A Splendid Ecstasy

Two years, before the expiration of the fourth decade of the twentieth-century, I was born in the month of August, into the home of an African family who were not educated in the western sense of the word.  My parents, Akon and Samuel Etuk, were not able to read and write in the English language.  Their formal education was barely beyond that of the second grade.

As far as I knew then, no one in my family had ever been an author except for my father’s junior brother, Udo-Ekong Etuk Obio-Offiong, a teacher at St. Paul’s Commercial College, located at Agbor-Hill, in Aba township.  Obio-Offiong, my uncle, had authored a booklet in 1958 on the history of the Ibibio people, the fourth largest ethnic group in Nigeria.  The Ibibios today comprise the inhabitants of Akwa Ibom State and some parts of Cross River State of Nigeria.1

I had no reason to presume that I would ever break our family’s record and become an author, talk less of traveling to reside in the United States of America for about 30 years.  My parents were extremely poor.  My father, pa Etuk and mother, Akon, regarded farming as the best education and trade for anyone growing up to build a family.  For them, as I saw it, the white man’s brand of education was not really very important. 

Chinua Achebe, in his novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), has pointed to the intellectual mindset of those days.  My grand-father did not embrace western education in order to send his son to school.  My father often said that the highest cultural honor he received from his own father was the initiation into the “Ekpo” society, a cultural dance group popular and known to many Ibibios. 

Often, I felt that my father looked forward to the day of my own initiation, especially as I was his first son.  It may have been that such initiation was a right-of-passage.  I am not sure.  In any case, some years later, my parents may have had a change of heart, perhaps, due to the influence of uncle Obio-Offiong who, himself, had been to school and had become a salary-earning teacher. 

In 1953, I recall one day being taken to Ipu Central School, located at Imo-River village along the old Aba-Port Harcourt Road, some 15 miles from the oil-city of Port Harcourt, which used to be known as the Garden City for its beauty.  Some years later, as I journeyed along my way through primary school, daily trekking barefoot for five miles to school in the hot blistering heat of the tropical weather, I realized that I was curious about books. 

Often, I thought about how they came to be and who wrote the first book in history.  I don’t remember our primary school having a library.  Everything that we learned at the time came to us by way of our teachers who were highly respected and admired in the community.  The headmaster, as he was called, was sort of a second father away from home.  Whatever he said to a parent was nearly unchallengeable.

My earliest recollection about contact with a book was with the family Bible which we had because my parents were Christians.  How they were converted I did not know.  But they were quite enthusiastic about their new religion.  However, I don’t remember reading the Bible myself until I was much older and approached the age of twelve. 

In 1960, I completed my studies at Ipu Central School.  It was the same year that Nigeria obtained independence from British colonial rule.  Because my parents were poor, I could not be enrolled into secondary school the next year.  I spent a year at home doing menial jobs and farming with my parents.  I observed, however, that the family Bible was published in the Efik language with a blue cover. 

Also, I observed that my father struggled to self-teach himself to read the sacred book.  When I was in my teenage years, he would often ask me to read the Bible to him.  He did the same thing when it came to writing some of his letters.

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