Nti Quotes

─El mundo está cambiando ─le había dicho─. No me gusta, pero soy como el pájaro eneke-nti-oba, que cuando sus amigos le preguntaron por que volaba a todas horas respondió: "Los hombres de hoy han aprendido a disparar sin errar y por eso yo he aprendido a volar sin posarme en las ramas".

Knowing that something is wrong without actively trying to fix it is worse than ignorant neutrality.

Marxist writers are generally either indifferent or mildly hostile to the anti-capitalist movement, which they see as no good substitute for the great projects of communism and social democracy. Now, in one sense this is quite justified[…] However, there seems very little reason to believe that a return to the tactics of the twentieth-century labour movement is going to achieve anything in the future… [W]hat is wrong with commodification is not commodification per se… Marxist tradition goes much further than simply recommending that the excessive power of capital be challenged and curbed. Historically, this tradition tends to assert that such a challenge can only be made by virtue of a direct challenge to the existing relations of production, conceived of as the basis for a social totality, and, crucially, that it can only be made by the proletariat, politically mobilizes as a ‘Class of Itself’. In concrete terms, this means that only the labour movement, being organized and mobilized on the basis of its class identity and demanding the socialization of the means of production, can mount such a challenge… This is where I, and the anti-capitalist movement, part company with classical Marxism… [A]nti-capitalist movement is characterized by a certain pluralism, an unwillingness to impose any one model of social organization, and a refusal of neoliberal hegemony not on the basis of a single class identity or even a single universal human identity, but precisely n the basis of a defence of such pluralism against neoliberalism’s tyrannical monomania.

Cuando uno lee un libro o está ante una obra de arte, decía Coleridge, hay que suspender la incredulidad, hay que creer que todo es posible, y de esa manera, se r nti lo que se ve, y no sólo observarlo.

A GLOSSARY OF IGBO WORDS AND PHRASES agadi-nwayi: old woman. agbala: woman; also used of a man who has taken no title. chi: personal god. efulefu: worthless man. egwugwu: a masquerader who impersonates one of the ancestral spirits of the village. ekwe: a musical instrument; a type of drum made from wood. eneke-nti-oba: a kind of bird. eze-agadi-nwayi: the teeth of an old woman. iba: fever. ilo: the village green, where assemblies for sports, discussions, etc., take place. inyanga: showing off, bragging. isa-ifi: a ceremony. If a wife had been separated from her husband for some time and were then to be re-united with him, this ceremony would be held to ascertain that she had not been unfaithful to him during the time of their separation. iyi-uwa: a special kind of stone which forms the link between an ogbanje and the spirit world. Only if the iyi-uwa were discovered and destroyed would the child not die. jigida: a string of waist beads. kotma: court messenger. The word is not of Igbo origin but is a corruption of “court messenger.” kwenu: a shout of approval and greeting. ndichie: elders. nna ayi: our father. nno: welcome. nso-ani: a religious offence of a kind abhorred by everyone, literally earth’s taboo. nza: a very small bird. obi: the large living quarters of the head of the family. obodo dike: the land of the brave. ocbu: murder or manslaughter. ogbanje: a changeling; a child who repeatedly dies and returns to its mother to be reborn. It is almost impossible to bring up an ogbanje child without it dying, unless its iyi-uwa is first found and destroyed.

Soroi n'ti Mee, Love of my life... Soroe n'ti Mau, Friend of my heart... z'Mee kumin Tau, Join me in life... be nor ret n'Kahn, tizmar sae? Please stay, beyond the cruel dawn?