WRESTLING TURNED RAPE
I had seen “Igba-mgba” Igbo traditional wrestling once in my whole life. I was lucky to have seen this popular sport that was indigenous to the Igbo community before it went extinct. If I remembered correctly, it took place in the neighboring village Odunmara, the same village that I remembered, danced the famous “Ekeleke”…a dance done on wooden stilettos. My earliest recollection of this wrestling bout was the frenzy surrounding the fight. It was a bout that validated the physical strengths of known legends in the village. The “Azu erualas (swift as a cat)”, “Nkita ara(mad dog)”, “Otu Okpukpus (one bone)” fighter myths were all at stake. The names even added to the heightened fever as people traveled from far and near to witness this encounter known to put end to rumors, hearsay, unspoken rivalries.
In Igbo land, a man is believed to prove his physical strength when he is able to fight off his aggressors and hence, wrestling became a way they showed strength and courage. I did not know this bout had an entertainment value to it, it seemed in those days as a do or die affair, it seemed an avenue for young men to settle scores. A lot of bad mouthing and sleazy talks between villages were rife months before the slating of this fight. One would expect a murderous end going by the preparation by these young men who only have victory in their mind, an end to a long-lasting dispute, an outcome that brings admiration, respect and earning of the legal title “Warrior”. This last part, for the most part, fueled the young men’s desire to fight with all zeal, till almost death, as the young women in the village branded such victorious gambits as a true show of greatness, deserving of their love and bosom.
It was the ultimate test for manhood. A test that was not determined by what stood in between their legs nor judged by what lay beneath the tightly-wrapped loin clothes. It was a test that gave superior strength, power over the lesser other. A mouth-watering end…power….that sounded like music from the accordions to all the ears of girls in the village.
The next time I had heard of “Igba-mgba” was during a holiday break of 1991 or so when I heard of an abattoir that existed in the shell camp area of Owerri. Going by gist around town, the place was a house that most young girls were lured to and eventually raped. These acts I learned were plotted by a group of boys that went to a nearby all boys school and the target girls were from a supposed all girls school. Rumors had it that similar houses littered around the Ikenegbu and Aladinma areas of the town.
Modern-day permutations had thrown out new dimensions, bringing in smart and intelligence as the new attraction for young women. Young men who, ordinarily were not physically and strength-wise capable did not in any sense have to wrestle to garner respect. These young men excelled excellently in academics, they were prominent in debate clubs, science and arts expose, literary worlds and clubs, high school entertainment circles, garnering respect and admiration amongst the girls. These permutations also had another ugly side to it, it had reared a situation where a group of boys were left out in this seemingly changing world, they were like fish out of water, with a majority lacking known skills or accomplishments, with a plethora of them who otherwise would be branded social misfits and less attractive for sheer emptiness of a brain, who had hitherto resorted to sticking to the old ways, where winning a girls love was to be taken by force.
These boys were supposed to be the “cool kids”. They were the young “geezers”. They were the “bad boys” who rolled in circles that peripherally revolved around the social circles that brought together the innocent ones. They hosted parties, were able to drive their parent’s car, enjoyed truancy that was channeled into ways to lure these girls. They had too much time on their hands. They were the cool kids…remember?
The target girls were those young teenagers that were seemingly hard to get. Those girls that were termed to be overtly sexy and flirty were in their constant radar. Those teenagers that they branded promiscuous just by sheer mental fantasies were penciled down. A lot of girls who would not know till this day why such punishment and debasement befell them made this bouquet.
It was as if it was a cool thing to partake in…”Igba-mgba”. It was in vogue for them and the majority of them had bragged on how they executed a well-known trap, they reveled in the notion that they had gotten everything as they wanted it, with some sharing in the joyous largess by mere watching from an open window or door and some basking in euphoria as having joined in holding down the girl’s legs and hands.
People like me who never indulged were looked upon as “Jew men”. We were not the cool kids because if we were, we probably would have been invited to these clandestine orgies or sex traps. I knew then as I know now that it was a bad thing, I knew it was detestable to even be associated with such but this write up is not in any way to put a holier than thou status to my person but yet to point out a seemingly interesting but worrisome reality.
Those mates of mine who have indulged in these acts in those early years, twenty plus years ago who never looked at rape or debasement of womanhood as a thing have now reached a mid prime stage where most of them are occupying seats as captains of ships. They run businesses, they are bosses and directors, they are politicians…and I worry if they can now tell for sure that the actions of their past were wrong, I worry if the mentality that they had acquired would be rubbing off on their today’s realities.
This is an issue if you study the trend in responses to rape cases. Only a handful of those mates can openly trounce rape. I know this because those cool majorities have lived in glass houses too long and hence cannot cast a simple pebble. They lay mute, they do not have a choice as they are and were guilty of a crime. I wonder and shudder when a few muster courage, casting a diversion to an alleged case, wondering why it had taken a girl twenty plus years to come forward. I am as now tempted to remind them that I have lived in Owerri and I have not heard about or of any of the girls that were lured and raped, come out and accused offenders.
The society we grew up in abhorred such confessions or revelations. The family name and unit in Owerri of those years were all that they had. Families preferred to hide and never mentioned these happenings. Most girls were sentenced to moral death where they could not justify the crime. Girls that were meted this onerous crime were left to gloat on the act till whenever. They were discouraged to come clean.
Who would marry a girl that was raped? Who will make the father of the girl a knight? Will this act cause the mother to lose ezinneship? Will her elder or younger sister get married because of this act? Will people look at her differently?
None of these girls came clean. They chose to protect the family name. They had no choice.
The closest to justice that I ever heard was some brothers of victims, taking justice into their hands, beating and fighting these rapist…but it all ended and fizzled away with more layers of shelter to stem hurt and shame brought to the family.
The world has moved yet a step further, and in its bellies, housed these young men who I have mentioned, who now have a renewed power that is not physical like in the old, or forceful like in the nineties, a renewed force that demanded loyalty and submission by soft force and coercion. These forces are seen in our today banks, where young girls are given brazen financial targets to meet, where these girls are exposed to these forces that leave them bare for exploitation, meta forces seen in the telecommunication industry where these girls are placed in situations to fight for their job, spreading them eagle for these new force. These forces exist in our churches, where “in the name of the lord” is constantly evoked to stow fear into these girls, chaperoning an eventual decapitation of their defenses. This evil is everywhere. They exist in family units, right under our noses. Those that did not know that rape was bad in the nineties, I suspect still do not now.
“The scars we remember the most are from the wounds that never bled. Those are the ones that cut right through our soul”
I as a writer can only imagine the trauma or hurt. I cannot say for sure what goes or zips through the minds of the victims but I know for sure that it seems like a sentence that one cannot say for how long. There are so many possible grave outcomes of these lewd and terrible act that is unforgiving.
Most of those girls, probably married now, might have married the wrong man because of the experience they had passed through. They might have chosen a different career path from the one they had intended prior to experience. They probably had moved from pleasant to angry in the course of their growing up. A majority probably never married out of spite. Others might have been in constant fear, drowning in anxiety and depression. A few might be battling to reinvent themselves.
In all these permutations, they remain victims and the simplest thing anyone can do at this point is to be supportive and understanding, accessing their journey as if it were ours. There is no clear cut manner or ways to deal with trauma or hurt. People deal with them differently but a universal language unique to this carnage is understanding. We understand wrestling as a sport …, we also acknowledge the fact that it is also an extinct one. We wish that for rape … to become extinct and above all, to fish out all those that think it a sport.
We would call it out. We stand to remove the hand of the monkey in the soup before it becomes the hand of a human being.
