ACHEBE 3-DAY PROVERBS CHALLENGE – DAY 2

Fiction, Proverbs 1 Minute

Hello good people!

So it’s the second day of the 3-day Proverbs Challenge from the stables of Achebe and I’m set to regale you with more of his interesting proverbs.

Meanwhile, permit me to serve you an ‘appetizer before the main course’. It’s a short excerpt from his magnum opus Things Fall Apart. Each time I read through that section of the novel, I can’t help but laugh. It’s about a man Obiako who went to consult the Oracle in order to find a solution to his hardship. I think you’ll find it interesting…

‘Obiako has always been a strange one’, said Nwakibe. ‘I have heard that many years ago, when his father had not been dead very long, he had gone to consult the Oracle. The Oracle said to him, “Your dead father wants you to sacrifice a goat to him”. Do you know what he told the Oracle? He said, “Ask my dead father if he ever had a fowl when he was alive. 😂

😎Okay, enough playing around… Now to the main course…

🐀A man of sense does not go on hunting little bush rodents when his age mates are after big game.

🛑Until a man wrestles with one of those who make a path across his homestead the others will not stop.

🍠 Sometimes when we have given a piece of yam to a child, we beg him to give us a little from it, not because we really want to eat it but because we want to test our child.

⚕ A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with everyday herbs.

🦎 The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did.

🐦 Eneke the birds says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing, he has learnt to fly without perching.

🌿 When two brothers fight a stranger reaps the harvest.

Thanks for stopping by. Tomorrow is another day…

Image Credit: BBC

©ayansola Ibukun

Published by ayansolaibukun

Faith, Relationships, Family, Reviews, Creative Writing

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22 thoughts on “ACHEBE 3-DAY PROVERBS CHALLENGE – DAY 2”

      1. He’s such a daring character considering that once the Oracle speaks, no one dares ask questions or else face the fury of the gods😁. In my present society, some accept to kill cows for their dead fathers who didn’t have cows while alive asking for it. It only takes immense courage like that of Obiako to question such demand.

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        1. 😂 But to be fair to Obiako, the dead man is asking for too much na. Our people say ‘you pour water upfront so you can step on a cool surface’. Something tells me it’s a ‘like father like son’ case.

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  2. That disease one though! When we don’t recognize the problem, it wouldn’t simply go away by doing the usual things we do to solve usual problems. We need to do something different in order to solve it, because clearly, if we had been doing the solution, the unknown problem wouldn’t have risen in the first place. Just like if we have been living life perfectly without sin, there wouldn’t be the issue of a damaged heart, and so we wouldn’t need Jesus. But we have a problem, our sin and so to solve this sin, we can’t simply go to world solutions as usual. We have to look to the unusual one, the one true solution and Savior, Jesus Christ. Thank you for this!

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    1. 👌You did justice to this particular proverb. I like how you viewed it from the perspective of salvation. Indeed, sin (unbelief) is the bain. The cure for it is unusual – in the crucified Christ. Your contributions are always profound. Thanks always.

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  5. “The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did.” I don’t why this was funny to me but once I saw the word iroko, I was reminded of the app for the African movies. I didn’t know there was a tree by the name iroko. I learned something new today. I love proverbs a lot. Thank you for sharing 😊

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