There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (4 page)

We went through the designated courses in secondary school, and the last examination
that we took was the Cambridge School Certificate exam. There were four classifications
of grades: A for distinction, C for credit, P for pass, and F for fail. Most pupils
at Umuahia passed all their subjects. I passed my school certificate exam with five
distinctions and one credit. Inyang passed with six distinctions and one credit. I
narrowly graduated top of the class only because the distinctions that I got were
higher in the courses that I took despite the fact that Inyang had more As in more
courses. Whatever the case, I held Mr. Inyang in great esteem, especially as he had
an A in literature while I had a credit.

As I was completing my secondary school education at Government College, Umuahia,
the colonial government announced that it was predisposed to building a University
College in West Africa. There was some kind of competition—would it be in the Gold
Coast (present-day Ghana) or in Nigeria? So a high-powered commission under Walter
Elliott was sent to survey the situation on the ground. Such was the reputation of
Government College, Umuahia, that the commission paid us a visit and spent a whole
weekend at our school. Most of them came to chapel service on Sunday morning, but
Julian Huxley, the biologist, roamed our extensive grounds, watching exotic birds
with binoculars. The Elliott Commission report led to the foundation of Nigeria’s
first university institution: a university college at Ibadan in a special relationship
with London.

I finished secondary school and literally walked into University College, Ibadan!
Well, maybe not walked in. There was a nationwide examination, and I came in first
or second in the country. I won what was called a “major” scholarship.
²

I grew up at a time when the colonial educational infrastructure celebrated hard work
and high achievement, and so did our families and communities. Government College,
Umuahia, was so proud of my work that they put up a big sign announcing my performance
in the national entrance examination. That notice stayed on the wall for years. My
family was very pleased with my school performance, from the end of primary school
through to this time. No matter that I was not known for my athletic ability; they
encouraged me to read voraciously, taking great pleasure in my nickname: Dictionary.

A very distinguished member of the colonial educational system—a British gentleman—who
was also the chairman of some important colonial council, heard about my entrance
examination result and came to our house to greet me. Now, I had never encountered
such a thing before. Surely people of that distinction did not call on children? But
here was this man, who was a very important person in the British educational system,
who thought that my work deserved encouragement, recognition, and a visit from him.
So clearly I had a good beginning.

As a young man, surrounded by all this excitement, it seemed as if the British were
planning surprises for me at every turn, including the construction of a new university!
It is, of course, only a joke, but I am sure many of my colleagues shared similar
feelings. Here we were, a whole generation of students who really could not have had
any clear idea of going to university until these events began to unfold.

It was a remarkable group—Chike Momah, Flora Nwapa, Mabel Segun, Ben Obumselu, Emmanuel
Obiechina, Kelsey Harrison, Gamaliel Onosode, Wande Abimbola, Iya Abubakar, Adiele
Afigbo, Igwe Aja-Nwachukwu, Theophilus Adeleke Akinyele, Grace Alele Williams, Mohammed
Bello, Elechi Amadi. A bit later Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Oluwokayo Oshuntokun,
M. J. C. Echeruo, Christopher Okigbo, Ayo Bamgbose, Christine Okoli (my future wife),
Emeka Anyaoku, Chukwuemeka Ike, Abiola Irele, Zulu Sofola, and several others. These
young men and women came from all over the country—from elite secondary schools modeled
on the public schools of England—Government College, Umuahia, Dennis Memorial Grammar
School, Government College, Ibadan, and Abeokuta, King’s College, Lagos, and Queen’s
College, Lagos.

T
HE
I
BADAN
E
XPERIENCE

Umuahia had a large contingent of students admitted to University College, Ibadan,
with a number of students winning at least minor scholarships.

I received my scholarship to study medicine at Ibadan. I wanted to be in the arts
but felt pressure to choose medicine instead. After a year of work I changed to English,
history, and theology, but by so doing I lost the bursary and was left with the prospect
of paying tuition.

I remember what the dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor E. A. Cadle, said to me
when I went to ask to be moved from the sciences to the arts: in order to get into
the arts I had to have taken a school certificate exam in Latin, which was not taught
at Umuahia. I was faced with a difficult dilemma and spent some time thinking about
the ramifications of taking extra courses in Latin.

But providence had other plans. Soon after my conversation with Professor Cadle an
announcement came through from the University of London, our parent institution, indicating
that it was dropping the Latin requirement for admission into the Faculty of Arts.
The University of London argued that the native languages of students from the British
Commonwealth could stand in for the Latin requirement. I was elated. I went back and
asked Professor Cadle for admission into the Arts Faculty. He brought out my file
and told me that I was admitted on the basis of my performance in physics and chemistry.
He wanted reassurance from me that I would be able to make such a fundamental shift
in academic focus and maintain good grades. After a little more conversation, he admitted
me to study English, history, and theology, and I moved from medicine to the Arts
Faculty.

My older brother Augustine Achebe, an engineer by training, had returned from his
studies in England and had landed a good job. On learning that I had lost my bursary,
Augustine gave me money he had saved up for his annual leave so that I could pay the
university tuition and continue my studies, which I did, very pleasantly.

After graduation I did not have to worry about where I would go next. The system was
so well organized that as we left university most of us were instantly absorbed into
civil service, academia, business, or industry. We trusted—I did, anyway—the country
and its rulers to provide this preparatory education and then a job to serve my nation.
I was not disappointed. I went home to my village at the end of the holiday and visited
a secondary school within my district, called the Merchants of Light, in Oba, near
Ogidi. I asked the principal to give me a job as an English teacher. And he did!

It helped that my colleague J. O. C. Ezeilo had completed a short tenure at the same
school and recommended it to me. Ezeilo is often described as Nigeria’s leading mathematician,
alongside Chike Obi. Ezeilo graduated from University of London in 1953, with a first
class honors in mathematics, an amazing feat by any measure, and particularly extraordinary
for the time. He would go on to receive his PhD from Queens’ College, University of
Cambridge, in 1958, and then rise rapidly through the Nigerian academic ranks to become
vice chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and several other Nigerian institutions
of higher learning.
³

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 intellectuals 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