The Test of Manhood

Anyi’s breath found calm in the voice that called his name. Even in a dream, he could recognize it with ease.
’Nnanyi? What is happening?’
He moved himself away, now conscious that it was his own father he had attacked. He still panted, his small chest rising and falling like tides crashing only to rise again.
‘You have done well.’ His father was now on his feet, looking down on him with a masked face.
‘Is this it? I passed the Ekpe test?’
There was a growling at the door, and in came the panther from before. It took slow, powerful strides towards Nnanyi, who touched it on the head—first a tap, then a rub. The growling died fast, but Anyi still struggled to breathe freely.
Breathe, breathe.
He saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned to focus. The night couldn’t possibly get stranger, but it did. Two masquerades he had thought to be stuffed figures like scarecrows moved out of their place and closer to him and his father.
‘This is only the first stage, and in many ways, it is as much about you as it is about me. Imagine my shame if you could not muster the courage to fight back.’
’So, I don’t understand.’ Anyi kept his eyes on the two figures, ‘Were they here to watch us?’
‘Well, they say the lion seen with only two eyes could have been a goat. I cannot be your examiner and your accessor.’
Anyi’s breath was finally back to what he remembered as normal.
‘So why didn’t one of them fight me instead?’
‘Each man knows his son. Another fighter might be too hard or too soft. And there is the matter of accidents. Ekpe society would rather a man slay his own son than see him die at the hands of a stranger.’
Anyi’s face twisted in the dark, unsure of how he felt about the last statement.
‘So, this is it?’ he asked. ‘I’ve passed? Courage is the substance of manhood?’
The figures had reached them now.
‘No, my son. Courage is only the beginning.’
Anyi felt a hand on his face, the taste of bitter on his tongue and the smell of something pungent in his nose. His eyes stung too. He blinked and blinked some more, but the room would not hold steady as his father’s masked face appeared to double, then triple.
‘Courage is only the beginning.’
It was the last thing he remembered hearing.
When Anyi woke up yet again, it was in a large hut with at least thirty other boys, by his estimation. There were no mats to rest on, only clay. There was barely even space. Mangled almost like lifeless bodies, the room was a river of flesh with barely any room to stand. Anyi rubbed his nose as his eyes adjusted to the dark. Without the cocks crowing, it was hard to tell the time in the absence of light.
Courage is only the beginning.
The words echoed back to him in his father’s voice, but instead of Nnanyi’s face, there was only the black of a mask, staring at him with white eyes and scary teeth. Now that he felt as though he was waking from a deep slumber, he wondered if it had all been a dream. Had he, Anyi Isieke, truly fought a panther and bared his teeth? And what about his home… how did he get to the forest in the first place?
A body next to him shifted and the boy began to wake. Anyi wondered if there were others awake who were feigning sleep. He remembered Ozi and how she sometimes pretended to be asleep so she could be carried to her bed. He also remembered the bushmeat known to play dead when the eagles squawked. He too was awake but did not move much. He wondered if Tobe and Uzo had made it this far.
From the open round windows, the sound of Ekwe drums swam into the room, and on command, the boys began to rise. Most knew little of the Ekwe drum rituals, but for the Ekwe, even a little was enough. There was no spirit more revered than that of Ekwensu, the spirit of war, conquest, and domination. Not just of enemies, but also of the earth in general—plants, animals, rivers, and land. Ekwensu was not a spirit to dwell in for long as many believed Ala, which spoke more of living with the land and not dominating it, was a stronger philosophy. But eventually, when war called, as it sometimes did, Ekwensu was the spirit to summon. And there was no louder call than that of the Ekwe drum—a double-slitted hollow wooden drum in the shape of a cylinder.
As the boys wiped the tiredness from their faces, they could hear the chime of masquerade bells. They already knew what followed, and before it, they began to panic. Through the window, different masquerades climbed in, each wielding a cane in hand, along with the will to use it. Over the sounds of the Ekwe drum, they flogged the boys without mercy, and the boys fell over themselves trying to force their bodies through the single doorway. There was shoving, pushing, and trampling, but not much escaping as everyone fought to squeeze through the same door. If they gave into the panic, and all tried to get out before the other, there would be no progress.
