Obierika's Memoir

In the end, I suppose it was inevitable. Umuofia had for long had cracks in its system, incomprehensible actions that not only I, but others as well did not really understand. Why were twins not allowed to live among us? Why were some men not given the same respect during their burial even though they were born equal? Why should a man pay dearly for a crime he never intended to commit? All of these questions have been for long swirling in the minds of our people, but never were they truly answered until the white men came to our land.

When they came at first nobody truly took them seriously. The only ones who found refuge in the white man’s religion were the osu, those who we had rejected. But eventually everyone began to see the superior power the white men had. They wooed our people with their medicine, with their education system. But what caused our people to lose faith on Umuofia’s traditions was that the white man could do many things we believed would bring him certain death. He built his settlement in the evil forest and survived without any problems. He removed the Chukwu’s mask and was not met with any punishment. They accepted twins, who then grew up to be perfectly normal people. The actions of the white men confirmed the horrible doubts that had already been stirring within our people for a long time; our beliefs and our religion were indeed flawed from the very beginning.