Our Beloved Father Ignatius

Father Ignatius was nowhere to be found. We did not immediately suspect anything. Three days after his disappearance, his favourite spot under the udara tree still looked well-kept, and his chair remained unmoved, leading us to believe he had been with us all along but didn’t want to be disturbed. The same Ukabuilo who told us not to worry was the one who eventually broke the news to the rest of us. According to Ukabuilo, he had told us not to worry (before the fact) because every time he was on his way to the farm in the morning, he’d hear a voice like that of Father Ignatius, singing and praying. 

“People,” Ukabuilo said, panting and running to us. “There’s fire on the mountain.”

“Too big for you to put out?”

“Yes, too big for me to put out.”

“Does the fire approach our farmland?”

“No, the fire threatens to consume our household.”

“Then why are you delaying the specifics? Spit it.”

“My good people,” he said, struggling to catch his breath. “Father Ignatius has gone missing.”

“The fire killed him?”

“Fools!” He snapped. “How could you say something like that when our beloved Father is missing? Are you not the least worried?”

And rightly so, we began to worry. We visited the mission house, which we had built for his predecessors. It was a one-story building, bordering our Uburu village and Isu — an edifice that was in itself a wonder of the modern world, garnering us the envy of the other villages. It was originally painted white, but the red sand of our village changed its colour. And when Father Ignatius came to our village, it displeased him. He said there was no way God could dwell in a place like that. So, we painted it blue, like the firmament, the abode of God, but as the rainy season came and the paint started to fade and take on a different colour, we painted it brown, and it never wore off again. We did a little more work on the building because Father Ignatius was a man who enjoyed gardening. We tore down the old fence and gave the church more land at the eastern flank. When we were done, he stopped us by the gate and said, “One more thing: I don’t need servants on the premises.” We said sure and ordered the young boy who had attended the previous priest to join us. 

Inside the building, we saw his large Latin Bible on his bed, a copy of an older bulletin, and a diary containing Bible quotes and chapters. Indeed, Father Ignatius was a devoted man! His cassock, stole, and three of his only pairs of shoes were neatly placed in the wardrobe we had built for him one month ago. His chasuble and cincture were gone, but the chalice with which he gave us all the sacred blood of Christ was there, the silver glistening. We began to reminisce on drinking the blood for the first time and feeling giddy with a renewed sense of divine possession. We recalled one such Sunday after communion, when, on our way home, Akpamgbo said he felt like a man who had consumed five litres of palm wine. “Could it be possible that the blood of Christ contains alcohol?” he inquired.

“You’ll never speak of that blasphemy,” Ukabuilo said.

“May the good Lord forgive you, Akpamgbo,” Albert said.

“Amen,” we said.

“Guys,” Akpamgbo said, determined to be heard by all means necessary. “How is this blasphemy to say how I feel after drinking the blood of the Savior?”

“It’s probably because you haven’t yet fully accepted Him as your Lord and Savior,” we said. “We all feel the same way, but we know it is God settling into us.”

“You are right, maybe.”

“You’ll see how right we are, and may God forgive you again.”

“Amen,” Akpamgbo said, pretending to be convinced, yet staggering about. There, we knew Akpamgbo was a heathen, beyond saving. Even the way we started singing and praying immediately, as Father Ignatius had instructed us to, when faced with heathens, was proof of our dedication to save a fallen brother.

It was afternoon when we finished looking around the mission house. Despite his missing bicycle (which we paid good money to buy for the first priest), it did not appear that Father Ignatius had left in a hurry. So, we went to the eastern part of the premises to check under the udara tree again to make sure he hadn’t miraculously appeared and was there to entertain the penitent and take pleasure in looking at the crops in his garden. He was not there either. We decided to split up and enter the woods to search for him, letting our dogs take the lead. And though they barked and jumped and licked our fingers, their excitement and our dedication combined could not produce Father Ignatius. We were certain dogs could be afraid, and we also knew they were incapable of harbouring feelings of disappointment. They kept jumping and wagging their tails at us while we suffered exhaustion and began to fear what many of us, except Akpamgbo, had thought but refused to say out loud. 

“I just hope he has not been killed,” said Akpamgbo in all his undiluted effusiveness. “What if he was killed by the Ohakwe people?”

“And why would they do that?”

“They could have done it to make the Englishmen think we killed one of theirs and declare war on us again.”

“Ohakwe would never do such a thing,” Ukabuilo said.

