There Was a Country: A Memoir Read online

  Meeting Christie and Her Family

  The school building at Merchants of Light was in disrepair and had a very small library. I would often encourage my students to read by bringing in a copy of the newspaper or by making a few more books from my own library available to them. Like most young people, they were enthusiastic and interested pupils. I spent about four months at this job. It was known to all that this would be a temporary position, what the Americans call “a summer job,” because I had my eyes farther afield.

  A few months later, in 1954, I was notified of a job opening at what was then called the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) in Enugu. I was offered a choice by the search committee of coming to Enugu to interview or having them come to me. I remember feeling quite entitled by this choice and proceeded to enjoy the privilege by asking them to come to me, which they did. The team of mainly Britons left to return to Enugu after an hour or so of interview questions. About a week or so later I received a letter in the mail offering me a job, so I moved to Enugu. I enjoyed my stint at the broadcasting house. Promotions came rapidly, and within a very short period of time I had become the controller of the Nigerian Broadcasting Service, Eastern Region.

  At the end of the academic year, during the long vacation, the NBS offered summer jobs to college students on vacation. They did not pay very well but provided young people with exposure to the world of journalism, broadcasting, and news reporting.

  NBS was inundated with a large number of applicants during this particular long vacation—not only students from my alma mater, University College, Ibadan, but from those returning from studies abroad. A few weeks later one could hear the unmistakable banter of young people as they milled about the normally quiet halls of the Nigerian Broadcasting Service. As the controller I had very little interaction with the students. I found all this excited commotion amusing and got on with my work.

  But soon after I was told by my secretary that a delegation of university students wanted to speak with me about a matter of great importance. The students trooped into my office led by their leader, Christie Okoli. She was a beautiful young woman and very articulate, and when she spoke she caught my attention. I was spellbound. In grave tones she announced the complaint of the students: There was one student whose salary was higher than all the others, and they wanted “equal pay for equal time.” I was kindly disposed toward them and made sure that all of the students received the same remuneration for the work that they did.

  My interest in Christie grew rapidly into a desire to get to know her better. I discovered, for instance, that she was from the ancient town of Awka, the present-day capital of Anambra state. Awka held a soft spot in my heart because it was my mother’s hometown, and it was known throughout Igbo land and beyond for its skilled artisans and blacksmiths, who fashioned bronze, wood, and metal carvings of a bold and haunting beauty.

  Two years into our friendship, Christie and I were engaged.

  —

  Christie was from a very prominent Awka family. She was the daughter of one of the most formidable Igbo men of the early twentieth century, Timothy Chukwukadibia Okoli, and Mgboye Matilda Mmuo, who unfortunately died not long after Christie was born.

  “T. C. Okoli,” as he was widely known, was the son of a famous dibia, or traditional medicine man, known from Arochukwu to Nri and from Onitsha to Ogoja for skills that encompassed herbal medicine, mysticism, divination, and magic. After a lifetime in the service of the ancient medical practice, Okoli gave his son the name Chukwukadibia, which means “God is greater than a traditional medicine man.” He encouraged his newborn son to seek a Christian life.

  An early convert to Christianity in Igbo land, T. C. Okoli was one of the few educated men of his time to attain the position of senior post- master in the colonial Posts and Telecommunications (P&T) Department. He was a profoundly generous man, and used his resources—which were quite outstanding for a Nigerian at that time—to sponsor the education of gifted children from scores of families in Awka. When he died at 102, in the mid-1980s, all thirteen villages of the town celebrated his life for several days, through both traditional and Christian rites and festivities.

  Meeting Christie’s father for the first time was a great thrill for me. His compound in Awka was always full of laughter. People visited constantly, some to drink and make merry, others for favors and to pay their respects. I belonged to the latter category.

  We arrived, and Christie promptly took me to meet her dad.

  “Papa” she said, “meet Chinua Achebe.”

  We shook hands, and then the pleasantries gave way to a brief interview: “Where are you from, young man?” “What do you do?” “Where did you go to school?” “Who are your parents?” I quickly discovered that T. C. Okoli was an Anglophile: He took pleasure in reciting passages in English from scripture, Shakespeare, and poetry; and he had sent several of his children off to England to advance their education. He was also a deeply respectful and kind man who left me with a lasting lesson that I have never forgotten.

  Christie and I were talking one evening when Okoli walked into the living room. We exchanged greetings. He sat down and listened to our conversation while sipping wine, watching the two of us talk. By this time I could say confidently that he liked me. We got along very well. But in the course of the conversation he missed something Christie said and asked for clarification. At this prompting I responded by saying jestfully in Igbo: “Rapia ka ona aghaigha agba,” or in English, “Don’t mind her . . . wagging her jaw. . . .”

