In Akudaaya, Ifeanacho interrogates Wraith’s long for romance

What if I told you that death is not final? That sometimes death is not a full-stop, but a semi-colon, an opening to a reality the human mind cannot consider. What if I told you that the dead are not always silent? Sometimes, they start new lives, chart alternative courses, and find new loves. This is the fate of an Akudaaya, a phenomenon so delicately and flawlessly explored in Mykonos in Congealed Blood by MaryAnn Ifeanacho.

Writing in lucid but almost poetic language, Ifeanacho explores Nigerian contemporary folklore with the Akudaaya phenomenon: Stories of human wraiths who find life and love away from the confines of their former lives. These entities are more or less human. However, they are hush-mouthed about their antecedents and family backgrounds.



They usually vanish without a trace when their secret is discovered or when they are seen by someone from their previous life. Ifeanacho’s story begins with the protagonist, Ekpereamaka — whose name means prayer is beautiful — losing her mother during a brief illness. Carrying the weight of her grief and her confusion at the unfairness of life, Ekpereamaka starts her first year at the university.

Her grief makes her asocial and irritable. However, it doesn’t free her from the advances of hormonal teens and tweens. After a while, everyone gets the memo: Ekperemaka is not interested.

Everyone, except Henry. Annoyed at his advances being spurned, Henry picks on Ekpereamaka at every opportunity. During one of those incidences, she caves in and slaps him.

Ekpereamaka runs into the Nnamdi Azikiwe Library to escape Henry’s fury and retribution. And that’s where she meets the serious but intriguing Sochima. Sochima and Ekpereamaka’s relationship is tentative.

Like a colt learning to walk, they slowly fall in love with each other over the course of months as they parse through their grief and conceptions of the best way to carry the weight it brings. For Ekpereamaka, Sochima’s love brings rebirth. A new hope.

Her happiness is evident and so contagious that everyone picks up on it. As their relationship develops, she yearns for more. She wants to see Sochima outside the library.

She wants to be a normal couple, to see Sochima during holidays and everything in between. He suggests texts and video calls, but she disagrees. Words and a grainy face on a screen cannot replace the comfort of a warm body.

She offers to come visit him, but he refuses. According to him, the relatives he stays with won’t take well to him having a girl over. However, he promised her a future where they could spend as much time together as she wanted.

Pillowed by his soft-spoken promises and the quiet comfort of the library, Ekpereamaka falls asleep in Sochima’s arms. She is rudely awoken by security officials. She gets a charge for trespassing on school property.

Ekpereamaka’s confusion at Sochima’s abandonment is overshadowed by the discovery that he is an Akudaaya — A dead person who tries to recapture the essence of life at another location or with someone new, someone unaware that he or she is dead. In Igbo tradition, it is believed that when a person dies a traumatic death, his or her soul never departs the location of that death. In a masterful blend of literature and Igbo spirituality, Sochima is trapped in the library, where he jumps to his death.

Meeting and loving Ekpereamaka frees Sochima. However, this moribund relationship will be the salve that will heal many wounds. On hearing that a particular girl claimed to be their son’s girlfriend, Sochima’s parents, who are also lecturers at the university, rush to the scene.

After losing their son in such an untimely manner, the Ngenes are grateful for the gift of Ekperemaka. To them, she is an answered prayer in the flesh and the evidence that their son had found happiness despite the circumstances of his death. In an interview with Flame Tree Publishing, Ifeanacho says this book was her attempt at writing her deceased father back to life, of creating a reality where he was just lost—as Sochima used to say—and not dead.

Mykonos in Congealed Blood is a story that stays with you. Days after reading it, you keep wondering if any of your dead loved ones were elsewhere in the world, starting new lives, charting alternative routes, and learning to love anew..