Dear Achebe,

My name is Beryl.

I know you have had many students pass through your hands. It might be hard to even
remember my face because all the while you lectured, not once did I speak to you. There
were so many of us. But now, it behoves me to write to you because you have been snatched
away from me and I can no longer speak to you in anyway, no matter how hard I try. I hope
you don’t grow tired reading my letter; I never have been tired of reading your books.

You see the main reason I wrote is to understand the unspoken in your work. My sister once
told my friend, “When Beryl is speaking to you, do not hear what she is saying, listen instead
to what she is not saying.” That day I laughed because I thought she was joking. But with
time, I came to realise that there were times when I was overwhelmed and I could not, in such
situations, open the speech pods in my head and let the words I wished to say come out of my
mouth. It took me a long time to realise that my sister understood me better than anyone else
because when I spoke, she listened to my unspoken words.

And so when I sat down to read your books, I heard things that I was afraid would cause my
heart to stop pumping. I looked at the eyes of some of your characters and I couldn’t help
seeing the pain that had sculptured their eye balls. I listened to some of them laugh and my
ears tingled pitifully at the frustration hid in their laughs. When I saw some of them walk in
those pages, all I wanted to do was stretch my hands into the papers and draw them to myself
for a hug. My heart was broken many a times at the mention of food, especially yams. I felt
hollowness in my chest whenever you wrote the word wine. Every instance you described a
ceremony, a deep fear gripped me and small goose bumps formed on my hand. Your work
was just so excellent. I found no fault in the way you captured the emotions, the moments,
and the drama!

Through these, I came to believe that the weight of your statements lay in the words you kept
unwritten. Allow me dear sir, to probe the minds of those who did not speak as much, to
share with you what I saw in their eyes and what I heard in their silence. Those words which
you perhaps did not let them say, the names you did not mention, the emotions you kept at
bay and the floods of visions that you purposely blocked from the world.

And if you will allow me, I will begin from the very beginning, the place where things fall
apart.

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If there was a man in Kenya called Okwonkwo, children would laugh and roll on the floor. I
mean what a name! Anyway, the name was already given. And lucky him, he had wives too.
From the onset, I happened to notice that all the sentences you wrote about his wives, you
somehow mentioned yams as well. I was just wondering if there was any relation between
Okwonkwo’s wives and yams.

When I think of them, the wives and not the yams, I thank God that my mother was not born
in those days. How they endured the polygamy is beyond my understanding. How he made
them all think that it was alright to marry two more new wives upon his return to Umuofia is
beyond belief.

I keep thinking of Nwoye’s mother, the woman who through all the pages has not once been
called by her name. Do you think that when Okwonkwo was wooing her he called her
“Nwoye’s mother?” I do not think so. I can almost see the sparkle that lit his eye as he
seduced her. I am imagining that in those days when she was young and her skin glistened
with the oil of youth, Okwonkwo would not stop to sing her name. Perhaps every fight he
won was for her. I can almost hear the words he used to describe her: daughter of the soil, the
sweetest bird in Umuofia, the queen of Umuofia, mother of my clan, the darling of my heart
and the ruler of my soul. Perhaps if her name was Nneka, he called her Nneka so many times
that she blushed just at the sight of his lips forming the first syllable of her name. I can
almost see the smile splitting his lips like a sharp axe upon dry wood and his teeth cracking
open like the inside of acacia wood, all white and good when he looked deep into her clear
eyes. I try but words fail me to describe the sparks of attraction that flew between the pair of
them. I imagine him clenching and unclenching his fists every time he saw her talk to another
man. I imagine his throat running dry when he saw her walk away from him, and perhaps his
loin cloth growing somehow tight and small when he saw her full beauty unleashed in the
traditional dances under the full glare of the moonlight!

And when he could no longer bear himself, I see him carrying pots of palm wine to her home,
taking bulls and cows and convincing her parents that he was man enough to marry her.

Logic fails me in understanding how a man could ever forget the name of a woman he wooed
with such passion. Do you think he forgot the glory Nneka once had? Do you think he forgot
the fire that burned his own skin when she let her finger touch his arm? Or perhaps the gentle
drawl of her voice when she called his name – pronouncing each syllable with such gentility

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that the name Okwonkwo sounded as sweet as the name Obierika or William or Ochieng’ or
something like that.

Sometimes I think of her despondent, all thoughtful in her obi, feet folded under her low
stool, her eyes red from blowing the fireplace, her sweat stinking from weeding the yam
farm, her back aching, her lips perched and dry, her eyes sunken in their sockets, all life
stolen from them, her head whirling in sounds of her husband’s shouts and threats and her
children’s yelps. I look into her soul and I see her pushing herself to live. Her husband’s
amulets tied on her ankles – the duties of a first wife gnawing away the beauty of her life.