  T. C. Okoli sat up and rebuked me. He said: “Don’t say or imply that what someone else has to say or is saying is not worth attending or listening to.” It immediately struck me that I had to be careful about the way I handled someone else’s words or opinions, especially Christie’s. Even when there was strong disagreement, one had to remember to be discordant with respect.

  Discovering Things Fall Apart

  Soon after this educational encounter with my future father-in-law I moved to Lagos to interview for a new position at the headquarters of what was now called the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). The Talks Department hired me to maul over scripts and prepare them for broadcast. A tedious job, it nevertheless honed my skill for writing realistic dialogue, a gift that I gratefully tapped into when writing my novels.

  In my second or third year at University College, Ibadan, I had offered two short stories, “Polar Undergraduate” and “Marriage Is a Private Affair,” to the University Herald, the campus magazine. They were accepted and published. I published other stories during that time, including “The Old Order in Conflict with the New” and “Dead Men’s Path.” In my third year I was invited to join the editorial committee of the journal. A bit later I became the magazine’s editor.

  At the University College, Ibadan, I was in contact with instructors of literature, of religion, and of history who had spent several years teaching in England. Studying religion was new to me and interesting because the focus went beyond Christian theology to encompass wider scholarship—West African religions. One of my professors in the Department of Religion, Dr. Parrinder, was a pioneer in the area. He had done extensive research in West African religions and cosmology, particularly in Dahomey, present-day Republic of Benin. For the first time I was able to see the systems—including my own—compared and placed side by side, which was really exciting. I also encountered another professor, James Welch, in that department, an extraordinary man, who had been chaplain to King George VI, chaplain to the BBC, and all kinds of high-powered things before he came to University College, Ibadan.

  My professors were excellent people and excellent teachers, but they were not always the ones I needed. James Welch said to me, “We may not be able to teach you what you need or what you want. We can only teach you what we know.” I thought that was wonderful. Welch helped me understand that they were not sent there to
translate their knowledge to me in a way that would help me channel my creative energies to tell my story of Africa, my story of Nigeria, the story of myself. I learned, if I may put it simply, that my story had to come from within me. Finding that inner creative spark required introspection, deep personal scrutiny, and connection, and this was not something anybody could really teach me.1

  I have written elsewhere of how I fared when I entered a short story competition in the Department of English, and how my teacher, who supervised this competition, announced the result, which was that nobody who entered the competition was good enough. I was more or less singled out as someone with some promise, but the story I submitted lacked “form.” Understandably, I wanted to find out more about what the professor meant by form. It seemed to me that here was some secret competence that I needed to be taught. But when I then applied some pressure on this professor to explain to me what form was, it was clear that she was not prepared—that she could not explain it to me. And it dawned on me that despite her excellent mind and background, she was not capable of teaching across cultures, from her English culture to mine. It was in these circumstances that I was moved to put down on paper the story that became Things Fall Apart. I was conscripted by the story, and I was writing it at all times—whenever there was any opening. It felt like a sentence, an imprisonment of creativity. Through it all I did not neglect the employment for which I earned a salary. Additional promotions came at NBC, and very swiftly, particularly after most of the British returned to England; I was appointed director of external broadcasting.

  I worked on my writing mostly at night. I was seized by the story and I found myself totally ensconced in it. It was almost like living in a parallel realm, a dual existence not in any negative sense but in the way a hand has two surfaces, united in purpose but very different in tone, appearance, character, and structure. I had in essence discovered the writer’s life, one that exists in the world of the pages of his or her story and then seamlessly steps into the realities of everyday life.

  The scribbling finally grew into a manuscript. I wanted to have not just a good manuscript but a good-looking manuscript, because it seemed to me that that would help to draw readers’ and publishers’ attention to the work. So I decided, on the strength of a recommendation of an advertisement in a British magazine or journal that described a company’s ability to transform a manuscript through typing into an attractive document, to send it off for “polishing.”

  What I did next, in retrospect, was quite naïve, even foolish. I put my handwritten documents together, went to the post office, and had them parcel the only copy of the manuscript I had to the London address of the highly recommended typing agency that was in the business of manuscript preparation. A letter came from this agency after a few weeks. They confirmed that they had received my document and wrote that the next thing I should do was send them thirty-two pounds, which was the cost of producing my manuscript. Now, thirty-two pounds was a lot of money in 1956, and a significant slice of my salary, but I was encouraged by the fact that I had received this information, this feedback, and that the people sounded as if they were going to be of great value to me. So, I sent off the payment as instructed.

  What happened next was a near catastrophe. The typing agency, obviously having received the money I sent, went silent. One week passed, then two, three, four, five, six weeks, and I began to panic. I wrote two letters inquiring about the status of the manuscript preparation and I got no answer.

  One had a great deal of confidence and faith in the British system that we had grown up in, a confidence and faith in British institutions. One trusted that things would get where they were sent; postal theft, tampering, or loss of documents were unheard-of. Today one would not even contemplate sending off materials of importance so readily, either abroad or even locally, by mail.

