Professor Chinua Achebe
The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred yam seeds 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 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. 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 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”
Extract from Chapter three of things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Indeed we shall look back and say, if we survived 2020, we shall survive anything.
