They say I talk too much about the old ways. That I live in a shrine of nostalgia, sweeping cobwebs no one else sees. But I was born in a house where the gods still knocked.

My name is Nnaemeka, son of Adanne, last child of the Nwokike lineage, keepers of the Ọfọ, the sacred staff of truth. Our compound sat at the mouth of the forest, where the wind carried whispers, and the trees didn’t sway they bowed.

In my boyhood, the Ogwugwu shrine wasn’t just a place, it was a presence. You entered barefoot, breath held, spirit bent. The priest didn’t need to speak; the silence was already a sermon. Women laid offerings with trembling hands. Men confessed before the deities, not courts. The sacred was not far. It was near. Thick in the air. Living in the soil.

But now?

Now the shrine is a selfie spot.

It happened gradually, like rain soaking into yam. The first crack was the loudspeaker one blaring gospel tunes into the shrine’s edge. Then came the politicians, draped in chieftaincy regalia, throwing coins like it was a wedding dance. Finally, they paved a road right through the sacred grove, slicing the spirit of the land like it owed us convenience.

Our last dibia, my uncle Ikenna, died holding his tongue. They said he refused to prophesy for cameras. They called him stubborn, called him mad. I call him the last one who feared the gods more than the people.

I buried him myself, with the Ọfọ staff wrapped in white cloth. The staff has not spoken since. These days, I watch schoolchildren giggle as they paint uli symbols on their hands during "cultural day" symbols once etched by priestesses in trance, each line a prayer. They call it fashion now. Their teachers don’t know the meanings. Neither do they.

I once asked a girl, “Do you know who Ani is?”

She said, “Is that a TikTok dancer?”

And just like that, a goddess crumbled.

Yesterday, a tourist asked me what the Ijele masquerade “represents.”

I wanted to tell him it doesn't represent. It is. Or was.

The towering spirit of justice and fertility. A god in cloth and motion. When it danced, people didn’t cheer, they held their breath. But now it performs between jollof stalls and soda stands, ushered in by police tape and speakers. Nobody falls to the ground anymore. Nobody faints.

They clap. Clap?

As if divinity needed applause.

But something happened last night.

I went to the old shrine alone, as it should be. No lights. No noise. I lit a clay lamp and sat beside the cracked altar stone. I didn't pray. I just listened. And for the first time in twenty years, I heard it.

A rustle. A murmur in a tongue older than language. A presence, it was brief. Fleeting but real.

I thought to myself the sacred is not gone , only hiding.

 I made it an habit teach my daughter. The culture, the names.

Not the versions from textbooks, but the names that used to call thunder: Amadioha, Ala, Ekwensu. I teach her how to greet the morning sun with ịbọ chi, how to offer kola not as snack, but as covenant. How to hear rain as speech.

And when she listens, really listens, her eyes go wide, like mine once did.

Wonder returns.

Even if only for a moment because when the sacred becomes ordinary, the earth forgets.

But if even one remembers, just one.

Then maybe the gods won’t leave us entirely.