  The good luck was that at that point in my career I was working very closely with a British former BBC Talks producer, Angela Beattie. Beattie was seconded to the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, for which she served as head of our two-person department. She was the head of Talks and I was the Talks producer, and we had a secretary, I believe, also from the BBC. It was to Beattie that I now went to and told my story about the British typing agency. Ms. Angela Beattie was shocked—she was a no-nonsense person.

  “Give me their name and address,” she insisted.

  Fortunately, she was about to go to England on leave, so she became the perfect vehicle to carry my anguish to the typists in London. And she did it in her distinctive way.

  She arrived at the offices of the typing agency and asked to speak to the manager, who showed up swiftly. Angela Beattie asked the manager sternly what she had done with the manuscript that her colleague in Lagos, Nigeria, had sent. Here, right before them, armed with a threat, was a well-connected woman who could really make trouble for them. The people there were surprised and shaken. “Now, I am going back to Nigeria in three weeks,” Angela Beattie said as she left the agency’s office, “and when I get there, let us hope that the manuscript you took money to prepare has been received by its owner, or else you will hear more about it.” A few weeks later I received a handsome package in the mail. It was my manuscript. I look back now at those events and state categorically that had the manuscript been lost I most certainly would have been irreversibly discouraged from continuing my writing career.

  Later that year, in the fall of 1956 or thereabouts, I was selected to travel to the British Broadcasting Corporation school in London where its staff were trained. Bisi Onabanjo, a good friend of mine and the future governor of Ogun state, was also among the small group of Nigerians attending this course. I had not up to this time traveled outside Nigeria. In those days such trips were done by boat, as commercial air flights from Lagos were not commonplace. London was a brand-new and pleasant experience. I took advanced technical production skills courses during my time at the BBC staff school, and in between my classes was able to take in the sights and sounds of London, a city that remains one of my favorite international capitals.

  I took along my typed manuscript, hoping to bump into a number of writers and publishers who could provide me with some advice about how best to get the book published. I was fortunate to meet and make the acquaintance of Gilbert Phelps, a British writer, who read the manuscript and was quite enthusiastic about its literary merit and prospects for publication. When Mr. Phelps kindly suggested that I hand over the manuscript to him to pass on to some publishers he knew; I hesitated and told him that I needed some more time to work on the novel. I was still wondering whether to publish it in three parts or divide the work into three separate books.2

  About a year later I wrote Gilbert Phelps and informed him that my novel, Things Fall Apart, was ready, and he happily sent the manuscript off to a number of publishers. There were several of instant rejections. Some did not even bother to read it, jaundiced by their impression that a book with an African backdrop had no “marketability.” Some of the responders found the very concept of an African novel amusing. The book’s fortunes changed when it got into the hands of Alan Hill and Donald McRae, executives of Heinemann. McRae had extensive experience traveling throughout Africa and encouraged Heinemann to publish the novel with a powerful recommendation: “This is the best first novel I have read since the war.”3

  It was under Alan Hill’s guidance that Things Fall Apart received immediate and consistent support. The initial publication run from Heinemann was two thousand hardcover copies. Things Fall Apart got some of its earliest endorsements and positive reviews from Canada, where critics such as G. D. Killam and the novelist Jean Margaret Laurence embraced it. Later the postcolonial literary critics Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin helped introduce the book into the Australian and British literary establishments. Michael Thelwell, Bernth Lindfors, Priscilla Tyler, Charles Larson, and Catherine Lynnette Innes were some of the first intellec
tuals in America to pick up the novel and present it to an American audience.

  In England the book received positive reviews from the Observer, Time and Tide, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. But not all the reviews were as kind or positive. Some failed to understand “the point of African Literature” and what I and others were trying to achieve by telling our own stories. It did the work a great deal of good, however, that the distinguished novelist Angus Wilson and the well-respected literary critic Walter Allen wrote positively about my first novel.

  In Nigeria there was a mixed bag of responses. Some of my old teachers at Ibadan found the idea of my publishing a novel “charming,” but many African intellectuals saw both literary and political merit in the work.

  When I wrote Things Fall Apart I began to understand and value my traditional Igbo history even more. I am not suggesting that I was an expert in the history of the world. I was a very young man. I knew I had a story, but how it fit into the story of the world—I really had no sense of that. After a while I began to understand why the book had resonance. Its meaning for my Igbo people was clear to me, but I didn’t know how other people elsewhere would respond to it. Did it have any meaning or relevance for them? I realized that it did when, to give just one example, the whole class of a girls’ college in South Korea wrote to me, and each one expressed an opinion about the book. And then I learned something: They had a history that was similar to the story of Things Fall Apart—the history of colonization. This I didn’t know before. Their colonizer was Japan. So these people across the waters were able to relate to the story of dispossession in Africa. People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.4