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CHRISTMAS 2005 WAS UTTERLY sad for me from eveiy point of view. I had left the US A on December 10 for a brief visit to Nigeria. Topmost on my agenda was a trip to Owerre-Nkwoji near OrIu in Imo State to meet for the first time the family of the poet laureate, the late Ezenwa-Ohaeto. I needed to be at his graveside to achieve a passionate healing and closure of a friendship of more than two decades. On December 16, 1 spoke with his young wife, Ngozi, and we agreed that I should arrive at the Ohaeto family house in Owerre-Nkwoji at 12 noon on Friday, December 23, 2005. Owerre-Nkwoji is a short forty-minute drive from my home village, Umunjam, Mbieri, on the outskirts of Owerri, the Imo State capital. In the intervening short period before the appointed date, I had a bit of a sober orientation in my mood for the visit, when suddenly on Monday, December 19, a younger brother of mine, practically Ezenwa' s age , most unexpectedly, died after a seven-hour tussle with a stroke that began at 4 p.m. and was over by 11.30 p.m. He and Ezenwa had one common link - gone too soon in the bloom of youth! Something is amiss in the natural order when elders visit the gravesides of youth cut down in their prime.
That was my frame of mind when I set off for Owerre-Nkwoji on Friday, December 23, 2005, accompanied by a younger brother, Chibunna, a lecturer at the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, who knew Ezenwa very well, as the latter had taught at the College for some years in the early 1990s, and the President of the Imo State branch of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Camillus Uka. Another member of the Branch Association, Dr Augustine Nwakpuda, would join us from his base at Abia State, University, Uturu, not too far from Owerre-Nkwoji. We arrived at the Ohaeto family house at 2.15 p.m. to a very warm welcome by Ezenwa's wife, Ngozi (an assistant lecturer in the English Department at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, where Ezenwa taught full-time till his death), and Ezenwa's younger brother, the engineer Ikechukwu (Iyke) Ohaeto, a virtual caibon copy of...