I know you will argue and tell me that all this was cultural. I do not deny. But didn’t you see
how Obierika managed his homestead, with more reason than his thorax, or rather chest? Or
was Nneka just to keep Okwonkwo’s home from falling apart?

My people have a saying, “mke wa kwanza ni wa kutengeneza boma, wa pili ni wa kutafuta

mali na wa tatu ni pambo la nyumba.” I guess they were right. Nneka was just there to make
the home so that when Ekwefi came she would find a comfortable place to create wealth and
Ajiugo would sit there and decorate Okwonkwo’s home stead.

Sometimes I think of Nneka in her obi at night, sobbing between the grass coverings. Crying
herself to sleep. I see her trying to love her son and just before she can learn how to teach the
child to be good, Okwonkwo shouting at the poor child and confusing all the lessons from his
head. I try to picture myself in her shoes. A boy brought to me from some strange village
weeping himself to sleep every night. The child not touching a morsel of the yams I make.
How exasperating! Yet Nneka lived through it and made the boy her own.

If I was her, perhaps with my stubborn head, I would have told Okwonkwo to return the child
to his home. May be I could have sneaked the weeping boy away and returned him to his
village. I wouldn’t have stood the madness of keeping someone else’s child under my roof.
And a weeping on at that matter!

Can you imagine the agony Nneka went through, consoling the boy – night and day?
Watching him grow up, at first all cold and detached, then slowly warming up but with some
distant look in his eyes. Can you imagine the look she saw in the eyes of the boy when he
told stories to other children and sang songs he had been taught by his own mother? Do you
see the puzzled look in Nneka’s eyes when the boy taught her own son how to milk a cow,
how to carry a pot properly on his head and how to split firewood?

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Sometimes I think that she would be too sad at the thought of the boy’s mother. The poor
woman screaming her lungs out when her boy was being dragged away to another village –
arms flying in the air and her neck veins sticking out like plastic pipes not properly covered
in a wall. If Nneka had seen the boy’s mother spiralling on the dust her own heart would have
been broken to pieces. If she had seen the tears mixed with mud, she would have never kept
the child under her roof even for a night. I am sure she thought of these things and was
greatly sorrowed in her heart.

I have a feeling she kind of knew the emotions that raged in the heart of Ikemefuna’s mother.
She pitied the woman, but what to do! Her own culture had tied her hands and made her a
thief of another’s child. She would sit and look at the boy and wish he was back at home
sweeping the obi of his own father and fetching water for his own mother. I almost want to
stretch my fingers and scratch her itchy heart. When I think of her thinking of Ikemefuna’s
mother, I want to give her a bed sheet to wipe her tears which flow in torrents down her puffy
face.

And to imagine that after the boy had stayed with her and become her own son for three
years, someone conjured up an idea to split his head with a panga. I can almost throw up at
the cruelty of some people.

Where was Okwonkwo’s pity even as the old man told him not to kill his own son? Do you
see how crazy Nneka went? She paced the compound with her leso on her waist, her womb
on fire, turning with the heat of incubating a child for nine months. Ikemefuna had been re
born in her house, he was her own son. Yet her own husband had no pity. He helped them
split Ikemefuna’s skull. I feel sick just thinking of that day.

Poor Ikemefuna, the lie they told him about meeting his parents. I am sure that in his mind
thoughts of his mother sped and overtook his slow feet on the lonely forest path. I know he
had planned to hug his mother. I am certain his mother would have ululated for three days
without a pause at the return of her son. But what did they do to him? They hacked him up.
And when he ran back to his own father, Okwonkwo finished him. If I ever could hate, then
this incident would fill me with so much hate that these pages would burn up in the heat of
my hatred before the letter got to you Mr Achebe. I am just very mad at Okwonkwo and all
his cohorts for killing a poor innocent child for the sin of a grown man. Do you see how
unjust the world can be? Doesn’t it make you sick just thinking about it? It makes me want to
vomit!

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Ekwefi.

Let me tell you also about what I think of Ekwefi; the woman whose mention brings a smile
to my face. She is the money machine in Okwonkwo’s compound, if you know what I mean,
the second wife who brings in wealth. I like her light hearted nature. The things she does I
can very much picture myself doing. When I saw her dashing in the barn and clamouring all
over the yams so as to hide from a shot fired from the angry man’s gun, I couldn’t help
laughing at the scene. You can never imagine how much I would have cried if Okwonkwo
had shot her dead. I am not sure of how exactly she folded herself in the barn to evade the
slim bullet, may be it was just good that her husband could never shoot anything. Don’t you
just feel her life and charisma oozing out to you M r. Achebe?