'We need to calm down! We need to calm down! The strokes can't break us!'
Anyi's voice was lost in the crowd, yet he called out again and again until someone echoed him. Soon enough, the message rang clear, making its way to every ear in the room. The boys adjusted to the flogging, mentally preparing their bodies for the pain. The chaos turned to order, and slowly, the hut began to thin. When this unified thinking seemed to have covered the room, the masquerades stopped and fled through the windows they had come through. Anyi wondered if his father was one of them. And he wondered yet again if he had been dreaming… if he was still dreaming.
The boys spilled out of the hut, Anyi being the last to step through. The compound was large and mostly bare save for palm frond broomsticks littering the ground and three masked men, one of whom was beating an Ekwe drum. The boys paused, unsure if they were still part of some sort of game. It made no sense having broomsticks over sand. Were they supposed to sweep the field away?

War will call, when war calls
For steel, for sweat
For men, and more
War will call, when war calls
The strong and the weak
Who is strong? Who is weak?
War will call, when war calls
For me, and you
My war is yours, and yours is mine
War will call
War will call
Who is me? And who are you?
Who is we? Who are we?

The drummer stopped abruptly, ending the poem he had been chanting.
‘You are now at war!’ one of the masked men barked. He moved his large bulk closer, his gorilla-like frame inspiring fear with the mere heaving of his naked, chalked chest.
’Aziza.’ He held out the broom he was carrying. There must have been at least two or three hundred dried fronds in the bunch. He held it with both hands, and in a display of monstrous strength, snapped it in half with veins bulging like vines tracking a tree trunk. The entire bundle did not snap all at once—not even a gorilla would have managed that. But one after the other, he managed to bend and break them all.
The other masked man walked up to the boys and handed one a similar broom.
‘When you have done as we have done, you will win the war.’
The boys looked on in bewilderment, hoping for more information— perhaps clarifications regarding instructions, rules, anything. But the masked men were done, and the drummer was at it again. He played and chanted until the masked men returned to him. Then, they helped him carry the large ceremonial Ekwe, one man at each end of the cylindrical instrument. There was no mention of how much time they had, or if they were allowed breaks, or should expect nourishment at some point. From the looks of it, there wasn’t even a well of water to draw from. If the afternoon heat found them here, some might not even survive.
‘Let me try it!’ It was Tobe with his loud voice. He was a big boy—taller than most, wider than most, stronger than most. The boy who had received the broom was happy to pass on the burden. Tobe held the broom in his hands, as if weighing it in his mind, before gripping it tightly to bend it. And sure enough, it bent. Bending the broom was easy—even the scrawniest of the bunch could manage that. Breaking it, on the other hand, was something else. With his hands together, pulling strength from his back and arms, Tobe tried. But not even one of the fronds snapped. He stopped to draw breath and tried again, the side of his face pulsing as he clenched. Still, nothing. Just a strained palm and tired muscles. Anyi’s eyes searched for Uzo, but he did not find him. Perhaps he missed him, or perhaps he did not make it past the first stage.
‘Let me try,’ another boy offered. He was shorter than Tobe, but bulkier, with muscular arms he had clearly inherited from one parent or both. Tobe tried a few more times, mainly to douse what Anyi imagined was shame, needless shame. The kind that came only from the slaying of pride. But it would not be enough to snap the palm frond broom.
The new boy tried again and again until he was tired and begged for a volunteer. Others joined in, bending, twisting, twisting and bending. Nothing worked. By the time the sun was up in the sky, not even a single frond had been broken, but many spirits had been crushed. The initial enthusiasm had dwindled, leaving behind a solemn congregation hoping for a miracle.
The boys continued trying as much as they could, hoping that over time, their collective efforts would weaken the broom and a crack would appear. The morning’s gentle sun gave way to the scorching of the afternoon blaze, and still, progress was at best a mirage that looked like hope. At this point, Anyi and some of the other boys decided to make their way back into the hut. At least, its shade would delay the onset of what now felt like a brewing delirium.
