Things Fall Apart At Sixty

Chinua Achebe’s Masterpiece at 60

Have you read Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece, Things Fall Apart?

I became acquainted with the book during Peace Corps training at the University of California Los Angeles, UCLA. It was the summer of 1962. The Peace Corps was barely a year old.

I was 21, eager to learn about Nigeria and begin my two-year adventure in the country.

Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was a wonderful introduction to the Igbo people and an earlier way of life. The story takes place around 1900. The novel relates the tragic story of Okonkwo, a man who is too aggressive for fear of being seen as weak.

The drama takes place while the Igbo culture is threatened by the arrival of missionaries. Not only religion but all Igbo culture is under siege.

For the 60th anniversary, actors read the novel aloud in a seven-hour program in London. I would have loved it! I read about it in Brittle Paper.

Bringing Achebe’s Masterpiece to Life | Highlights from the 60th Anniversary Reading of Things Fall Apart | Eddie Hewitt

Traditions That Remain

As I learned during my twenty-four years in Nigeria, the customs depicted so vividly in Things Fall Apart have not entirely disappeared. Some came to light for me during my first months in the country. Others I learned after marrying and spending a year in the village.

One custom I learned about in my first year was osu, Igbo slavery. I relate the story in my nearly completed second book.

During our first visit to his village together, in 1964, Clem was telling me about a man dedicated to protecting the shrine in his home town. The man was osu, a slave, Clem said. He continued,

“You know they are not considered full citizens of the town. Other Igbo people cannot marry them.”

As Clem spoke, I remembered the shock I had felt on hearing the story about osu from my Igbo friend Johnny during my first year in Nigeria, before I met Clem. Johnny said he had been in love with a woman whom he hoped to marry.

“You know we Igbo people marry another family, not just another person,” he had told me. “When I knew I wanted to marry her, I asked my family to do the traditional checking into her family’s background.”

“What happened?” I said.

“They found that her people were osu. I had to abandon my wish to marry her. I still miss her,” he said.

I encountered another long-lasting tradition during the Biafran War, 1967-70. I was living in Clem’s village, with no electricity and no running water.

I tell this story too in my new book:

There was a shortage of kerosene for our lanterns. I had gone to the outhouse next to the main building in the early morning without a light. I noticed something draped over the hole. I drew closer, thinking it must be a piece of clothing someone had left.

It was a python, very long and very scary. Hearing my screams, several young male cousins came to prod and push it out of the small enclosure.

“It’s getting away. Why don’t you kill it?” I said.

“We can’t kill it. Our tradition does not allow it.”

After a couple of days of seeing the same snake curled up comfortably in a log at the front of our compound, I said to one of the cousins, “I don’t see why this snake should be protected and I’m not! After all, the python is not sacred to my people!”

It was the only time I deliberately used my status as a foreigner and a white American. I didn’t say, “Please kill the snake.”

The snake died that night. But the elders had to appease the gods for the affront to tradition!

Testimonial About Things Fall Apart

I just looked online to confirm the time the novel takes place. A website, African Writing, had testimonials about Things Fall Apart on its 50th anniversary.

I was surprised to see the first, by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe!

Cheluchi is the daughter of Clem’s first cousin Isaiah, whose 80th birthday we celebrated in Nanka during the Christmas holidays.

She said Things Fall Apart is personal to her. “An Igbo myself, for many years I considered it not just fiction but a true history of the Igbo. Long before I understood the history of my own family, I imagined my ancestors, tall and proud like Okonkwo, living in an organized society, rich in customs, full of intelligent and good people, with very human failings.”

Margaret Anderson, The Persuasion Coach

I’ve given you two segments of an interview I did with Margaret Anderson, a “virtual” friend. Margaret is a trainer, author, and consultant. I have benefited from, and used, her ideas.

The full interview is here. This is the third segment. The final one will appear next time.

CO:  I love the term “walkaway alternative.” Can you explain what this is, and how someone can use it to help in reaching consensus?

MEA:  I coined the term “Walkaway Alternative” because few people remember what the “Harvardese” term “BATNA” means. It’s the most misunderstood term in negotiation parlance. Many believe it’s a bottom line or top line.

But just as interests replace opening positions in our system, Walkaways replace the bottom or top line as a better benchmark for whether or not to accept a proposal.

(Margaret is describing a conversation about a vacation between Tess who wants comforts of a city and Johnny who wants to watch birds.) To develop her best Walkaway Alternative, Tess thinks of all the ways she could address her interests, on her own, without any cooperation from Johnny—what she’ll do if she decides to walk away from trying to agree with him. She considers separate vacations, a stay-cation for herself, and other options.

Next, Tess picks one or more items from her list to create her best Walkaway Alternative: going with her sister to visit their aunt and uncle while Johnny goes his own way. This is what she’ll do if she decides to walk away from trying to reach agreement with Johnny, her backup plan.

Tess and Johnny decide staying at a park lodge is the best possible agreement, the one that satisfies both sets of interests as much as possible.

Contrast what would happen if Tess used the conventional bottom line benchmark, let’s say at least 8 days in the city. If Tess abided by this bottom line benchmark, she’d refuse the negotiated lodge plan because it wouldn’t allow 8 days in the city. But assessing interest satisfaction with her Walkaway Alternative as the benchmark, she fully satisfies her interests with the lodge plan, even though she spends no time at all in the city.

CO:  Without violating anyone’s privacy or confidentiality, can you share with me and my readers one or two of the most delightful or most enlightening conflict resolution stories from your experience?

MEA:  A delightful example is my dad. He was a natural at staying tuned in to his true interests and creating solutions for those interests. Whenever he hit a roadblock, he immediately looked around for things he could use, people who could help, to move toward his interests. He used such resources in creative ways. He was also naturally tactful.

Dad demonstrated these traits many times in the US Navy during WWII. You’d think there’s not much room for negotiation in military service. But I was amazed at how many times he got things most people would think impossible.

For example, he was ordered to take a draft of men from the training center in San Diego to San Francisco. A truck for the last leg of the journey, from the Embarcadero to the receiving ship, didn‘t show up as promised.

By looking around for resources, Dad found a free ride to his destination. There he amazed the Master at Arms by handing over, not only all the men (some usually ran away), not only all their records, but also the cash he’d been given to pay the trucking company.

I’m currently working on a memoir of Dad’s time in the Navy. As with Love on the Rocks, I’ll provide study notes on skills usage. Here’s a page about the memoir on my website: https://persuasioncoach.com/a-different-kind-of-war-memoir/