Hi friends,
As some of you may know, I focused most of last year on writing and publishing my book: The Runaway Princess and Other Stories, a collection of stories and poems focused on girls and women from African history, legend, mythology and folklore. It includes fifteen short stories, five poems, seventeen countries and over fifty unforgettable girls and women. (Check out a list of all primary and secondary characters and what I think their archetypes are here)
It was grueling and I am never doing anything like that in as short a time-frame as I did it in again…I think? It was also one of the most exhilarating times of my life and this was largely because I got to work with amazing and talented people like Ubong Edison. I first met Edison in this MA Twitter Space discussion during which he gave us quite the education on Ibibio culture. So he’s the first person I thought of when I decided I wanted to translate one of the poems in my book to the language of the people from whom the story comes. Working with Edison was so much fun. It was clear he loves his people and their culture. Things got even better when he agreed to sit down and chat with us about his translation journey.
In this episode, Edison talks about his experience of translating the poem ("...challenging but exciting"), and spent some time explaining the intricacies of the Ibibio language. We also talked about Ibibio riddles, proverbs, poetry, and music-making traditions. Edison also gave us a thorough education on the importance of Ndem Spirits to the Efik/Ibibio people for whom Ndem spirits are a religion, a way of life, a source of identity and much more!
The Sacred Spring is a poetic retelling of an Ibibio folktale about a woman named Adiaha Anwa who goes to the village’s sacred spring to fetch water in violation of the Sacred Day of Ndem, the Spirit of the Spring. The original version is found in Amaury Talbot’s Woman's mysteries of a primitive people: The Ibibios of Southern Nigeria. The Ibibio people of Southeastern Nigeria have a rich musical and poetic culture which finds full expression in their language. Many Ibibio songs and poems focus on their water spirits known as Ndem spirits.
Asáŋasáŋa Idim is the Ibibio version of “The Sacred Spring” translated and read by Ubong Edison. You can listen to Edison read the full poem in Ibibio or read it in English here.
Meet the Translator: Ubong Edison