‘Are you just going to give up?’ a boy asked.
‘I don’t know what we are supposed to do, but none of us here can break that broom.’
’So, we are to wait until they find us resting? Perhaps they want us to persist.’
Anyi thought about it. The test from before had been about persistence in a sense, more so courage, but it was on the same path.
‘I will be out soon. We will be out soon. Perhaps we can take turns resting. Everyone breaking in the sun won’t make us any stronger.’ Anyi left the boy and went inside. He was surprised to find Tobe seated, his back to the mud wall.
‘My father is going to be so disappointed,’ Tobe said.
‘All our fathers are going to be disappointed,’ Anyi replied.
‘Courage is only the beginning. That was the last thing he said to me.’ Tobe looked at his tired hands. ‘How is courage supposed to help us break this broom?’ As Anyi and Tobe discussed the previous task, more boys joined them in the hut to rest, each adding his own tales of manhood.
Some never ran and never faced panthers, leopards, or lions. Others like Anyi did and had to coax their courage from where it was buried. Tobe was one of the few who never ran. As it appeared, his courage and brute strength counted for little in this test. Perhaps it was about endurance. But had they not already endured enough?
‘I can just see his face when I tell him that we failed.’ Tobe circled back to his underlying fear. ‘You know, when one of us breaks anything in the house or misses a task, my father punishes everybody. He says that one person’s war is everyone’s war. Just like in the chant.’
‘A nalu ofu onye azu, a nalu go aro azu,’ Anyi echoed.
It was a popular saying, as old as the Ape Men, meaning that taking fish from one man in the tribe was the same as taking it from the entire tribe.
‘One time, we all had to put hands together to clean the huts because my older sister had forgotten. It was the first time I ever touched a broom. I wasn’t even old enough to sweep back then, but I got a share, even if it was only the small bath hut.’ Anyi listened to Tobe’s story, not sure who it was meant for.
A boy appeared in the doorframe holding the broom.
’Tobe? You don’t want to try again?’
‘Bring it! Bring it!’ Anyi shouted as he sprung to his feet. ‘Ike aziza bu na nchi kota – the strength of the broom is in the gathering.’
The boy at the door did not understand what Anyi was getting at, but he handed the broom to him without protest. Anyi wasted no time unfastening the rope catch that held the fronds together. Then, he began to hand the fronds to each boy, no more than ten fronds each. They felt foolish for not thinking of it much earlier. If one person’s war was the war of all, then surely, the burden was for all to share. Just like the wild cats had helped some to find their courage, the flogging out of the hut was to help them settle into thinking as a team.
Ten sticks at a time, the palm fronds snapped with ease, and the task was done. Then, they slammed the goat skin drum in their hut, and the masked men reemerged from the bushes they had disappeared into. They wheeled in a wooden contraption carrying a large three-legged pot and the forbidden ero mmuo—spirit mushrooms.

The Ekpe graduation ritual did not take place until the moon was high in the night. The boys had still not been fed. They had been congratulated as a group on completing the task, but none of the instructing masked men bothered to ask who had figured out the trick to split the fronds. When some boys tried to make Anyi a hero, they were cautioned against it. Failure would have been shared by all, so glory could not be claimed by one.
When the time came, all the boys were asked to go outside. One by one, they were to come in for the final test; a confrontation with the spirit. It was believed that the spirit mushroom was a kind of portal that allowed one to transcend without death or even the powers of a d’bia. Upon ingesting it, each would be confronted with something about themselves. No one knew what the next person saw, and it was forbidden to ever ask or speak of it.
One by one, the boys entered the hut, coming in through the front door and leaving through the back window. Anyi waited, his ears sweating with the nerves that also swirled his stomach. Eventually, it was his turn. He walked into the hut to find a small oil torch burning, two men sat on a mat, a bowl of steaming liquid with mushrooms, and the bark of a tree floating.