“Brother Akpamgbo,” Albert said, stopping in his tracks. “Does it never tire you of speaking negativities all the time?”

“How does it ever tire one to be rational? Think outside of miracles, brethren!”

“May the Lord be merciful to you,” we said, crossing ourselves. 

Yet, we knew within us that Akpamgbo was right. Anything was possible. But of what use was it to start counting our losses while the market was still open? Father Ignatius was the fifth missionary sent to our dear village. The District Officer, Mr. Clarkson, had brought us word from the bishop that the next priest would be the last. Mr. Clarkson was stern with his rebuke. “For such lowlives like you,” he said. “You’re too picky. Why are you heathens making it difficult to be saved?” So, we looked around for who to blame. We blamed the mosquitoes that terrorised the first priest. We blamed Albert, who said his dream of being a priest had been thwarted because the second priest he was attending always wanted to see his penis. We blamed our women who led a protest to the Colonial House after they saw Albert crying and flagellating himself in a schoolyard. Then we blamed Ukabuilo, whose lurking eyes caught the third priest doing it in the woods with Maazi Ibe’s wife, Urunna. We also blamed Maazi Ibe for the delayed response. Why did he wait for his wife to give birth before screaming, “No, this can’t be my son!” and convincing the whole village to help him sack the priest from the community? “No, it’s not good to blame Maazi Ibe, who has to take care of another man’s child,” we thought. So, we blamed ourselves again and again for allowing our jealousy to control us when we saw the fourth priest. 

He was beautiful. Our women, who had nothing to do with the church, suddenly started going to church and lazing about on the farm, talking about his tiny, immaculate lips, narrow nose, and the funny way he spoke Igbo. There was really nothing special about him, but we saw the way our women gawked and smiled whenever he was around, or the way they pretended to be under the anointing whenever he broke the bread and fed us. We all saw how they kept cooking food and taking turns to go weed at the mission house — even heard one of them saying that she didn’t mind having a baby that looks like Urunna’s child. Then, one day, we all got up and said we had had enough, stormed Colonial House, and demanded that Mr. Clarkson send the priest packing. And when he asked for a reason, we said the priest lacked spiritual awareness. We said that we needed a priest who could save us with the blood of Jesus. We reckoned that there was no way God could call a “seducer of the brethren” into his vineyard. Observing us for a lengthy stretch of time, Mr. Clarkson, who had stopped writing in his little notebook, hissed and said he’d see what he could do. “While you figure out what to do, Mr. Clarkson,” we said. “Please send him out right away.” And the priest was gone the next day. No fanfare. He left the way he came: his bible in one hand, his portmanteau in the other, rivulets of sweat streaming down his face. We forbade our women from coming out.

Just when we thought Mr. Clarkson would not send us another priest after that vitriol, we saw Father Ignatius in the village. He did not announce himself as the other priest did. He was not in any vestment. There was no briefcase. Not dropped off by car and introduced by the District Officer. He brought himself to us like the hungry, begging to be fed. He looked malnourished and bore fresh bruises on his face. He was neither very tall nor very short. He was ugly enough to make us feel safe. Quickly, we knew wild animals might have attacked him, or our heathen neighbours might have robbed him to bring us the wrath of the Englishmen. Therefore, we swung into action, taking him to the mission house, where we fed him four servings of biscuits and hot tea, as suggested by Albert. We wondered, though, how that would be enough to help Father Ignatius regain his lost flesh, but Albert kept assuring us.

“I know about his people well,” Albert said with pride. “They never look hungry enough to want to eat any other food except biscuits and tea.”

“True,” we said. “It’s all we see them eat.”

Then we begged Albert to stay behind and help the little boy who had been attending the previous priest take care of Father Ignatius. We said we understood the horrors the mission house bore for him, but we also wanted to salvage our reputation in the district. He agreed, stayed back, and nurtured Father Ignatius, whom God had sent us broken. Then Father Ignatius recovered and went about the village in his cassock, saying thank you, praying for, and helping us with chores. We welcomed him into our homes to dine and drink with us. He did not live like he descended from the same ship as Mr. Clarkson. Whatever he lacked in facial features, he made up for in his generosity, calmness, and the way he spoke to us. For instance, we never saw Father Ignatius get angry except on occasions during confessions under the udara tree, when a penitent would approach to confess the same sins again. “Goddamnit!” he’d say. “No way you did it again.” Then, adjusting his amice and knowing the penitent was waiting patiently to say, “For His mercy endures forever,” Father Ignatius would say, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good,” before calling the next person.

