The Igbo and Homecoming
By Ugoji Egbujo THE civil war united the Igbo and strengthened the attachment to the ancestral home. So when they rose from the ashes and ruins and sojourned again to find hope, they knew home keenly. Home was where to refuge and live, or come back to rest and die, in peace. The home was where they couldn’t flee from and abandon. So it became imperative that wealth must reach home. Because wealth stored outside could become abandoned property. War made home the place of last resort and homecoming a fundamental cultural rite. Those who ignored home, and made home elsewhere, were deemed lost. Besides ancestral sentimentality, that culture fostered the unity between the diaspora and the rural dwellers. Homecoming brought back succour and hope and gave happiness to home comers. Apprentices were found and nurtured to prosperity, and wives and husbands were created. Traditional marriages, funerals and church festivities, cultural rites and dances were artificial if they didn’t hap...