failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a
playmate had told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to
know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man
who had taken no title. And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion - to hate everything
that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was
idleness.
During the planting season Okonkwo worked daily on his farms from cock-crow
until the chickens went to roost. He was a very strong man and rarely felt fatigue. But
his wives and young children were not as strong, and so they suffered. But they dared
not complain openly. Okonkwo's first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old but was
already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was
how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant nagging and
beating. And so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth.
Okonkwo's prosperity was visi ble in his household. He had a large compound
enclosed by a thick wall of red earth. His own hut, or obi, stood immediately behind the
only gate in the red walls. Each of his three wives had her own hut, which together
formed a half moon behind the obi. The barn was built against one end of the red walls,
and long stacks of yam stood out prosperously in it. At the opposite end of the
compound was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment to her hut for
the hens. Near the barn was a small house, the "medicine house" or shrine where
Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal god and of his ancestral spirits. He
worshipped them with sacrifices of kola nut, food and palm-wine, and offered prayers to
them on behalf of himself, his three wives and eight children.
So when the daughter of Umuofia was killed in Mbaino, Ikemefuna came into
Okonkwo's household. When Okonkwo brought him home that day he called his most
senior wife and handed him over to her.
"He belongs to the clan," he told her. "So look after him."
"Is he staying long with us?" she asked.