while her husband starved. And so at a very early age when he was striving desperately
to build a barn through share-cropping Okonkwo was also fending for his father's house.
It was like pouring grains of corn into a bag full of holes. His mother and sisters worked
hard enough, but they grew women's crops, like coco-yams, beans and cassava. Yam,
the king of crops, was a man's crop.
The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed-yams from Nwakibie was the
worst year in living memory. Nothing happened at its proper time,- it was either too
early or too late. It seemed as if the world had gone mad. The first rains were late, and,
when they came, lasted only a brief moment. The blazing sun returned, more fierce than
it had ever been known, and scorched all the green that had appeared with the rains. The
earth burned like hot coals and roasted all the yams that had been sown. Like all good
farmers, Okonkwo had begun to sow with the first rains. He had sown four hundred
seeds when the rains dried up and the heat returned. He watched the sky all day for
signs of rain clouds and lay awake all night. In the morning he went back to his farm
and saw the withering tendrils. He had tried to protect them from the smouldering earth
by making rings of thick sisal leaves around them. But by the end of the day the sisal
rings were burned dry and grey. He changed them every day, and prayed that the rain
might fall in the night. But the drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams
were killed.
Some farmers had not planted their yams yet. They were the lazy easy-going
ones who always put off clearing their farms as long as they could. This year they were
the wise ones. They sympathised with their neighbours with much shaking of the head,
but inwardly they were happy for what they took to be their own foresight.
Okonkwo planted what was left of his seed-yams when the rains finally
returned. He had one consolation. The yams he had sown before the drought were his
own, the harvest of the previous year. He still had the eight hundred from Nwakibie and
the four hundred from his father's friend. So he would make a fresh start.
But the year had gone mad. Rain fell as it had never fallen before. For days and
nights together it poured down in violent torrents, and washed away the yam heaps.
Trees were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere. Then the rain became less