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I was born on a Nkwo Market Day, a day considered sacred in my community. My father named me Ehiwariornotoyelua, which means, “we pleaded with God that he lives longer.” That name was not given casually. It carried the full weight of a father’s grief. Before I was born, my father had buried many of his children. One tragic day, he lost two of them within hours of each other. The sorrow in our home was deep and unrelenting. My elder sister was named Onwuemezilem, meaning, “Death, please pardon me.”

In our family, names were never random. They were not just words. They were stories, shaped by pain and prayer. Each name was a whispered plea to fate, a conversation with the divine. In my culture, a name is both memory and prophecy. It reflects who we are, where we come from, and sometimes, where we are going. My name felt like a covenant; a promise whispered into the ears of the heavens.

My father’s sorrow eventually led him down a different path. He searched for answers beyond what his eyes could see. That search turned him into an herbalist, a seer, and a spiritual guide for many. His journey from grief to spiritual calling laid the foundation for how I first experienced the unseen world.

Our home in Idumu Ozuke didn’t feel like an ordinary house. It felt like a sacred ground. People came from all over. They brought goats, chickens, tortoises, whatever they could offer. These were sacrifices for healing rituals. The blood from the animals was used in ceremonies to call on the gods, and the meat was shared with our kinsmen. Nothing was wasted. Everything had meaning.

The shrine had its rules. Women who had reached puberty were not allowed to enter. Only the spiritually clean were permitted inside. But as a child, I had access. I saw the inner workings of what many only heard whispers about. The room was lined with bottles of local brews and foreign gins, gifts brought by those seeking help. In my young mind, I believed that the more expensive the gin you brought, the faster your healing would come.

At dawn, older men would stop by to take a quick shot of gin before heading to their farms. It was more than a drink. To them, it was fuel for the body, and maybe even for the spirit. On Eke Market Days, our compound would be packed before the sun had fully risen. People came filled with hope, fear, and desperation. Some were sick, others just lost. It often felt like my father held the last candle in a very dark room.

On Afor Days, however, my father rested. Those were the quiet days. He would sit on the large tree trunk by the verandah with his kinsmen, telling stories and sharing drinks. Before taking his first sip, he would pour a little on the ground. That was his way of greeting the ancestors, honouring those who had gone before us.

Behind our house was a thick bush where he grew herbs. He treated the plants with care, almost like they were alive. In his bedroom, there was a carved bust of his own head. He called it his Ehi, his spiritual twin, the part of him that belonged to the divine. That statue stood guard while he slept and perhaps watched over him as he healed others.

My father was fearless in his duties. Many nights, I walked beside him to remote T-junctions, wrapped in the stillness of midnight. Under the cover of darkness, he performed cleansing rituals for people battling mysterious illnesses. For those with milder ailments, he used a large clay pot filled with water in his inner chamber. He would stir the water with his hand and then wash the head of the sick, whispering sacred words as he did. No matter where the pain or sickness was, he always started with the head. In our culture, the head is everything. It is the crown, the seat of destiny, a living god. That pot was our own Pool of Bethesda. But unlike the biblical version, my father stirred it constantly, as if to keep the spirit’s alert.

These rituals were believed to remove spiritual attacks, restore peace, and bring healing. And people believed. They came in numbers. They left with hope.

One memory I’ll never forget is the day my immediate elder brother died from a snake bite. My father and his kinsmen believed the death wasn’t natural. They left the body untouched and travelled to a distant village for answers. When they returned, they brought spiritual men with them. In broad daylight, right there in our compound and before many witnesses, they performed a ritual to call on his spirit and asked him to name his killer. It felt unreal, like something out of a film. But it was real. I saw it with my own eyes.

When he wasn’t helping people spiritually, my father was on the farm. We had a large piece of land in Ekpon, about a hundred kilometres from our home. During planting season, I would go with him and my younger brother. We stayed in a mud hut, worked the soil, and slept under a sky full of stars. Those trips were hard, but they were beautiful too. They taught me discipline, silence, and strength.

Then, in 1996, everything changed. My father died.

After his death, I was sent to live in Lagos with my eldest sister. She treated me like her own son. At first, we lived on Ajegunle Street in Onipanu, sharing a small home with her and our uncle. She enrolled me in a better school and brought some structure into my life.

Eventually, her husband, who was a police officer, moved his family into the police barracks. I joined them in the year 2000 and lived there until 2015. The barracks were nothing like home. They were noisy, crowded, full of energy and tension. But they became part of my story.

While living with my uncle, I had a spiritual awakening of my own. I gave my life to Christ and started attending Chosen Vessels Christian Assembly. When I moved into the barracks, I joined TREM (The Redeemed Evangelical Mission) and was eventually baptised.

Life in the barracks introduced me to many characters, but none like Mama Ngozi. She was from Okija in Anambra State and was married to a man from Ondo Town. Her children had all dropped out of school, yet she took it upon herself to discipline every other child in the block. She was feared, especially because she often spoke about fetching water from the Okija shrine every year. During certain seasons, she dressed in all white from morning until night, like some ghostly priestess walking among us.

We all shared a single bathroom, more than seventy of us. To get to school on time, I had to wake up by 5:30 a.m. One early morning, while heading to bathe, I saw Mama Ngozi completely naked, holding a calabash and shouting curses. I just walked past her. Everyone feared her. I never did.

Not far from my secondary school, there was a junction where someone always left coins on top of boiled eggs. I noticed this regularly. One day, curiosity got the better of me. I picked the coins and spent them. Deep down, I knew I was tampering with forces I didn’t understand.

In university, people started calling me Joseph. I kept a dream journal, writing down what I saw in my sleep every night. My upbringing had taught me that dreams are not random. They are messages from somewhere deeper.

One evening, while walking near the Lagos lagoon, I met a man named Alfa Jamiu. He asked for my name. I said, “Emmanuel.” He smiled and said, “That is God’s name.” When I asked what he was doing by the water, he said he came to pray. He waded into the lagoon, whispered his prayers, and when he came back, he handed me his number. “Call me if you ever need anything,” he said.

During NYSC, I was posted to Ijebu-Igbo. On weekends, I often returned to Lagos to raise money to renovate the school where I served. One Sunday, I boarded a bus and sat beside an older man. He wore a turban and had a strong body odour. We got talking in Yoruba. He was going to Oru-Ijebu. I paid his fare, and he thanked me. Before getting off, he asked for my name. I said, “Emmanuel.” He smiled, reached into his pocket, and handed me a white-wrapped substance. I politely declined.

These encounters, strange, beautiful, divine, and sometimes eerie, have shaped the way I see life. From the rituals behind my father’s house to the baptismal waters of TREM, from dreams to Lagos streets filled with spiritual echoes, I have walked between two worlds.

If there is one truth I carry with me, it is this:

Life is spiritual.