Ngozi Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Afamefuna: An Encyclopedia of Igbo Names

Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria: Anchor Book Publisher Africa, 2024, 428 pp. ISBN: 978-978-767-210-5, paperback

The second edition of Ngozi Ezenwa-Ohaeto's Afamefuna: An Encyclopedia of Igbo Names, is a collection of more than 6,500 Igbo names and their meanings. The Encyclopedia is an attempt to achieve exactly the literal meaning of its title: ‘Afamefuna’ (‘May my name not get lost’). Other names that mean the same thing as it are ‘Amaechina’ and ‘Amaefula.’ In the Igbo world view, such names reflect the people's desire for the perpetuation of their lineage. ‘Ama’ in the deeper Igbo context means ‘my path’ or ‘my lineage’ while ‘echina’ or ‘efula’ means ‘not close’ or ‘go into extinction.’ In most situations when a child is named ‘Afamefuna’ or ‘Ahamefula,’ it indicates either a long period of childlessness or the family has only female children who will eventually get married and leave the family with no one to continue the lineage. The birth of a son offers the hope of continuity to the family. Thus, a child's name can be deployed to know the circumstances of life of the name-givers because the existential experiences of couples and the circumstances surrounding a child's birth are used to create a name for the child. Therefore, name-giving in the Igbo world view can be used to draw insights into their traditional values and their philosophy of life.

It is 27 April 2010. A small crowd, held back by a police cordon, waits in front of the entrance of the Reggio Calabria police headquarters for the exit of Giovanni Tegano and his transfer to prison. A ‘Ndrangheta boss and a fugitive since 1993, Tegano had been captured the previous day, in Terreti, along with five other individuals. Once outside, escorted by two police officers towards the patrol car, Tegano is greeted with a mixture of cheers and tears of despair by relatives, associates and supporters. Among the shouts, the voice of a woman becomes increasingly distinct as she angrily, repeatedly, yells, ‘Man of peace! Man of peace! He has done good!’. The police car, with the boss on board, departs and the crowd's shouts gradually fade into silence, but the woman continues to shout that unsettling ‘Man of peace!’ for several tens of seconds, in an attitude of furious defiance towards the state and even some of those present, who were urging her to calm down.

The episode caused a sensation and no small amount of outrage in the public opinion, at both the local and national levels. Regardless of that woman's affiliation with criminal clans, how can a ruthless murderer at the helm of a mafia organisation be considered a ‘man of peace’? How can a term (‘peace’) that evokes concepts such as harmony, concord and justice be associated with the ferocity of the struggle between criminal factions?

The 1960 Coup d’État, led by brothers Germame and Mengistu Neway, marks the abrupt right turn in Emperor Haile Selassie's reign, ending his struggle to consolidate power against foreign and domestic challengers and inaugurating his determination to hang on to power while deaf to the counsel of trusted advisers and blind to societal signposts. As Bahru Zewde states: “In the three decades between Liberation and Revolution, no event shook the imperial regime or attracted as much public attention as the abortive coup d’état of December 1960.”1 The plotters tested the regime to its core and their suppression challenged the monarchy to implement a just solution.

Serving justice, or not, is the focus of this chapter. The first section probes a wide-ranging analysis of the intellectual currents coursing through Ethiopia at the time. It concentrates on the Qachane Club, for many of the drivers of the coup and countercoup were members of this social and intellectual club. The second section outlines the adoption of European legal practices in Ethiopia by focusing on procedural developments in the courts and the reorganization of the Ministry of Justice. This is followed by an account of the coup d’état as background for the trial of the plotters, the most noted of whom was Mengistu Neway. Comprehending how hanging from a rope in the middle of a square in Addis Ababa would ensure his place in history as a revolutionary martyred for his cause, Mengistu Neway did not appeal his death sentence or seek other means of redress. The trial was an outright rejection of restorative justice and, if probed further in cases of less prominent supporters of the coup d’état, the tricky reconciliation process showed elements of traditional restorative justice long practiced by the state, yet with omissions that reduced its ability to bring about reconciliation.

Introduction

There is an overlap in time between this chapter and the previous two, because although peat shrinkage and storm surges continued to plague the inhabitants of the North Sea Lowlands, the first half of the sixteenth century also witnessed the beginning of a new period of expansion. This expansion was so strong that I will call the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the era of the Second Reclamation of the North Sea Lowlands. This Second Reclamation was less impressive than the Great Reclamation of the central Middle Ages as far as land area was concerned, but it required much more capital than the earlier reclamation phase and it fundamentally changed property relations and farming systems in the lowlands. The strongest drive for this change was the growth of population and economy in the Low Countries, first concentrated around the port of Antwerp, later in the northern Low Countries, the emerging Dutch Republic. Like the preceding periods, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will be covered in two chapters. This chapter will demonstrate how Dutch capital, expertise and institutional innovations made the Second Reclamation possible. Chapter six will be dedicated to the changes in property relations and farming following this second wave of reclamations. Firstly, a survey of the history of the North Sea area from 1500 to 1700 provides context.

The forest in medieval romance is a liminal landscape that variously provides a haven for lovers, a proving ground for young knights, and a gateway to the Otherworld. In a specific textual tradition, the forest also becomes a refuge for mothers who have been wronged by chivalric elements of elite society and, as such, allows romance authors to explore an alternative way to raise and educate sons that foregrounds maternal influence. Whereas the previous chapters in this book have shown how women in romance assert their role as mothers in the built environment, such as birthing rooms and castles, the next two chapters explore how mothers behave in ostensibly natural spaces that have been nonetheless shaped by human perception and interaction: the forest and the sea. Motherhood in these natural spaces is characterised by levels of isolation (from court) and interaction (with other characters) that show that they are part of, rather than existing outside, society.

The representation of the wild forest as both separate from and essential to the courtly environment occurs in a number of medieval romance texts, including Sir Orfeo and Perceforest.

In the historiography of Israeli art music there is a gaping absence: that of Verdina Shlonsky (1905–1990), the only female among the so-called founding fathers generation of composers who settled in British Mandate Palestine before the outbreak of World War II. Over the years, Shlonsky has been all but forgotten, largely excluded from the canon of Israeli music. Though in recent years, some attempts have been made to rectify this situation, her public image remains that of an outsider, a stranger to Israeli culture as well as to the Hebrew language. Such an image can only act to reinforce and even justify her continuing neglect.

And yet, as Shlonsky's life story reveals, she was anything but an outsider to the Yishuv's society and culture. On the contrary, she was a primary contributor whose status, participation, and involvement in contemporary cultural life was thorough and prolific. During the 1920s and 1930s she was identified as “the very growth of this soil, well-rooted in this country's life,” and as representing it to the world. Through her early performances across British Palestine, often in collaboration with her sister Yehudit (Ida, 1903– 1977?) and at times also with her famous brother, poet Avraham Shlonsky (1900–1973), Verdina became the voice of the Yishuv, its representative and musical emissary.

Moreover, despite her general absence from historiography, she held a pioneering position in the history of musical life in the Yishuv. To her contemporaries, Shlonsky represented the community's first grassroots growth, a young composer whose art carried the sounds of the Jewish revival in Palestine to the world. Particularly notable is her first publication, the Images Palestiniennes (1933).