Showing posts with label Headmaster Mr. Okongwu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Headmaster Mr. Okongwu. Show all posts

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Tribute To Chinua Achebe (Ikejimba; 1930-2013)

By Chike Momah 

[This tribute is a second revision of a piece (REFLECTIONS ON CHINUA ACHEBE) which I wrote in 2000, and revised in 2007. His passing, in the third week of March 2013, has necessitated this revision.]     



Chinua Achebe was a compelling figure, straight out of a Biblical saga. He was also, rather more prosaically, a friend who was so close, he was like a brother. A few hours after his death was blazed around the world, I received a condolence call from a member of our Dallas, TX Igbo community. This friend asked me if I was sure Chinua and I did not share an umbilical cord. Another person, this time a Reverend gentleman, expressed his condolences in rather more risqué language. “Your friendship with Chinua,” he said, “reminds me of the biblical story of David and Jonathan.”

I would be lying through my teeth if I said I was not flattered by the language in which the two condolences were couched. But while I gloried in the way my friendship with Chinua was perceived by these two gentlemen, two things struck me about the manner their perceptions were expressed.