SWEM: THE STONE OF TIV

SWEM: THE STONE OF TIV

SWEM

The Stone of Tiv

A Poetic Drama in Five Acts

Adapted in the spirit of kwagh-alom and Kwagh-hir, the storytelling and theatre traditions of the Tiv people of central Nigeria

A NOTE ON THIS BOOK

The Tiv people have no single written epic the way some traditions do. What they have is older and more alive than that: kwagh-alom, the fireside storytelling of moonlit nights after the day's farm work, and its grander descendant Kwagh-hir, the "thing of wonder" — a total theatre of puppetry, masquerade, poetry, music, and dance through which the Tiv have always told and retold the story of who they are.

At the center of that story stands a man named Tiv, ancestor of an entire people; his two sons, Ichongo and Ipusu, from whom all Tiv clans descend; and Swem, the sacred hill on the Nigeria–Cameroon borderland where the family is said to have rested on its long migration, and where a stone of truth was set down that the Tiv still swear upon today.

What follows is a dramatization — verse, scenes, and dialogue shaped by my own hand — built around that remembered arc: conflict in a distant western homeland, a desperate river crossing, settlement at Swem, the parting of two brothers' descendants, and the final arrival in the Benue Valley the Tiv call home. The bones of the story — the names, the river, the hill, the stone, the two sons — com.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

TIV — the ancestor; a tired, stubborn, far-seeing man

AYAAYA (also remembered as Aliwee) — his wife

GBE — the eldest son, restless, who leaves and does not return

ICHONGO — the second son

IPUSU — the third son

ANADENDEN — the daughter

ORTESE — the Announcer, who opens and closes the action, in the manner of the kwagh-hir crier

CHORUS — the voice of the watching village, the drums, the dead, and the unborn

THE NEIGHBOR-CHIEF — ruler of the western land Tiv's family flees

A RIVER-WOMAN — spirit-keeper of the crossing

THE UGENYI (Chamba) — a war-host encountered near Swem

ADZOV — small spirit-voices, played as puppets, who comment and tease throughout

Staging note: In true Kwagh-hir, the ADZOV would be carved puppets worked from below or behind a screen, the CHORUS would drum and dance the transitions, and ORTESE would stand apart from the story, narrating it into being. A modern staging can use shadow puppets, masks, or simply lantern light for the ADZOV, and a single drummer for the CHORUS's rhythms.

PROLOGUE — THE ANNOUNCER'S CALL

(Darkness. A single drum begins, slow, then quickening. ORTESE enters before the curtain, carrying nothing but a staff.)

ORTESE:

Come close. The fire is small tonight but it will hold.

I am not the story — I only open the door.

Behind me: a man, two rivers, a stone, a hill called Swem,

and sons enough to fill a valley with their children's children.

(beat, listening to the drum)

Some of you have heard this before — from a grandmother,

from an uncle drunk enough to tell it right,

from a kwagh-hir troupe with puppets taller than goats

dancing the river out of cloth and wire.

I will tell it again. It does not wear out.

A story that explains a whole people to itself

does not wear out — it only grows new mouths.

(He raps his staff twice.)

Bring up the first house. Bring up Tiv.

(The CHORUS hums low. Lights rise.)

ACT ONE — THE LAND OF GBE'S FATHERS

Scene 1 — A Compound, West of Here

(TIV's compound. AYAAYA grinds something at a low stone. GBE, ICHONGO, IPUSU, and ANADENDEN are at various small tasks. TIV sits apart, watching the horizon line like a man reading weather.)

AYAAYA:

You watch that line of sky the way you watch

a debt you haven't paid.

TIV:

I watch it because it watches me back.

A man's neighbors do not love him

for having more goats than they have, Ayaaya.

They love the idea of his goats walking into their own kraal.

GBE: (restless, sharpening something)

Then let them try. I am tired of this compound.

The world is bigger than father's fences.

TIV:

The world is bigger, yes. It is also hungrier.

GBE:

I did not ask to be first-born into caution.

I am going, father. Not today — but I am going.

ICHONGO: (younger, teasing)

Going where, big brother? To marry the moon?

GBE:

To find out if there's a place where a man

isn't measured against his father's goats.

