By
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Chinua Achebe died at exactly 11:51pm (US time), that is 4.51am
(Nigerian time), on Thursday, March 21 at the Harvard University Teaching
Hospital, Massachusetts, USA, aged 82. It was one death that shook the entire
world as tributes came pouring in from all the continents of the world, from
presidents down to paupers.
*Pix by Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye (2013)
For some of his admirers, the world stood still, yet for orders
events moved at a frenetic pace, culminating to the Thursday, May 23 interment
of the icon in his native Ogidi, Anambra State. The one-storey home of Chinua
Achebe looks quite modest from the outside but it has a lift inside. The
building for me captures the essence of the great progenitor of African
literature: the quality of what is within is greater than any showiness outside.
The mausoleum constructed to the side of the frontage of the
building bears the heavy burden of the memory of Mother Africa in the buried
remains of Professor Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, the inimitable author of Things
Fall Apart.
Achebe was interred at 4.30pm in a marble tomb in his Ikenga
village ancestral home of Ogidi town in Idemili North Local Government Area of
Anambra State. He was given an elaborate Christian funeral service at St.
Philips Anglican Church, Ogidi, as opposed to the African mores he championed
in his novels.