The kola nut

Things Fall Apart, 1958

Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, was published in London by Heinemann in 1958. Set in Umuofia, a fictional Igbo clan, it briefly describes a kola nut ceremony and mentions the eating of kola at least ten times. One of its sayings is ‘He who brings kola brings life.’ The line echoes an Igbo saying, onye wetara ọjị wetara ndu, which a 2024 study gives as ‘whoever brings kola nut brings life’.

To verify: The first-chapter scene in which Unoka welcomes his neighbour Okoye with kola, Okoye answers ‘He who brings kola brings life’, and Unoka breaks the kola with a prayer to the ancestors, read in the novel itself, with its page in the 1958 first edition; An earlier dated account of the kola welcome, before 1958

The guest’s welcome

A 2024 study in Sophia: An African Journal of Philosophy and Public Affairs calls ọjị the quintessential gesture of welcome among the Igbo, in formal and informal gatherings, and describes its ritual presenting as an expression of hospitality, goodwill, welcome and friendship to guests. A visitor is greeted and given a seat; then the host presents kola in a carved wooden bowl, okwa ọjị, and the guest does not state his errand until the kola has been eaten. The eldest prays over it in Igbo, breaks it, throws one lobe to the ancestors and eats or shares the rest. The study names kola as a necessity at the New Yam festival, weddings, burials, child-naming ceremonies and the settling of land disputes.

Still the first thing offered

The custom travels with Igbo communities abroad: at the Igbo Studies Association’s 2026 conference at Dominican University in Chicago, members of the Igbo Association of Chicago welcomed participants by offering ọjị. Kola is food and a living custom, so we tell the story and make no jewellery of it.