They spoke in a language he did not recognise and marked his body with nzu chalk, drawing dots and patterns.
‘You will go, and you will return. You are of here, and you are of there.’
He drank from the calabash he was handed, managing no more than two bitter gulps and swallowing some of the mushrooms floating inside. The last thing he recalled was a fever, a burning in his eyes, the blurring of his vision, and finally, darkness.

First came the darkness, then the roar of another unfamiliar sound—a strange, roaring rattle. His eyes opened to find his body suspended in the air, both hands gripping some kind of metal contraption. Without thinking, he pulled on the bars he held, and his arm jolted and shook as sparks flew from the equipment. Perhaps this was some type of gun, one that did not spit single bullets like the rifles he knew, but hundreds. Bronze-coloured cases fell as he fired, and a belt by his feet moved into the chamber.
Anyi gathered that he was trapped in another body, one caged in a sort of metal bird being flown by two pig-men. By his side, another pig-man fed ammunition into the chamber, his eyes ice blue.
Breathe, breathe.
He heard it in his head and wondered if it was the body he was in that spoke, or if it was him, and if there was any difference at all. For one thing, this body he was now in was larger than he remembered himself to be. He could tell from the distance between his feet and the ground that he was a man now. The hands he could see were dark, like the tone of his skin. What was an ape-man like him doing with pig-men? Flying in a mechanical contraption? Agbara Ekwensu—the words flashed in his mind: science and nature dominating spirit.
Breathe, breathe.
He caught the body he was trapped in controlling its breath and focusing on the gun it operated. Again and again, its fingers pulled the trigger, and bullets flew, wreaking havoc on an opposing mechanical contraption he did not recognise. It was another iron machine, moving with a barrel mounted atop it.
He lost his footing and staggered, but there would be no recovery from this. The mechanical bird spun out of control, heading downward. Without thinking, he jumped and pulled a strap on his uniform. It wasn’t exactly like the pig-men uniform he knew, but it was more like it than anything he had seen in Eke. He even noticed badges on his chest and shoulders. What did these badges mean, and why did he have them on?
He felt a tug followed by a lightness, as what he thought of as a huge wrapper-cloth exploded from his back. Slowly, he glided through what he now knew to be a battlefield. The crackling of guns, unlike anything he had ever heard, overlapped, with screaming and grunts following fast. When he was low enough to the ground, he fished a blade from his waist and cut through the strings that held the giant wrapper-cloth that enabled him to float.
He moved without the need for thinking or willing, and even when he willed himself to stop, he continued to move. Crouching to avoid getting shot at, he found a trench where men, dressed in what he now recognised to be Anglon uniforms, waited. He peeked above to take a look at the enemy. A bullet burrowing so close, it caused sand to rise and hit his face, forced him back down. He reached for his shoulder and retrieved a gun. It was similar to the rifles he had known, but with much more going on. His hands moved, pulling and clicking parts to ready the weapon.
When he was done, he raised his rifle to take aim. The men running towards them were pig-men. Pig-men killing pig-men. This was not his war. A bullet struck the man next to him, and blood splattered everywhere. He took out a few soldiers, running to flank them before settling into the trenches to reload his weapon. First, he discarded the empty cartridge, then withdrew another to slide it in. But not before he paused to stare at the shiny bullet on top. In it, a face stared back at him—strangely familiar, yet different. He froze in horror, and then, he woke up with a cough.

The last thing he remembered was the bullet on the cartridge and the face on it—an older version of his face with bright blue eyes staring back at him.
‘It cannot be! It cannot be!’
‘Shhh, the spirits have shown you what you need to know. Now leave through the window. And know that the day what you have seen leaves your tongue and meets an ear, you will surely die. You, and your destiny with you.’
‘But…’ Anyi wanted to protest.
The men were silent—a warning silence that told him the test was not over until he left and would never be over until he was dead. Being a man, after all, was not the function of a single rite. It was a lifetime of courage, comradery, and whatever this was.
Silently, Anyi jumped through the window, a strange dread that blue eyes now haunted him, prickling at the nape of his neck.