Most of Nelly Kalu’s essay in the Nigerian Guardian is about the restitution of Benin bronzes. What the piece of this journalist makes also interesting is what he writes about his childhood: When I was a child, my father would tell me stories of the deities in our village and their significance to our lives, even in our names.
I was a city child, born and bred in Lagos Nigeria, occasionally, we’d travel over 600 km for 10 hours by road to our village in southeast Nigeria to spend Christmas with our relatives.
Our family name is Kalu Arunsi, it’s been passed down from son to son until it became a surname for younger sons to pass down to their children after colonialism brought Christianity to my village.
Kalu is a deity, a small deity as my father called it. Every family had a kalu.
It was the family deity or chi, where families say daily prayers and expect it to watch over their affairs. It was an intimate relationship one had with their chi, when your chi was angry with you it showed in the ill fortunes of your house specifically, you can also be angry with your chi and it showed in the silent treatment and the abandonment of worship and attention you gave it.
