ACHEBE LIVED TO RESPOND: WHO ARE AFRICANS?

Thirty one years, before the birth of Chinua Achebe - Joseph Conrad was a well-established word smith. To employ words as “a vehicle for conveying a bath of personal impressions” in reining “his mental laziness” by taking “the line of least resistance.” Mind-boggling. But this is how the Heart of Darkness come into being and darkly stormed the public eye through the Blackwood’s Magazine – in 1899. It’s a satire that the anchor of the book is set at the Congo/Zaire. Where this curious man – Joseph Conrad went prying but “come out of them with all kinds of spoils.” Was Conrad a prophet of doom espoused in the anecdotes of racialism? Africa seems to have lived to fulfill the stereotypes of inhumanity – oozing suffering, dictatorship and tyranny? Congo , Rwanda , Uganda , Liberia , Sudan , Nigeria , Ivory Coast , Somalia , Zimbabwe … Kenya , have they embraced Conrad? “As to its ‘reality,’ that is for the readers to determine,” Conrad wrote in his introduction to the book. Was Conrad a man of batched memory and evil dreams? He writes of his first encounter with an African: “A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning range, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards.” In responding to these racist sentiments – to check the ripples of Conrad, Achebe went shopping for the same vehicle; hawk-eyed with reality and sobriety – proclaiming who we’re as Africans. Achebe entered this uncharted water without any surety whether is response in Things Fall Apart was neither going to be accepted nor published. This was novel mean without African Literature to gauge his experimental work with. Save, Amos Tutuola’s Wine Drunkard (1952) and Cyprian Ekwesi’s People of the City (1954). As the bug of writing transformed Conrad from a sea captain to a writer to reckon with, Achebe too, forfeited a scholarship and a lucrative career in Medicine to become the foremost mirror of the African continent: A watchman not only to the Conrads and Watson – the DNA genius, but to African leadership - as a poet, novelist, and literary critic. In 1972 he was a joint - winner of the first commonwealth poetry prize. In his country he scoped the prestigious Nigerian National Merit Award and Order of the Federal Republic as well as seizing the Man Booker International Prize. The awards are chain that Achebe is readers envisioned that he will be crowned with a literature Nobel Prize. Notwithstanding Conrad’s racist stains his scholars have assured the Heart of Darkness a secure place “among the half-dozen short novels in the English language.” As Newton’s third law of motion states: Action and reaction are equal but acts on opposite direction. Things Fall Apart in spite being the first novel of Achebe has fought on the same literary platform taking its place among the world master pieces. Indeed Achebe’s pen never dried in his life time, even after the fatal road accident that saw him wheeled till his death at the sundown of last week. He kept on working on his memoir and living to fulfill his testimony: “I’m an Igbo writer, because this is my basic culture; Nigerian, African and a writer…no, black first, then a writer,” by translating Things Fall Apart to his native language. Although Achebe has authored other great literally works Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah among others. Things Fall Apart stands without a peer - circulating in55 languages and more than 11 million copies sold in the competitive and complex world of book. To Achebe literately works will remain to be the Kola and proverbs with which geniuses literally writing are weaved for the larger public consumption in clear language with vast ideas. At Bard College he was dove tailed with the literal calling of River Nun of Gabriel Okara – Annandale – on – Hudson, New York to raise the African school of thought to a better and higher spectrum. He died as a David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies Brown University. As he wrote- a cock is spotted while being a chick. Achebe’s writing acumen started taking root while pursuing his undergraduate studies at Ibadan University. He mirrored his fellow students study habits and future dreams in the story the Polar Undergraduate (1950) that is anthologized in Girls at War and Other Stories among his 21 titles he has published. Things Fall Apart began and remained to be the pivot of his writings. Although in various forums he said that a parent loves all his children. In Things Fall Apart he wrestles with the biased thinking about Africans. Achebe paints a gracious and humanistic picture – that man – whoever and from wherever have the same passions – integrity and respect is the aspiration. “As the elders said, if a child washes his hands he could eat with Kings,” Achebe wrote. This is an encouragement, after being blustered with labels as “savage,” “an improved specimen,” “cannibals – in there place,” “a prehistoric earth,” “an earth that wore the aspect of unknown planet”… by Conrad. Conrad dehumanized an African woman who was a mistress to one of the whites (Mr. Kurtz) as a “savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent….She stood looking at us without stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose.” Things Fall Apart has taken the trajectory of being a teacher at the global stage, to salvage the African from Ngugi’s leitmotif “colonization of the mind.” “Here then is an adequate revolution for me to espouse – to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the year of denigration and self-abasement. And it is essentially a question of education, in the best sense of that word….I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did more than teach my readers that their past with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them,” Achebe said in an interview with the Morning. As we mark the end of the life of an African literally icon we need to peep into the past and behold the future. Were as Africans we have fallen apart and the centre is not holding in leadership, technological uptake, unemployment, tribalism among other hailment we are suffering from thus the post-independence era has never been at ease, even girl have found themselves in the fields of war: a blend of hopes and impediments has followed suit where every leader is seeking the arrow of God to become a man of the people in the Anthill of Savannah. Across the continent one need to be aware of soul brothers for the morning is yet on a creation day – leaving one to ask: what is the trouble with Africa? Things Fall Apart as well as other streams of Achebe’s writing will find there relevance in these times of entrepreneurship, innovation and reformation. The current world need more daring Onkwonkwo of Things Fall Apart, who’s “fame rested on sold personal achievement” to bring down Amalinze the great wrestler in the form of momentous challenges we are facing as a continent such as food insecurity, poverty, insecurity and wanting leadership among others. Africa needs a people who are determined to dirty their hands and build its amazing nations to an envisioned future, example Kenya’s Vision 2030. Driven by creativity and hard work, turning challenges into stepping stones with the inspiration of Onkwonkwo who “neither inherited a ban nor a title, nor even a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages, he had began even in his father his lifetime to lay the foundation of a prosperous future. It was slow and painful. But he threw himself like the one possessed. And indeed he was possessed…” Achebe’s death calls for Africans to re-examine how far we have mark-timed from the “Heat of Darkness” to escape the tragic ending of Things Fall Apart where “every day” Achebe wrote, we’re offering the western media “new material” from our wanting leadership and mode of elections where “one could write a whole…”on them. Free and fair? To a shame the “already chosen” coverage.