CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When nearly two years later Obierika paid another visit to his friend in exile the
circumstances were less happy. The missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built
their church there, won a handful of converts and were already sending evangelists to
the surrounding towns and villages. That was a source of great sorrow to the leaders of
the clan, but many of them believed that the strange faith and the white man's god
would not last. None of his converts was a man whose word was heeded in ihe assembly
of the people. None of them was a man of title. They were mostly the kind of people
that were called efulefu, worthless, empty men. The imagery of an efulefu in the
language of the clan was a man who sold his machete and wore the sheath to battle.
Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, called the converts the excrement of the clan, and the
new faith was a mad dog that had come to eat it up.
What moved Obierika to visit Okonkwo was the sudden appearance of the
latter's son, Nwoye, among the missionaries in Umuofia.
"What are you doing here?" Obierika had asked when after many difficulties the
missionaries had allowed him to speak to the boy.
"1 am one of them," replied Nwoye.
"How is your father?" Obierika asked, not knowing what else to say.
"1 don't know. He is not my father," said Nwoye, unhappily.
And so Obierika went to Mbanta to see his friend. And he found that Okonkwo
did not wish to speak about Nwoye. It was only from Nwoye's mother that he heard
scraps of the story.
The arrival of the missionaries had caused a considerable stir in the village of
Mbanta. There were six of them and one was a white man. Every man and woman came
out to see the white man. Stories about these strange men had grown sim one of them