Kiong Okoyong Tee · Plate XXXVI · The Forest Holds the Language · Pre-Order (Ships ASAP)

Plate XXXVI — Kiong Okoyong. The four clans of the Kiong-speaking people in a ring around the forest canopy: Ekongatanako, Ankiong, Onim and Ekori. The forest holds the language.

Navy shirt carries ivory and moss-green ink; white shirt carries navy. Full-front print.

History

The Kiong Okoyong nation held the forest ridge between the Cross and Calabar Rivers in four clans, a fiercely independent people whose warriors kept both the trading towns and the interior powers at arm's length. Their Kiong tongue, a Cross River language distinct from Efik and Ejagham alike, is today critically endangered — spoken by only a remnant of elders, making the Okoyong custodians of one of Nigeria's rarest languages. Mary Slessor's years among them from 1888 carried their name abroad, but the deeper story is their own: a small nation that answered to no one, whose four clans still close the count of Old Calabar's peoples.