Nigerian Seeks Relief From Curse : Africa: Son says his mother’s body was mishandled while being flown to her village--and that crop failures and other woes have followed. He is suing the airline.

Almost four years after his mother died, Onyebuchim Onyeanusi yearns to give her an honorable burial that might lift a curse against him and his family.

The curse, rooted in African tribal beliefs, has been blamed for all sorts of woe in his native Nigerian village: dismal yam harvests, a canceled wedding and an epidemic that killed chickens, goats and sheep.

The bad things started after his mother was buried in shame, after, he says, her body was mishandled and misplaced for eight days while being shipped from the United States.

Because he was responsible for the funeral, Onyeanusi says he was cursed by the gods of his native Ibo tribe, as were 98 family members.

Onyeanusi hoped to set things right the Western way: He and the relatives filed suit against Pan American World Airways, which shipped her body home. But a federal judge ruled against him last month, and his efforts to avenge his mother’s spirit now hinge on appeals.

“The war is not over,” Onyeanusi said. “This was only a battle.”

Onyeanusi’s saga underscores the challenges of Africans emerging in the modern world, but still rooted in traditional beliefs.

It began Oct. 1, 1986, when his mother, Olamma, died of pneumonia while visiting Onyeanusi, who lives on visa status with his American wife and their four children in Philadelphia. The mother was about 90 when she died, although her age was unknown because of uncertain birth records.

Pan Am shipped his mother’s body while Onyeanusi flew to southeastern Nigeria to arrange the funeral. The body was supposed to go to Paris, then home via Nigeria Airways.

According to tribal custom, all business stops until the honored person is buried. The family bears all expenses, and Onyeanusi pledged the family’s 155-acre plantation to feed the 20,000 villagers who gathered for the feast honoring his mother.

“We believe people should rejoice in death. The highest honor you can give someone is at death. There is singing, feasting, the shooting of guns,” Onyeanusi said.

But the villagers waited and waited and waited. Each day for eight days, a frustrated and bewildered Onyeanusi made the two-hour drive to the airport.

The funeral tab eventually came to about $24,000. But that was the least of the family’s problems.

The Videon Funeral Home of Broomall, Pa., embalmed Olamma Onyeanusi’s body and dressed it in a blue sarong, blue turban and white gloves. She was placed in a sheet metal case, which in turn was put into an air tray made of corrugated paper.

The body left New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Oct. 15.

But a Pan Am memo dated Oct. 20 from the director of cargo at Roissy Airport in Paris said: “Shipment received with a crate surrounding the coffin damaged. Nigerian Airways refused to accept transfer and we had to call the Pompes Funebres (French funeral home) to repair that crate.”

When the body arrived in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, the family said it had decayed. And somewhere along the line, Olamma Onyeanusi had been wrapped in burlap and turned upside down--tribal taboos that show someone committed suicide or was an evil person.

“These are regarded as the greatest abuse to be given a corpse,” Onyeanusi said. “We knew from the smell the body had spoiled. She was decomposed, decaying. The skin was peeling off.”

At the funeral, the family burned heavy incense to mask the smell before burying her in disgrace.

The family offered sacrifices of yams, money and English wine to appease the gods. But tribe members say they have seen the woman’s spirit roaming, despite placing chains on her grave to hold her down.

“If anything happens, the family is blamed for it,” said Onyeanusi. “My mother was treated as if she were nothing. My mother is not at peace. She is angry.”

One relative, Obioha Onyeanusi, was a prominent farmer, but was ruined by a poor harvest of yams, an Ibo delicacy. An epidemic blamed on the curse also killed 2,500 chickens, 95 goats and 89 sheep.

The woman’s daughter, Nnalu, earned a degree at Cheyney University in Pennsylvania and went home in 1986 to marry a man she had known for 10 years. But he called off the wedding because of the curse.

Business deals also went sour, the family says.

“It was as if the family had been shunned. Nobody wanted anything to do with them,” said John Beavers, Onyeanusi’s lawyer.

The family sued in 1988 to recover costs for mental anguish, emotional distress and breach of contract. But U.S. District Judge Edmund Ludwig threw the case out June 13 without saying anything about the curse.

Ludwig ruled that the case was covered by the Warsaw Convention, an international treaty that limits liability on shipments to about $18 per pound with a maximum damage claim of $75,000.

The treaty also requires that damage claims be filed within 21 days. Onyeanusi didn’t notify Pan Am for 60 days, so his claim was invalid, the judge said.

Thomas Bracaglia, Pan Am’s attorney, denied the airline mishandled the corpse, but refused to comment on specific allegations. But, he said: “The issues themselves are fascinating.”

Onyeanusi has asked the judge to reconsider and, failing that, will seek relief from the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

“It goes against the grain of not only Nigerian thinking but American thinking that human remains are just goods that can be lost like luggage,” Beavers said.

“We’re not trying to prove to an American jury these curses are real. All we want to do is convince them the family believes it’s true and they’ve suffered consequences,” he said.

Onyeanusi, who is about 50, was a captain in the losing Biafran army during Nigeria’s 1967-70 civil war, Africa’s bloodiest tribal conflict, in which 1 million people were killed.

He left his native village of Uzuakoli and the land of the Ibo, the fourth-largest ethnic group in his homeland, to study in America. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, a master’s degree at Temple University and a doctorate in vocational education at Temple.

Experts on African beliefs say Onyeanusi might not be able to offset the curse even if he wins the appeal. But it’s his only chance to regain respect.

“The gravity of a curse like this is such that one lives with it forever,” said Emeke Akaezuwa, an Ibo who is executive director of the African Academy of Arts, Science and Technology in North Brunswick, N.J. “If you lose respect in the Ibo culture, no one takes you seriously. You are as good as dead.”

Onyeanusi can only ask the gods for mercy.

“If this had been done to us by an individual, my whole tribe would have gone to war,” Onyeanusi said. “If I win the case, it would be like bringing back someone’s head. It would prove I’m a warrior, a strong man. It will show the gods I have done something against someone who shamed my mother.”