IPUSU:

Bring back a story, at least. We'll need one.

(ANADENDEN laughs. The CHORUS, unseen, murmurs a low refrain — almost a lullaby, almost a warning.)

CHORUS: (sung, soft)

The eldest leaves with the sun on his back —

de mvande nan Gbe, share his portion to the ground first,

before any other mouth is fed.

The eldest leaves. The house remembers him

in the first piece of every meal, forever.

(GBE rises, embraces his mother, clasps his father's arm a moment longer than necessary, and walks off into the dark beyond the firelight. He does not look back. He will not return.)

TIV: (quietly, to no one)

That is one gone. Three left to keep alive.

Scene 2 — The Chief's House, Some Distance Off

(THE NEIGHBOR-CHIEF, with two ADZOV puppet-voices flanking him like whispering thoughts given shape.)

THE NEIGHBOR-CHIEF:

Tiv's compound grows fat while mine stays thin.

His goats multiply like his sons do.

ADZOV 1: (small, sly voice)

Fat things are easy to take while they sleep.

ADZOV 2: (small, sly voice)

A man with three sons left is not yet a wall.

He is still only a fence with three posts.

THE NEIGHBOR-CHIEF:

Then let us be the wind that finds the gaps.

Send word — quietly — to the others.

We move when the moon is dark enough to hide in.

(The ADZOV cackle and vanish. Drum quickens, ominous.)

ORTESE: (stepping forward briefly)

But word, like water, finds its own cracks to run through —

and one of the chief's own people loved Tiv's salt

more than he feared the chief's anger.

ACT TWO — THE RIVER

Scene 1 — Flight by Night

(A messenger figure — played by a single CHORUS voice stepping forward — whispers urgently to TIV.)

CHORUS-VOICE:

They come when the moon hides its face.

Take what you can carry and nothing more.

A loaded back runs slower than a frightened one.

(TIV wakes AYAAYA, ICHONGO, IPUSU, ANADENDEN. They gather almost nothing — a cooking pot, a stone, a sleeping mat rolled tight.)

AYAAYA:

Where do we run to, husband, in a night this black?

TIV:

Away first. Toward, after.

A direction chosen in fear is still a direction.

We will find the "toward" once "away" is far enough behind us.

(They move. The CHORUS becomes the sound of footsteps, breath, the night itself — a percussive, urgent rhythm, no words, just motion translated into drum.)

Scene 2 — The River's Edge

(They arrive, exhausted, at a wide dark river. No bridge. No boat. THE RIVER-WOMAN rises from the water-line — half light, half shadow, an ADZOV-spirit larger than the rest.)

IPUSU:

Father — we cannot swim this. Not with Anadenden. Not with the pot.

TIV: (to the river, not quite believing he's speaking to it)

River. I have nothing to give you

but a man's whole family, asking to live.

THE RIVER-WOMAN:

Every river has heard that prayer before, Tiv.

Most who pray it drown anyway.

TIV:

Then let me be the one it works for, this once.

(A long pause. The CHORUS holds its breath — literally, a held drum-roll.)

THE RIVER-WOMAN:

I will not carry you. I am not a boat.

But I will hold still long enough

that your courage can do what my mercy won't.

Find the place where I run shallow over stone,

upstream, where the water forgets to be deep.

Go now, while the dark still hides you from both banks.

(She sinks back into shadow. The family moves upstream, find a stone ford, and cross — slow, careful, the CHORUS drumming each footstep like a held breath finally released.)

ANADENDEN: (once across, looking back)

We left everything on that side, father.

TIV:

We left everything except each other.

That was always the only thing

worth carrying across a river at night.

(They keep walking. Lights dim slowly to the sound of the CHORUS singing a wordless, weary lullaby.)

ACT THREE — SWEM

Scene 1 — The Hill

(Dawn. A hill rises before them — green, quiet, untouched. The family stands at its foot.)

TIV:

This is far enough that fear can put down its load.

ICHONGO:

What do we call a place that holds us after a night like that?

TIV:

We call it what it is. Swem. A resting.

(They climb. At the top, TIV finds two stones jutting at an angle — the ILYUM — and sets between them a small clay pot, the one carried across the river.)

