Chapter One:
In the village of Amaedukwu, the wind did not just blow—it whispered. It carried the voices of ancestors, the sighs of tired mothers, the laughter of children chasing lizards across the dusty square. Every stone had a memory, every tree a secret, and every elder a proverb that could slice pride like a hot knife through yam.
That was the world where Odogwu Orie was born, on a night when the moon refused to hide and the owl hooted three times without pause. The midwife declared him "a child of vision," and the village seer, old Nze Okafor, nodded solemnly. "He will not drink from the same calabash as his mates," he said. "His thirst will be for other rivers."
Odogwu's father, Orie, was a farmer and a thinker. He tilled the earth with one hand and read old books with the other. He believed that a man must understand both the ways of the soil and the wisdom of the stars. "The yam does not grow just because you want it to," he would say, hoe in hand. "It grows because you understand its silence."
His wife, Nkem, was laughter wrapped in discipline. She spoke with her eyes, corrected with her hands, and loved with her food. The people said her egusi soup could settle a quarrel between thunder and lightning.
Together, they raised Odogwu in a compound shaded by three mango trees and surrounded by the murmur of life. Chickens strutted like they owned the land. Goats chewed their ropes and ran free. And at night, the crickets played symphonies that lulled the village to sleep.
Odogwu was no ordinary child. He did not only ask questions—he questioned the answers.
"Papa," he asked one evening, "why does the moon follow us when we walk?"
Orie smiled, wiping his brow after returning from the farm. "Because it is lonely and finds company in dreamers."
"And why do the trees dance when there is no music?"
"Because even trees remember the drums of yesterday."
He grew up not just on food, but on sayings. His father's favorite was: "A man who forgets where the rain began to beat him will not know where to dry his clothes."
By the time Odogwu turned ten, it was clear to the elders that the boy was built for more than farm life and market days. He memorized proverbs like poems. He mapped the stars with sticks in the sand. He listened more than he spoke, and when he spoke, even adults listened.
On market days, while other children helped hawk pepper and groundnut, Odogwu visited the palm-wine tapper, Okorie, just to ask how he knew which tree would yield the sweetest sap.
"Na the tree wey dey hide sweetness inside hardship," Okorie once said. "Just like you."
That made Odogwu smile.
But not everyone smiled back. Some boys in the village grew jealous. They called him "book head," mocked his quiet ways, and once pushed him into a puddle during a wrestling match.
That evening, he sat beside his father, wiping mud from his knees.
"Why do they hate me, Papa?"
"They do not hate you," Orie said softly. "They fear what they do not understand. A monkey laughs at the turtle until it sees how far the turtle can walk without rest."
Odogwu took those words and tucked them into his heart.
At fourteen, he began helping his father on the farm—not just with planting, but with documenting rainfall patterns, soil behavior, and crop yields. Orie often said, "A farmer with sense is a scientist in disguise."
He also helped at the primary school on weekends, teaching younger children simple arithmetic and storytelling. Parents whispered, "That one will leave us soon."
And they were right.
At eighteen, Odogwu received admission to Elegosi State University. The entire village gathered at the square to celebrate. Gifts of yams, snails, and wrappers were piled at the family's door. Even the boys who once mocked him now envied him.
His grandmother, Mama Oyidiya, blessed him with kola nuts and a red thread to tie around his wrist.
"It will not stop snakes or bad people," she said. "But it will remind you where you come from."
Before he left, Orie pulled him aside and placed something in his hand—a small, carved wooden token shaped like a palm kernel.
"This," he said, "is the seed of your future. Wherever you go, plant it—not in soil, but in hearts."
On the morning of his departure, Odogwu stood at the edge of the village road, his bag slung over one shoulder, his heart pounding like festival drums.
His mother kissed his forehead. "Go, but do not scatter. The wind that forgets its roots loses its direction."
His father embraced him. "Life outside is not fair. But fairness is not your portion—purpose is. Walk straight. Speak few words. Let your work be the loudest voice in the room."
Then the bus came, coughing dust and hope.
As it rattled out of Amaedukwu, Odogwu looked back once and saw the three mango trees waving in the morning breeze, like elders bidding farewell without tears.
He did not cry.
But deep inside, he promised himself one thing:
He would not just leave. He would return—not as the boy who left, but as the man who made Amaedukwu proud.