About Me

 Chakpii!!! Woo!!!

I remember vividly my childhood days; nights filled with stories told by my Mum. On a great moonlit night, we would all lie on mats spread on the floor of the verandah of the two storey-building where we lived.  My Mum would tell us stories of Mbe-the Tortoise, stories of the Nigerian/Biafran Civil War, stories about her childhood and stories her Mum told her as told by her own Mother (my Mum’s grandmother) and so on. She would teach us how to sing poems in our dialect:

She would chant: One anu nwe ukwu ano? (Which animal has four legs?)

And we would chorus: Nwe ukwu ano (Has four legs)

And she would proceed to list the names of the animals and we would repeat after her and on on. Those nights were greatly treasured as we learnt so much about life through my Mother’s storytelling.

Later on, my eldest sister would take over the traditional storytelling nights.

Chakpii!!! She would shout, signifying the beginning of a story and we would gather around her and answer ‘Woooo!’

She also told us stories of Mbe-the Tortoise but then introduced other stories she learnt in school and also foreign stories of Cinderella, Rapunzel and the likes. The stories stuck so much with me and when it was time to start reading, I naturally fell in love with books.

History is made up of stories, Jesus taught his disciples with stories. Everyone has a story, a story that can change a life, a story that someone can learn from, if it is told…

That’s why we are here; to tell our stories and to change lives.

Welcome to The Storytela.

 Life’s a journey, document it!