I love the book Things Fall Apart. I hope my students at least learn to appreciate it since I keep making them read it. If you haven’t read it, you should. Good stuff there. But this isn’t a book review. This is about the yams. Things Fall Apart is full of yams. Yams are the major crop. Fame and fortune and family pride all depend upon the yams.
Because I love this book, when I think of yams I think of small Nigerian villages. And now I have found this video on CNN that confirms for me that small Nigerian villages are really into yams. I love it when life imitates art.
Also, the main character in the book is named Okonkwo, and the guy interviewed in the video about the yams and yam festivals and the yam pestilences is named Chris Okonkwo. Something tells me this is not the uncommon name I’ve always thought of it as in my own head. I love it too when the obvious finally hits home years later than it ever should have.
As long as you’re still learning some dumb thing every day that you should have already known, there’s hope for you. The world is still turning, and you’re still that same old person perfectly capable of living and evolving in your own foolishness and having a pretty decent time doing it.
That’s all. Yams are big potatoes, good for what ails. As long as there are yams, life goes on. Things might just keep on and on falling apart, but life goes on.
