Guest of the Cannibals

Guest of the Cannibals is a true story my father told me about his encounter with cannibals while on a trip with his family in the early 1930s. He is the chief character in the play. Some names, characters, and places have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals in the story.

My father had five wives. He was a blacksmith by trade. He made guns, knives, machetes, crafts, etcetera. The nature of his trade involved traveling by foot from place to place throughout Nigeria in search of greener pastures. He did this with flair and with a lot of hard work and dedication to his trade and family.

He is extremely industrious but at the same time very impatient. He works very hard, and is able to garner enough money to get the prestigious "ozo title" in 1928; widely considered the highest title in the whole of Igbo land. He has his struggles. He is desperate to maintain his new found status and at the same time feed his enormous family. Market for his craft is dismal. He runs into a customer who suggests he moves to reboot his trade.

He takes the customer up on this offer and sets off with his wives and children. They move from village to village, traveling for days. First, he settles in a small town where he finds some success. There, he runs into another man who tells him of a remote place far away with even greener pastures. He decides to move again to this place against the advice of his family. This decision almost cost him his life and his family. He ignores several signs on the way to this place including the unique almost vampire-like shaped black stained teeth of the people on the way to this new place.

He ends up becoming the guest of the cannibals.