To you sir, it was just a book, a novel telling a story of
an Africa that once was, an Africa that was populated with dignified people,
who had structure, knowledge, medicine, wisdom and who inhabited a land that
was of their birth. To you sir, it was an account of what might have been; of a
time when our communities were structured by who we were and what we believed,
before the great and calamitous invasion. I thank you for this. You told a
story, but to me it was more than that. For me it was THE STORY that changed
everything.
To me sir, Things
Fall Apart was the mirror that was held to my face, a mirror which showed me an
image of myself that was far different from the image in my head: the one in
which I was a poor dirty black African who stank, who was of lesser
intelligence and therefore had to have white people oversee me. The Image that
was drummed into my head of a me that was clumsy, ineloquent, inherently stupid
and backward. That depiction of me as “lucky” to have been saved, fortunate to
be in an all white school instead of a group B school eating weevil- infested
beans and sadza everyday. Things fall apart stirred a deep ancient memory in
me, and kept stirring the more I read, it rattled at the scales before my eyes
until they started to fall off gradually in bits and pieces, so that I could truly
see what had happened to me, to us, to the continent of Africa. Where I had
been led to believe that Africans were very lucky that white people came, I
began to see that tragic effects of colonization. Where I was told there was
ugliness and “paganism” in our faces names and traditions, I began to see
beauty, wealth depth and true spirituality. Where I had heard the word inept
over and over again I began to hear the words, intellectual, scientist, writer,
doctor, lawyer….human being.
Things Fall Apart was my Bible. I read it and gently,
lovingly tenderly I was born again. Things Fall Apart marked the beginning of
my re education, my coming of age, my awakening. I began to dig and to search
for other such books. I was thirsty for more images of myself as fully human,
fully alive, and therefore full entitled to exist and to live just like other
human beings.
Thank you for giving me Okwonkwo, who taught me that to die
with dignity is better than to live in shame and humiliation. Thank you for his
indomitable spirit, because though I did not know it at 14, I would need this
same spirit later on in life. Thank you for Nwoye, who taught me that artistry,
a gentle spirit and distaste for blood- letting are not signs of weakness.
Thank you for the egwugwu, who reminded me that there is a continuum that
begins before birth and carries on after death, and that death is but just
another milestone on that continuum. This gave me courage to venture to places
and spaces I would not have otherwise dared to even think about. The ancestors
were with me, I lived to tell the tale.
Thank you for clothing mother Africa in garments befitting
her stature, garments woven from the most beautiful and lyrical words. Thank
you for lifting her up along with her children and emboldening all of us to
tell our myriad stories and to reclaim ourselves. Thank you for those garments
that restored her dignity and enabled her to stand among other mother nations, owning
her faults and flaunting her iridescent beauty.
Daalu, Nna, Thank you for it all. RIP.