TIV:

Here. This is where a man may stand

and say a true thing, and the ground will hold him to it.

And where a man says a false thing —

(he touches his own stomach, legs, forehead)

— let his belly remember it before his mouth forgets.

(He plants AYANDE, the lean-stemmed vegetable, around the stone. The CHORUS sings a settling hymn — slower now, rooted, no longer fleeing.)

CHORUS:

Swem holds the truth the way a mouth holds water —

spill it, and someone always notices the wet ground.

We did not bring a kingdom across that river.

We brought a stone, and the habit of telling the truth on it.

That was enough to grow a people from.

Scene 2 — The Sons Grow

(Years pass — shown simply: AYAAYA older, ICHONGO and IPUSU grown to young men, ANADENDEN grown too. ADZOV puppets dance the passage of seasons — rain, sun, harvest, rain again.)

IPUSU:

Brother. They cut Ichongo at the right age, as is proper.

They did not cut me. Does that make me less of father's son?

ICHONGO:

It makes you Ipusu and me Ichongo.

That is all it has ever meant, until someone

decides to make it mean more than that.

IPUSU:

Will someone decide that, do you think?

ICHONGO: (after a pause, looking out at the land)

Someone always does, eventually.

Not us, I hope. Maybe our children's children,

arguing over who sits where at a feast

neither of us will live to attend.

IPUSU:

Then let's at least make sure the feast is worth fighting over.

(They laugh — real laughter, brothers' laughter. ORTESE steps forward, addressing the audience directly while the brothers continue their work behind him, unheard now.)

ORTESE:

Remember those two names — Ichongo, Ipusu.

Every Tiv clan you will ever meet

folds back into one of those two men,

the way every river you cross

eventually folds back into the sea.

ACT FOUR — THE PARTING OF WATERS

Scene 1 — News from the South

(TIV, now visibly older, leaning on a staff. AYAAYA beside him. A scout-CHORUS-voice arrives.)

CHORUS-VOICE:

Father Tiv — the land south and east of here

is wide and green along a great river's valley.

But it is not empty. The Ugenyi hold ground there,

and they do not give ground easily.

TIV:

Land worth having is never offered freely.

It is always taken, or it is always fought for.

We have done the taking-by-flight already, once.

Now we will have to learn the other kind.

AYAAYA:

You speak of war the way you once spoke of rivers —

as if naming the danger makes it smaller.

TIV:

It doesn't make it smaller, Ayaaya.

It only makes it speakable.

A danger you can name is a danger you can plan against.

Scene 2 — The Ugenyi Encounter

(A tense meeting-ground. THE UGENYI war-host faces ICHONGO and IPUSU, now leading in their father's stead, TIV himself too old to stand at the front line.)

THE UGENYI:

This valley feeds our cattle and our dead.

What do you bring that earns you a place in it?

ICHONGO:

We bring a stone we swore truth on, on a hill far behind us,

and the children of two brothers who have never yet

needed to lie to each other to survive.

That is worth more than it sounds, where we come from.

IPUSU:

We are not asking for all of it.

We are asking for enough of it

to stop running and start planting.

THE UGENYI: (considering, then, grudgingly)

Then we will test what "enough" costs you.

Land is not given. It is agreed to, after the asking

has proven its weight in something other than words.

(A stylized battle sequence — drums, masked dancers as the warring sides, ADZOV puppets darting between them as fear and courage made visible. It need not be literal; in Kwagh-hir, war is danced, not merely described. At its close, neither side is destroyed — both sides are exhausted, and exhaustion becomes its own kind of treaty.)

ORTESE:

No victory song here. Only this:

the valley had room enough, in the end,

for those who refused to stop arriving.

ACT FIVE — THE VALLEY OF BENUE

Scene 1 — Settling

(The full family — TIV very old now, AYAAYA beside him, ICHONGO and IPUSU each with their own grown children gathering around them, ANADENDEN with children of her own — stand on a riverbank, wide water glinting behind them: the Benue.)

TIV: (slow, his strength visibly going)

I will not walk much farther than this valley.

Let it be far enough.

