Chinua Achebe – “Things Fall Apart” (ch.1 – the end)

The following vignette is as much a description of Unoka’s improvidence as of Igbo’s social customs. One day his neighbour Okoye comes to visit him with a goat skin under his arm. The goat skin he later unrolls and sits on. Unoka goes with him through the kola nut ceremony, during which he breaks the kola nut and offers his guest a piece of chalk with which he paints his big toe and draws his symbol on the ground. Their small talk is about weather and about the impending war with another village, but Unoka is a coward who does not like blood shed, and so he changes the subject to music, which he loves. Then Okoye finally reveals the purpose of his visit, although according to Igbo etiquette he must not do it in a straightforward manner. He says that as Unoka may have heard, he is going to take a title, then speaks for a while in proverbs, until he finally reaches the conclusion: he wants Unoka to pay him back two hundred cowries (shells used as currency) he borrowed two years ago. The title ceremony is expensive and Okoye needs all his money. Unoka bursts out laughing and tells Okoye to look at the chalk marks on the wall of his hut, which mark his debts. The smallest group of chalk marks represents a debt of one thousand cowries and Unoka explains that he has to pay his big debts first. So Okoye leaves him with nothing. As the narrator comments, it’s understandable that Okonkwo was ashamed of such a father who, on dying, left him nothing but debts. But Okonkwo is the polar opposite of his father – great warrior, athlete, wealthy man and husband of three wives, had two honorific titles. And this is how he became the guardian of a boy hostage whose name was Ikemefuna.