Extract from Chapter 3 of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seeds of yam from Nwakibie was the worst year in living memory. Nothing happened at its proper time; it was either too early or too late. It seemed as if the world had gone mad. The first rains were late and when they came, lasted only a brief moment.
The drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams were killed. The year had gone mad. When the rains finally returned, they fell as it had never fallen before. Trees were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere.
That year, the harvest was sad, like a funeral and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams. One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged himself.
Okonkwo remembered that tragic year with a cold shiver throughout the rest of his life. It always surprised him when he thought about it later that he did not sink under the load of despair. He knew he was a fierce fighter, but that year had been enough to break the heart of a lion.
“Since I survived that year,” he always said, “I shall survive anything.”
Indeed, we shall look back and say, if we survived 2021, the economic meltdown, insecurity, increase in market prizes, bad Government policies, Pandemic, banditry and kidnapping etc. if we survived them all, we shall survive anything. Trust in God and pray. Whatever mistakes we made this 2021, we shall correct them all in the coming year 2022. The strategies that failed this year, we shall re-strategize and get them right by 2022.
This is to wish our esteem readers a Happy New year filled with loads of success in all our ventures. All the best ahead.