ICHONGO:

It is far enough, father. It is fertile. It is ours

the way a thing becomes yours — by surviving in it.

TIV:

Then hear me, while I can still be heard.

(to IPUSU and ICHONGO together)

Your children will spread until they no longer

remember sharing one mother's cooking-fire.

They will call themselves Ukum, Kparev, Shitire, Tongov —

your line, Ipusu — and Turan, Ikurav, Iharev, Nongov, Ugondo, Mase —

yours, Ichongo. They will forget, sometimes,

that they came from one fence with three posts

and a fourth son who walked into the dark and never wrote home.

IPUSU:

We will not forget, father.

TIV:

You will not. But theirs will, a little, in a hundred years.

That is not betrayal. That is only how a family

becomes a people — by growing too large

to fit around one fire, and learning to light new ones

from the same first flame.

(He looks toward the river, then back at his children, his strength nearly gone.)

TIV:

Keep the stone's habit, even when the stone itself is far behind you.

Tell the truth on something, even if it's only each other's faces.

That is the only inheritance that doesn't divide

when you split it among many hands.

(AYAAYA takes his arm. The light narrows to just the two of them, the CHORUS rising softly around them like the valley itself breathing.)

CHORUS: (sung, full now, the whole company)

Ya na angbian — eat, and share with your brother —

was never only about food.

It was always about this: that a people

who remember to share will remember to remain a people,

*long after the man who taught them is only a name

at the start of a long, long list of children.

EPILOGUE — THE DRUM FADES

(ORTESE returns to the front, alone, as the company stills behind him.)

ORTESE:

That is the story. Tiv is gone now, generations gone,

and Gbe never did write home, as far as anyone heard.

But Ichongo and Ipusu's children filled a valley,

and filled it again, and are still filling it,

and somewhere on a hill near a border

that two countries have drawn through one mountain,

there may still be a stone two angles wide,

waiting for someone honest enough to swear on it.

(He taps his staff once.)

We call this kind of telling Kwagh-hir —

"a thing of wonder." Not because the river

truly held still for a frightened family at night.

Not because a hill truly grew a vegetable

exactly where a pot was set down.

We call it wonder because of what it does

to a people sitting around a fire centuries later,

hearing their own beginning handed to them again,

a little reshaped by whoever is doing the telling tonight —

and recognizing themselves in it anyway.

(The drum slows to a single, final beat.)

That is the wonder. Go home. Tell it again, your own way,

the next time someone asks you where you're from.

(Darkness.)

— END —

AFTERWORD: ON THE TRADITION BEHIND THIS BOOK

The Tiv people number several million today, concentrated chiefly in Benue State, central Nigeria, with related communities across the Nigeria–Cameroon borderland. Their oral history holds that an ancestor named Tiv — his own father remembered variously as Takuruku, Shon, or Awange depending on who is telling it — fled conflict in a homeland to the west or south (some traditions place it as far as the Congo basin) and led his family across a great river and eventually to a hill called Swem, never definitively located, which remains the spiritual reference point of Tiv identity to this day. His sons Ichongo (the circumcised line) and Ipusu (the uncircumcised line) are remembered as the root of the two great lineage-halves into which nearly every Tiv clan still traces itself, down to today's local government divisions. The eldest son, Gbe, is remembered as having departed and never returned — a story still marked in the Tiv custom of "de mvande nan Gbe," setting aside the first portion of any meal or drink for the absent eldest brother before anyone else partakes.

This migration narrative is not preserved as a single fixed text. It lives in kwagh-alom, the household storytelling tradition of moonlit nights, and has been elevated since the mid-twentieth century into Kwagh-hir — a public, composite theatre art recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, combining puppetry, masquerade, poetry, music, and dance to dramatize both ancient legend and present-day social commentary. The drama above borrows its shape, its named characters, and its core events from that remembered tradition, while inventing the dialogue, the river-spirit, and other dramatic flesh in the manner any kwagh-alom teller would — filling a known frame with the details a particular night, and a particular audience, seems to call for.

For readers who want to go further: look into the documented oral histories collected by Tiv scholars such as Akiga Sai, and the continuing scholarship and performance tradition around Kwagh-hir in Benue State today.