Achebe taught me that nothing puzzles God

PHOTO | AFP The late Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, the revered author of "Things Fall Apart" who has been called the father of modern African literature, died earlier this year aged 82.  AFP

In Summary
In Achebe’s fictitious village of Umuofia — which I didn’t know was created until I met some Nigerians in college — the people’s daily undertakings are so much like what an ordinary Luo would engage in.

Hard work pays. It’s not a cliche. Okonkwo, whose father Unoka left him neither a fowl nor a barn full of yams, worked his socks off by tilling the land and becoming wealthy by Umuofian standards. He thereafter could sit and dine with the kings as a man of title.

I had never been a TV buff. Apart from sports and docu-feature channels, I rarely glued my eyes on the tube. But I changed this rule immediately after finishing high school.

I was in the boondocks doing a lot of nothing (in the mind of a hot-blooded teenager) save for the endless farm work. So, every day after the 1pm news bulletin on KBC TV — long before they discovered KBC Channel One — I would sit down and watch a German DW TV documentary. They were very captivating and awe-inspiring.

Now, one day, I watched one documentary about bird sport somewhere in Afghanistan. To me, the birds of prey looked like eagles, and I was astounded that the handlers had protective covers on the one arm where the predators rested. The sport went on in the tumultuous crescendo of shrilly commands to the birds in flight.

THINGS FALL APART

I learnt much later that the predators were falcons. Then it hit me. I understood WB Yeats’s poem ‘The Second Coming,’ from where the late Chinua Achebe grabbed his seminal novel’s title Things Fall Apart. ‘The falcon can no longer hear the falconer. Because there’s so much tumult, civil wars and such like unleashed in the corrupt and highly repressive world.’

SIMILARITIES
In Achebe’s fictitious village of Umuofia — which I didn’t know was created until I met some Nigerians in college — the people’s daily undertakings are so much like what an ordinary Luo would engage in.

Okonkwo and his ilk (like his friend Obierika) had their obi, which was the man’s hut where he ate, received visitors, and even slept with his wives in turns. The Luos of yore had their abila, where the same transpired. So, a lot can be gleaned through comparative studies.

Achebe, though a consummate literary icon, never left behind his capacity to entertain, inform and educate the masses through the use of simple and enjoyable language to describe weighty issues.

He teaches that one should never allow greetings to go beyond the elbow with total strangers, especially so with women. How many men in Nairobi and other parts of Kenya have been left with egg on their faces after having fallen prey to green-eyed monsters who drugged them disappeared with their loot?

I never disregard people just because of their small physique or status in the society. Life is short so, like the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes who admonishes the youth, I make merry today hoping that tomorrow will glow with great promises and life will proceed unhindered.

Of course, there’s nothing new under the sun. According to Achebe son of Ogidi village somewhere in Igboland, nothing, really, puzzles God. He gets whatever He wants.

HARD WORK

Hard work pays. It’s not a cliche. Okonkwo, whose father Unoka left him neither a fowl nor a barn full of yams, worked his socks off by tilling the land and becoming wealthy by Umuofian standards. He thereafter could sit and dine with the kings as a man of title.

Even though this is a fictitious account, creative works are inspired by societal occurrences. Okot p’Bitek says that writers of fiction depict whatever transpires in the real world.

After all, fiction does not happen in a vacuum. That’s to say fiction is not always fictitious. It could have happened, is currently taking place or is capable of happening.