It had been nearly seven days since we last saw Father Ignatius. We began to think he might have left the village because he was tired of our sins — for how many times did he hear us confess about stealing each other’s yams, goats, palm wine, refusing to pay tax to Mr. Clarkson, lying about money to pull our kids from schools? He had seen us for who we were and must have heard about how we treated the previous priests, which frightened him.

“No,” Albert said. “Father Ignatius is not that kind of priest. He is genuine. He burns for Christ.”

“He is charismatic,” Ukabuilo affirmed. “You’d need to see the way he helped me settle my land dispute with Odii.”

“Ukabuilo and I almost killed each other that day,” Odii would say, half-chuckling. “But he came and said, ‘Brethren, how’d you be able to cultivate this land if you killed yourselves?’”

All around the village, everyone had a similar story about Father Ignatius. He prayed for the sick, buried the dead, followed the living to remind them of God’s love, and then he’d help the elderly gather firewood. We also remembered that he had accompanied us into the woods to search for the billy goat we had intended to use for Thanksgiving at the church. We had wanted to thank God for sparing his life when bandits attacked him (as he’d later tell us), and to celebrate six months of being with us. The truth was simple. We wanted to thank God for sparing us from the afflictions that followed the previous priests. Father Ignatius did not ask to see anyone’s penis, did not seduce any of our women, did not sleep with Maazi Ibe’s wife, and did not say any bad thing about us to Mr. Clarkson. Thus, when the white goat we contributed three shillings to buy ran away from the post it was tethered to, Father Ignatius charged into the woods with us in his alb. He whistled, “Come, Oh Ye Faithful,” while we cleared the path with cutlasses, accepting the invitation to join him in song. Soon, we found our immaculate goat, trying to soil itself with a nanny. We said a prayer for it, happy we caught it before the act. Indeed, we reckoned, God worked in mysterious ways. Albert reminded us not to forget that it was God, following Father Ignatius, who helped us. We gave thanks, sang very loudly, and saw how it made Father Ignatius happy. Yes, he was happy to be with us, the way we were happy to have him with us.

“Yes, Albert,” we said. “You are absolutely right. He could never abandon us.”

Hence, we looked for Father Ignatius at the riverbank. Some of us even went as far as jumping into the river and swimming to its mouth to look for his body (assuming he had drowned). We cleared the brushes, followed the river, and marched to our boundaries with other villages. We even sent spies, but found nothing. No one had heard about Father Ignatius. No one had seen him elsewhere. Was he raptured? Then, we began to get angry that Albert was not raptured with him. He was the most devoted, who, despite what the previous priest did to him, was always willing to serve God and remind us to repent and forsake our ancestral gods, which he called evil. We even found out he was the one who kept tidying the mission house while Father Ignatius was away.

“Could it be that this God doesn’t care about people who don’t have pale skin?” we asked, pitying Albert.

“Is this not the type of question that would make you all scream blasphemy if I said it?” Akpamgbo asked, but we ignored him.

“You don’t have to be sad, Albert.”

“I’m not sad. It’s not rapture.”

“Perhaps the white man gets raptured first, eh? Is something like that in your Bible, Albert?”

“There’s nothing like that. There’ll be a loud trumpet on the day of rapture.”

“Maybe we didn’t hear it because we were sound asleep. It rained that night, remember.”

“Heathens!” Albert yelled, the veins in his temples shooting out. “My God cannot be mocked.”

“Look at Mr. Clarkson, for instance,” we said, ignoring Albert. “Does he look like someone who would want to be raptured with us at the same time?”

“Again, that’s not how rapture works. God doesn’t care about all those things. You should ask for forgiveness.”

Agitated, Albert stomped the ground. We neither looked his way nor said anything to him. We were furious at ourselves for thinking that Albert could have been left behind by God. We were also furious that we didn’t think highly enough of ourselves to be considered rapturable. Consequently, we turned to Akpamgbo and said, “Let’s do our best when this search is over.”

