PHOTO | AFP The late Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, the revered author of "Things Fall Apart" who has been called the father of modern African literature, died earlier this year aged 82.
What you need to know:
In Achebe’s fictitious village of Umuofia — which I didn’t know was created until I met some Nigerians in college — the people’s daily undertakings are so much like what an ordinary Luo would engage in.
Hard work pays. It’s not a cliche. Okonkwo, whose father Unoka left him neither a fowl nor a barn full of yams, worked his socks off by tilling the land and becoming wealthy by Umuofian standards. He thereafter could sit and dine with the kings as a man of title.
I had never been a TV buff. Apart from sports and docu-feature channels, I rarely glued my eyes on the tube. But I changed this rule immediately after finishing high school.
I was in the boondocks doing a lot of nothing (in the mind of a hot-blooded teenager) save for the endless farm work. So, every day after the 1pm news bulletin on KBC TV — long before they discovered KBC Channel One — I would sit down and watch a German DW TV documentary. They were very captivating and awe-inspiring.
