CAVE LAND.

Memoirs from the Cave....

When I was much younger, I used to see myself as being the vibrant albeit quiet city girl that was born, bred and raised in a suburban city setting far away from the East. I was also deficient and handicapped and worse, ignorant of the fact that I was deficient and handicapped. I could count the number of times I was taken to my hometown during long holidays save for Christmas festivities - it was either Abuja or Lagos or an excursion to a different place organised by my Alma mater in order to get that much exposure. So, when people would open their mouths to talk about Nnewi, Alor, Awka, Oraukwu, Abia, Owerri, Enugu, Uga, Igboukwu, Ihiala, even the rowdy Onitsha and it's neighboring sister Nkpor, I humbled myself by looking and acting like a dunce. I didn't know shigbain about that supposedly popular Cave City in Anambra. My Igbo-speaking skills back then were nothing short of a sorry excuse for a half-baked Easterner. I understood it perfectly but I couldn't speak it well without infusing some form of English.
I didn't exactly fit in, at first, with the majorly razz lifestyles and shenanigans of some of the razz folk which were plainly evident in my first year at Nnamdi Azikiwe University. But as time went by, the circumstances opened my previously blinded eyes properly and I began to see things in a different light. I had the biggest break when several people supposedly from Cave City repeatedly baptised me with satirical punch lines to my greatest chagrin, such as, "Nya, etu a I chagolu anya nwaagbo na-emezi ka ndi obodo, I maghi uzo be gi ofuma, I maghi etu esi a ga ogba di na be gi; ifele megbukwalu gi ebe ahu. Lijukwa nsi! (So, you claim the city life but you don't know your home and you don't know the cave, shame on you!)"
Only the Igbos would understand how deep it gets when one is told to "lie nsi".
My perspective changed completely after I was bound, tied and unceremoniously dumped in the East some years later...
***
11 YEARS AGO...

On a cold and dusty Harmattan morning shortly after Christmas day, I set my sights and began a hitch-hike from Umueri-Umudioka axis with Emeka. Emeka was my close cousin (still is) and he brought along a few of his paternal cousins and a tour guide. There was no car that could take us all so we arduously trekked the 1 hour journey along an uneven, untarred and hilly road to a destination that was hidden amidst a thick forest of trees, down in a valley. Conversations sprung up along the way and jokes were cracked, those kinds of jokes that could only make you entertained when it was spoken in Igbo, rather than English. I have never in my entire existence trekked for 1 hour on foot save for NYSC endurance trek which was even less than 1 hour, but I'll be damned if I complained about being tired. I could not stand to be jabbed in my native language as a weakling.

The tour guide alerted us when we approached the cave. I expected to see a gate of some sorts but all I could see was just an expanse of trees, a stretch of forest that seemed to follow the topography of the hills. Nothing looked closely related to an underground hole to climb into. There was a vast expanse of land behind me, even behind the endless horizon across, very evident in an undulating fashion. It felt like I was in an entirely different world and an entirely different time than the present. The wind blew across my face and cooled my senses and the pores underneath my skin, making the hairs at the back of my neck stand on edge. The sweetest part of this breeze was where it soared over my underarms and armpits, attempting to dry off the beads of sweat but giving me a sensational feeling of excitement at the same time. Apart from the voices of the tour guide and Emeka trying to urge the local securities to beat down the cost of touring the cave, together with the subtle gossips coming from Emeka's female cousins, the only other sounds coming from the place were the sparrows and robins of the air, screeching and tweeting as they flew in a colony from tree to tree, their sounds echoing as they flew graciously overhead. 

We were finally let into the vicinity and had to trek for another kilometer to get to the stairs. It felt quite easy climbing down more than one hundred steps into the down below, shaded from the sun's rays by the tallest of pine trees I ever saw. Easy because it didn't feel like one of those workout sessions being displayed on TV. Easy because talk wasn't cheap and talking overshadowed the anxiety born out of a desire to go inside the ground, something I had never thought I would do because I had always assumed that a cave was where primitive people lived, if there were any of those still alive in that cave in Ogbunike.

I was still reveling in the mixed and unknown scent of the trees whose leaves and branches swayed here and there intermittently as the wind ruffled them when I saw it from the corner of my eye. That open hole into the down below. A very large one indeed with a million and one scratch markings on its walls. It looked like an ancient tomb without a door, wide enough for a crowd of people to easily get into the darkness. The large boulder just a distance from the main entrance had so many scratch markings of names and nicknames of people who had been there and left their impressions on a monument of some sorts. Some people had been into that cave and never came out. They had gotten lost among the mazes or swallowed up by sink holes along the floor, left to their fate in the hands of bats and wild animals. My skin crawled with goosebumps at the thought of that. I peered into the darkness ahead and saw many inner open entrances. I could almost have sworn that a lion could come out from any one entrance when the tour guide mentioned wild animals that took refuge there at nighttime. I would never know if it was a myth or the truth.

With torches and lanterns we followed our tour guide straight into the darkness, into the mazes ahead like local warriors off to battle with the king, carefully avoiding sink and swallow holes and bats. At some point we crawled underneath the earthen roof which was too low for any human straight enough to walk, or we laid flat on our stomachs and crawled over earthen ground filled with mud and water. We were too dazed by eagerness to worry about our clothes getting dirty.

After what seemed like an eternity climbing walls, crawling over openings and dodging attacks from wild bats within, we got out to the Nature Waterfall somewhere at the back of the cave. The most beautiful part of the cave was this waterfall, guarded surreptitiously by large pines with moss-green leaves on either side. It was the peak highlight of my tour. I sat down on one of the large boulders by the edge of the crystal clear stream and stared at the waterfall in all of its magnificent glory as it poured endlessly from the summit of a hill down into the stream, creating a laminar flow along the stream a short distance away. Without thinking, I removed my sandals, folded and drew my jeans up to my knees and placed my feet into the stream. I wanted to feel the sheer beauty of it. I wanted to touch it.

I wanted to take off my clothes and just lay there in the water and imagine that I was in a tub, to let Nature pet and caress my skin as I looked on at it. Instead I waded my feet in the water, enjoying the way the water tickled my legs and feet. I scooped water off the stream and splashed it on my face, my hair, my hands, even my back and on my clothes. I could see my reflection from the subtle waves at the surface. Nature is a very beautiful thing, I thought to myself.

Sometime later, it was time to leave Nature Waterfall and the Cave and head back home as the afternoon progressed into evening. By then, I had seen and felt enough of the waterfall and as a token, the waterfall decided to take away my wristwatch which was initially a gift. I didn't really care. I thought it was tit for tat. It gave me a magnificent and unspeakable view and feeling and then still took my watch away because it knew too well that I could easily get a new watch even if I didn't come back to look for it. I would always, always remember it in many more years to come. I would never forget it.
***
11 YEARS LATER...

It has been eleven years and not just eleven years right on but eleven years and three months since I visited Nature Waterfall and the Cave for the first time. I still have the various scenes invariably etched like a fitted jigsaw inside my brain. That place is too beautiful to ever forget. Amongst the various places around the world on my wishlist to visit, The Cave and Nature Waterfall are one of them. I want anyone who cares to visit to see what I saw and feel what I felt practically. I want them to have the experience I had and live to tell the tale again and again. Maybe someday, the Anambrarian and Nigerian government would finally look at it and turn it into a world class tourist destination.