It had its shrine in the centre of Umuofia, in a cleared spot. And if anybody was so
foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see the old woman hopping
about.
And so the neighbouring clans who naturally knew of these things feared
Umuofia, and would not go to war against it without first trying a peaceful settlement.
And in fairness to Umuofia it should be recorded that it never went to war unless its
case was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle - the Oracle of the Hills
and the Caves. And there were indeed occasions when the Oracle had forbidden
Umuofia to wage a war. If the clan had disobeyed the Oracle they would surely have
been beaten, because their dreaded agadi-nwayi would never fight what the Ibo call a
fight of blame.
But the war that now threatened was a just war. Even the enemy clan knew that.
And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the proud and imperious
emissary of war, he was treated with great honour and respect, and two days later he
returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young virgin. The lad's name was Ikemefuna,
whose sad story is still told in Umuofia unto this day.
The elders, or ndichie, met to hear a report of Okonkwo's mission. At the end
they decided, as everybody knew they would, that the girl should go to Ogbuefi Udo to
replace his murdered wife. As for the boy, he belonged to the clan as a whole, and there
was no hurry to decide his fate. Okonkwo was, therefore, asked on behalf of the clan to
look after him in the interim. And so for three years Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo's
household.
Qkonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the
youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children.
Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was
dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate
than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the
forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than
these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he
should be found to resemble his father. Even as a little boy he had resented his father's