Things Fall Apart

It was early afternoon, about 10 minutes left until the lunchtime bell was due to go off and I didn’t think I could survive any longer. The only thing keeping my eyelids from drooping was the queer rumbling that appeared to be emanating from my stomach. I looked around the classroom and everyone seemed to be in a similar state. We had English Literature, but I had long finished my essay on Lady Macbeth and was just waiting fir everyone else to catch up. Mr Akyea looked and noticed the pallor that had fallen over the class. He asked us all to stop what we were doing and decided to read a bit for us. He opened the book in front of him and began to read:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

I snapped to attention instantly and looked straight at him. In that moment, I felt a jolt of recognition and I know he did too, because as the lunchtime bell sounded, he requested that I remain behind. I walked up to his desk, wondering what he was going to say. He asked how I felt when he read that portion of the William Butler Yeats poem quoted in the frontpiece of Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’. I wanted to answer him honestly but could not for fear of ridicule. Sensing my hesitation, he responded for me; “You felt complete awe, and a shiver went down your spine”. I looked up in surprise, and nodded mutely.
He told me that I reminded him very much of his youth, that he had also developed a great love of literature and oration at an early age, and that he always recognised that spark the minute he saw it in someone else.

13 years down the line, I am re-reading ‘Things Fall Apart’ for the millionth time, and as always when I turn to the first page, I can hear his voice booming as clear as if he were standing right next to me. I savour the words as though I speaking along with him and they take on such profound beauty that I am almost moved to tears. As I read the novel, I frequently turn back to the frontpiece and roll those words around my tongue. For some reason, doing this lends the story a new urgency, as though I have not already devoured it a thousand times.

I am passionate about reading, I always have been. I already knew that when I walked into Mr. Akyea’s class 13 years ago. What I learned from him however, was that the passion is there to be nurtured. Savoured as though it were something precious and wallowed in to utmost. That was the first time that I truly learned about passion in a Nigerian classroom. It was not to be the last time, but it was definitely the first and it played a significant role in shaping me into who I am today. Everybody has that one teacher who completely changed their life, I have several but the one I think of the most often is Mr. Akyea. The reason for this is that he was not a saint, nor was he someone you put on a pedestal and idolised. He was just real, and it was this honesty without hiding behind the traditional barriers of adults always being right and children always being wrong that made the literary exploration we undertook in his classes such a rare treat. Nigerian children could do with a few more Mr. Akyeas today.