Yet it is this same woman that bore baby after baby and they all died save for one. It is this
woman that fed everyone else with her cassava when no one else had cassava. They said she
had a small family so her abundant store of cassava was to feed the entire household, but I
could read her eyes wishing she had more children of her own to eat her cassavas.

Sometimes I think that if I was in her shoes, I could have done the very thing she did with her
daughter. My little girl and I would take turns at telling each other stories deep in the night. I
could have told my daughter the story of Awuor, the pretty girl who was saved from a well
and grew to be very powerful, I could have told her the story of the wife of Nyamgondo, the
lady of the lake who came to her husband’s home with her own cattle and left with
everything, including the fish in the pot the day her husband begun growing a big head. I can
only imagine how concerned my daughter would be if I told her the story of Simbi Nyaima, a
whole village that sunk because no one in it was kind enough to give a calabash of water to
an old woman. I could spend hours with my child and tell her all the tales of my people, all
the stories of the women I knew. I would definitely tell her about my mother Akinyi, the
greatest woman I know who has fought life and prevailed; and her mother before her Auma,
the kindest heart in the entire world; and Auma’s mother-in-law Subia, the most gentle and
beautiful woman that ever lived; and Subia’s mother-in-law Nyawange, the most radically
controversial old woman anyone has ever laid eyes upon. I could have told her of Nyagasi,
the short beautiful Tanzanian who got married to my great grandfather as the third wife. I
could have praised Nyagasi to my girl and spoken of her cows; best cows in the entire village
that even the affluent of men were unable to breed a stock superior to hers. I would tell her of
Da Fab, and Kristin, and Chi Aloo, and Nyadara and even of Nyagembe, my other great

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grandmother who would walk a whole day’s journey all the way from Gembe to bring me a
piece of sugar cane in Homa-bay. If only I had a daughter to tell!

Anyway, Ekwefi makes me smile as she locks her child in gul and feeds her the forbidden
eggs. I can almost see the two of them smiling mischievously at each other and giggling
when both their bellies were filled with fowl eggs. Do you see Ezinma’s tough belly shining
with oil and her mother gently poking it to see if every corner was stuffed with an egg? Don’t
I just love Ekwefi!

When I think of the dedication Ekwefi had to Ezinma, my big head seems too small to
contain the wonder of that love. I remember the night Ezinma almost died. Ekwefi trembled
from head to toe, her heart torn to pieces at the thought of losing yet another child. I
remember her frantic, running and shouting towards Okwonkwo’s hut,

“Mayoo Ezinma thoo…Okwonkwo! Toka toka, mototo anakufa!...Kimbia jamani…!”

I remember her boiling herbs and nursing Ezinma, tears streaming down her face as she
remembered the pain she had gone through putting her children year after year in the belly of
the earth. Death was so merciless!

Finally when the ailment disappeared, Ekwefi doubled her love to her daughter. Ezinma
waxed stronger by the day. Her little feet would carry her across the compound as she ferried
food to her father’s obi. Her small neck would hold up a pot full of water and her mouth
never seemed to have enough of ponge and olemo.

I remember the startled look on her face one day as she sat next to her mother by the fireside
preparing their meal. Her eyes grew so large from admiration that I thought they would pop
out of their sockets. Her mouth formed the most perfect O and she quickly rushed her tender
palms to her face in a bid to prevent her eyes from seeing anything she would later regret –
her mother spilling the food. And then her huge sigh of relief when she peeped between her
fingers and saw the pot nested safely on the grass patch that held it from rolling on the mud
floor.

I sometimes see her trying to be all grown up. With heaped up red hot coals I see her making
a quick dash from her mother’s obi to Nneka’s. Yet there are days I sympathise with her. The
child in her robbed of sleep and of happiness. I see her crying by a fence when the other
children make jest of her and call her the bad child that crushed the mother’s skull. On such

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occasions I keep wondering if Ezinma will grow up all delinquent and twisted. When I
imagine the things that Chielo, the priestess - which if I were the one writing the book, would
have called a jajuok – did to her, I would have lost my mind.

Which spirit sends a priestess to pluck a sleeping child from her bed and run with her the
whole night in absolute darkness? That is juogi, the spirit of darkness. Can you imagine how
scared Ezinma was? Did you see the look in her eyes? She was scared to death. Did you even
hear her whimpers which interrupted the high pitch of the great night witch, once in a while
fighting to be let down from the back of the possessed priestess? I am telling you the truth Mr
Achebe, that child thought she was going to die that night.