Fearing what might happen to our village if Mr. Clarkson heard that an Englishman who was sent to our parish had disappeared without a trace, we decided amongst ourselves to go to Colonial House and report ourselves to the government. The elders from the village agreed to be sent because it would be better if they were detained and killed in retaliation than if we sent our young men. Sons should bury their fathers and not the other way around. So, we left for Colonial House in the early hours of the day in December, harmattan trailing us. We each decided to trek instead of bicycling because we feared being arrested alongside our bicycles, leaving our families nothing of value to inherit. Thus, we walked and walked and walked for four days to Afikpo to meet Mr. Clarkson.

At the gate stood five men with guns, safety whistles hanging around their necks, barefoot, and clad in khaki shorts, their heads moving like those of distressed owls. They did not return our greetings and kept moving. After about ten minutes of us standing and waiting to be acknowledged, the one with a bald pate spoke. “You’re here again?”

“Yes,” we said. “We are here again.”

“A new priest will be sent to you shortly before Christmas,” he said.

“We don’t need a new priest. We just want the one we lost,” we protested.

“I’m sorry, brothers,” he said, looking around as if he was about to intimate us with a secret. “Mr. Clarkson does not wish to see you people anymore.”

“That’s not true.”

“You won’t believe what I have said to you? Okay, you can hang around here forever.”

“We don’t mind.”

Two… three… four… Five hours passed, and the men at the gate were relieved by another group of men, who, though having the same alertness as the previous guards, were boisterous. We took advantage of that to try to bribe them. They were not willing to oblige. Then we were angry with ourselves because we were hungry, and even though we had come here for a just cause, we were trying to get things done through bribery. If Ukabuilo were here, he’d have reminded us that this could be another reason we would likely never be raptured. “An ordinary man with criminal tendencies will sooner or later choose the easiest part,” he’d say. Anyway, we kept pushing until the youngest guard decided to run inside to put in a word for us.

Mr. Clarkson was not pleased when he saw us in his office. He was almost choking on his Earl Grey tea, squinting his eyes and turning to start cussing at us. His furrowed eyebrows dared us. “This is not a cathedral!” he screamed. “I am neither a pope nor a bishop, and I do not care whether your souls perish or not. Stop disturbing me.”

We did not say anything. He scanned our faces and said, “Jesus! Are you swines listening to me at all?”

“No, sir,” we said. “We’ve had the utmost pleasure to be selfish.”

He guffawed at our remark.

“Gentlemen, I sent for a priest already. He’ll arrive before Christmas.”

“But we don’t want a new priest. We want Father Ignatius, who has suddenly disappeared from our village.”

“What priest do you speak of?”

“Father…”

“I heard you the first time, idiots! How long ago was this?”

“He has been with us for six months and went missing two weeks ago. We came to report the incident and inquire if you had a hand in his transfer.”

He looked perplexed, started rubbing his temples, and shuffled through a bunch of papers in a stack in front of him. As he continued to play with his stacks, we described Father Ignatius to him as best as we could. “He was our beloved priest, and we pray you use your influence to bring him back to us.”

Mr Clarkson stopped shuffling between the stacks and looked at us pleadingly as if he was tired of our babblings. Then he pulled some wanted-person posters from among the decks and showed them to us. The more he showed us, the more we shook our heads, until there he was, our beloved Father Ignatius, in the same outfit he wore on the day we first saw him in our village. Our excitement soon faded when Mr Clarkson (now his turn to shake his head), hissed, then sighed and hissed again, before telling us that we were fools for not knowing that Father Ignatius was not a priest but a fugitive wanted for the murder of a senior colonial officer. He was Sergeant Eastender. 

“What was I thinking?” Mr Clarkson said, standing from his seat and making a frantic dash into another room we couldn’t see. We were left to face our bemusement alone. 

“Maybe, we should not have come here in the first place,” one of us said.

“But we were also worried about our families,” another said.

“What would they do when they catch him?”

“I refuse to believe our beloved Father Ignatius was fake.”

After a while, we began to hiss noisily to distract ourselves. We had something to be grateful for. At least, we thought, Father Ignatius was not dead. Our women and children would be spared from the Englishmen’s cannons. We hissed and sighed again, looked at each other, and felt sorry for one another. We hadn’t eaten anything except for the fruits we had bought by the roadside while we journeyed here. Perspiring and thinking about the journey back home, we began to deliberate which story to break to the villagers first. We agreed that it wouldn't be easy. Then we imagined the orange moon dropping in the early evening sky, over the udara tree, telling the villagers what had transpired, while we searched their faces, hoping to find Father Ignatius jumping out from amongst us, and saying, “Whoa, Albert. Is our Lord not good? Look at my garden.”