With two beautiful grown-up daughters his return to Umuofia would attract
considerable attention. His future sons-in-law would be men of authority in the clan.
The poor and unknown would not dare to come forth.
Umuofia had indeed changed during the seven years Okonkwo had been in
exile. The church had come and led many astray. Not only the low-born and the outcast
but sometimes a worthy man had joined it. Such a man was Ogbuefi Ugonna, who had
taken two titles, and who like a madman had cut the anklet of his titles and cast it away
to join the Christians. The white missionary was very proud of him and he was one of
the first men in Umuofia to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, or Holy Feast as
it was called in Ibo. Ogbuefi Ugonna had thought of the Feast in terms of eating and
drinking, only more holy than the village variety. He had therefore put his drinking-horn
into his goatskin bag for the occasion.
But apart from the church, the white men had also brought a government. They
had built a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in ignorance. He had
court messengers who brought men to him for trial. Many of these messengers came
from Umuru on the bank of the Great River, where the white men first came many years
before and where they had built the centre of their religion and trade and government.
These court messengers were greatly hated in Umuofia because they were foreigners
and also arrogant and high-handed. They were called kotma, and because of their ashcoloured shorts they earned the additional name of Ashy Buttocks. They guarded the
prison, which was full of men who had offended against the white man's law. Some of
these prisoners had thrown away their twins and some had molested the Christians.
They were beaten in the prison by the kotma and made to work every morning clearing
the government compound and fetching wood for the white Commissioner and the court
messengers. Some of these prisoners were men of title who should be above such mean
occupation. They were grieved by the indignity and mourned for their neglected farms.
As they cut grass in the morning the younger men sang in time with the strokes of their
machetes: "Kotma of the ashy buttocks, He is fit to be a slave. The white man has no
sense, He is fit to be a slave."