When did the issue of climate change get personal for you?
Okechi: It was in 2019, after the pipeline explosion in Oyigbo, after its resultant effect, after the death of my parents’ crops.
There is a strong presence of nostalgia in your story. Could this sense of nostalgia be of loss or hope?
Okechi: It is both a sense of loss and hope. It is the recognition of things that perished—and still perishes—on the corridors of climate crisis. This loss is also the silence our capitalist world gives. And the hope, for me, is the feeling that, in spite of the loss, people are saving the Earth in little but significant ways.
What inspired your story for The Green We Left Behind nonfiction anthology?
Okechi: The need to document that experience. The need to show the world how devastating climate change is, and to celebrate the satisfying beauty of farming.
As an artist, how are you able to merge beauty in language with such a dire theme on climate change?
Okechi: As a writer, language is my tool but I don’t set out to write beautiful metaphors or else I’ll sacrifice my story on the altar of fantastically empty words. That said, language itself doesn’t have as much impact as what it can do or how it can make people feel, because we are not merely a constellation of orgasmic words and metaphors. We are stories and the significance of those stories matters. While trying to capture the sense of this story, I used the language that came natural to me, the language suitable for the story, the language of accessibility in which I interspersed Igbo within it.
As you release your story to the world, what is your wish or hope for the story?
Okechi: When I sent an early draft of this piece to a dearest friend, he admired it and confessed to how, after reading it, he understood some of the issues around climate change and its devastating effects. Like my friend, I hope people understand climate change, feel charged to begin, in their various little ways, to fight for a better, greener Earth.
Aside writing, how else do you intend to contribute towards curbing climate change?
Okechi: Through activism. Taking it to rural areas, joining a nongovernmental organization that brings awareness of climate change to people.
Biography
Okechi Okeke is a teacher and writer whose work has appeared in The Economist, Protean Magazine and elsewhere. He is a recipient of Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award and finalist for Awele Creative Trust Award and the K and L Prize for African writing.
