met in Benin during the Scripture Union National Conference. She was excited that both of us are from the same town. When she lost her job in Benin, she raced to Lagos.
The day she visited my church, God told her that He would show her the man she would marry. As one young man was doing the ‘David dance’, expressing himself in the way he knew best, God said to her, “This is the man”. She spat it out, “God forbid bad thing”. It was anathema to her, a sister from Deeper Life! That evening, she visited me and saw the youth in my house. She could not reconcile how I could associate with such a worldly man. Not long after, unaware of God’s revelation to Chy concerning him, he made a marriage proposal to her. Almost immediately, an engineer from Deeper Life brought to us in the church, a marriage proposal letter for her, signed by Pastor W.F. Kumuyi. She turned it down. She confessed that she had lusted for him, and God told her that he was not her husband. It was the ‘Ajasco’ dancer, who she had detested, that she married. Today he is a minister of God. May we not conclude things from a distance!
I told Chy to detail what they did during the August Meeting. Her response showed that, ‘The old order of things,’ according to Alfred Tennyson, ‘has changed, yielding place to the new’. The ‘new’ calls for a serious change in our lives. It is no longer enough for anyone to sit at home and figure out what August Meeting is all about. It is enough rather to be part of it, at least with your money. I rebuked someone once who said, ‘Igbos are always stubborn’. Some Igbos refer derogatory to the Yorubas as ‘Ndi alaa’. This is not right since every cloud has a silver lining. The first day I met Pastor Gbile Akanni, his simple outfit biased me. When he ministered, he dwarfed all of us – Professors, Bishops and God’s Generals – sitting with me on the high table.
I remember the August Meeting held few years ago. It started in Ovim with fasting and prayers. Imagine! Fasting humbles people. Our age is full of excitement, which is good. Sobriety is also a Christian virtue. Starting a programme with fasting and prayers dictates the pace of its seriousness. Rev. Anokwuru of Jesus Chosen Church and Rev. Monday of Evangel Churches Winning Africa (ECWA) gave the first two talks. There were sessions for testimonies, recitation, special numbers and what you will find in a serious church setting.
Gift items were distributed to the needy: bags of garri, rice, baby food, clothing materials, etc. Women from Lagos alone gave 79 pieces of wax materials. The delegates had a march-parade. Some of them, singing and matching on the roads, I guess, were doctorate degree holders, judges, permanent secretaries, lecturers. Among them also are wives of former governors, top military brass and top businessmen. I recall how I was once told to pray for Ovim women and I said, ‘God bless Ovim women, known for giving births to two military governors, Chief of Army Staff, four Army Generals, commissioners, Heads of Service, professors, etc’.
Being a women affair, one would think that they would limit their largesse to food items and clothing. Not Ovim women! They stretched it to academics. I am not surprised. Their son, Dr. Ernest N. Ukpaby (late) earned a PhD in the United States and returned to Nigeria in 1955. He was the first Dean of Students Affairs, University of Nigeria, followed by Dr. Achinivu Okorie PhD (late). Their daughter, Late Mrs. Mgborie Achara, was one of the first educated women in old Owerri Province. Their son, her husband, Mr. J.C. Achara, a masters degree holder from UK, was the first Principal of Okigwe National Grammar School (OKINGS). No wonder the women awarded scholarships to three students.
Not yet satisfied, seeing that the technical school was understaffed, instead of criticism, the stock-in-trade of most women, the women employed some teachers, absorbing their salaries. To improve skills in the community, the women have also built and equipped a centre for skill acquisition.
August Meeting is now born-again. Let us identify with it!
For further comment, Please contact: Osondu Anyalechi: 0909 041 9057; [email protected]