You can imagine the confusion in Ezinma’s head when her father shouted to her in the
harshest of voices, “Sit like a woman!” I imagine her eyes darting about the room like some
trapped rat trying to see who her father was speaking to. Then her great shock when she
realised that she was the one being addressed. Can you hear her verbalizing her confusion,
“woman?” and looking at her father’s face, the man who oblivious of the tempest he had
caused in his daughter’s head chewed on rather loudly, occasionally with his mouth open.

Try and think of the days she would hear her father saying, “She should have been a boy.”
Encouraged by such slips, picture her attempting to make amends for being born a girl by
offering to carry her father’s stool and him shouting her quiet in return, “that is a boy’s
work!”

Don’t you, dear Achebe think that this girl suffered the worst fate of all? Imagine her all
grown up in kane’wuongi and having all these suitors flock the homestead. Picture her
disappointment when her father would turn all the men away. I am sure she gave up and
knew for certain that she would die a spinster.

Did you know that she loved Nyambalo? Are you aware that the two of them spent their free
afternoons staring at each other’s eyes and giggling in the long grass just behind her mother’s
obi? Did you know that the two of them had sworn and taken a blood oath that they would
end up together? Just imagine her heart break when Okwonkwo announced that she would
only marry from Umuofia and not from Kane’wuongi! I would have gone mad. I am sure I
could have told my father off and told him that our love knew no boundaries. I could have
sang satirically and made my father so uncomfortable in his own homestead:

Eee Baba,

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Nitulie, nisitulie

Yaani hivi mimi na wewe -

Tukerane, tuchokorane ndiyo ufurahi?

Mimi nimekwisha sema, nampenda sana Nyambalo

Hata awe wa kabila hiyo, tumekwisha chaguana

Wewe na mama mkichaguana, sikuwapinga nyie

Kwani yeye si wa kabila lile?

Ama kero nini sasa?

Mapenzi kunibania, hata raha sioni tena

Tafadhali babangu, tuheshimiane

Penzi si ukabila

Penzi ni uchaguzi!

I am so certain Okwonkwo would have lost his head if Ezinma dared to sing a song like this.
I wonder why she did not, that girl! She should have.

And finally Mr Achebe, this girl Akuekue; have you seen the look on my face when I read
about her?

I wish I knew something more about her. All I know is that her body was ripe. Was her father
sane describing his own daughter as ripe? Was his brain well when he let her be looked over
like some good so that she could be pronounced ripe by strange men? She was just sixteen, a
girl who loved her beads yet all they did was just call her ripe.

Sometimes I get disgusted when I hear them describe her tender chest. Don’t you know that a
woman’s chest is holy? Don’t you know that you just can’t go calling it by name and
describing it anyway you want until all the men fall into sin just thinking of that chest? You
tell me Mr Achebe if you would ever go around describing a man’s manhood as ripe.

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Believe me Mr Achebe when I say I would have rebelled so much that I would have been
thrown away at the evil forest. No husband of mine would have pronounced my name in the
same sentence with yams. No child of mine would have been shouted quiet by some egoistic
fighter. No husband of mine would have ever called me using my child’s name. I would have
never allowed men to come into my compound and count sticks and buy my sixteen year old
teenage daughter, their eyes all blurry from the palm wine as they smacked and licked their
fat lips. Never!

If these people had been born in my day, I could have told them “nkt!”

I think if I keep on writing, I might get too emotional. Let me stop here for now. I have such a
beautiful letter about your other book A Man of the People. It has a much happier tone.

Dear Sir, kindly take no offence, the pen possessed and I just wrote as I felt.

I am glad you have read my letter to the end.

I look forward to reading more of your work and getting to know you more through the
characters you have described in them. I appreciate all the time you spent in trying to educate
the foolishness out of me through your books.

May you live forever!

Your somewhat favourite student,

Beryl.

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Translation of words and Phrases

“mke wa kwanza ni wa kutengeneza boma, wa pili ni wa kutafuta mali na wa tatu ni pambo

la nyumba. – The first wife makes the homestead, the second looks for wealth and the third is
the home’s decoration.

Panga - machete

Leso – a fabric which women tie round their waist in most parts of Africa

Gul – the most secret place in a house; mostly the darkest corner of a bedroom

Ponge – a sort of round and very fluffy African doughnut; also called mandazi

Olemo – a tiny rock hard fruit which is sweet and juicy once cracked open

Jajuok – A wizzard

Juogi – The state of being possessed by evil spirits.

Kane’wuongi – the home of his father’s mother

Nkt – A click sound made by clicking the tongue in the mouth

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