Thomas and Not Jacob: A Story of Grit and Good Happenstance

This is the story of a man’s life from childhood in rural Igbo village in the mid-1930s, during the British colonial rule in Southern Nigeria to the first decade of the new millennium. It mirrors the life of a whole generation in an era of Nigeria’s most radical and dramatic changes and total transformation. It depicts the birth pangs, political upheavals, and competitiveness of an era of struggle for ascendency of religious and cultural values that still continue. It tells how the author’s passion and ambition to transform his hometown, Urualla, into a “little London” was spurred by the compassionate and humanitarian support of his host families during his student days in the turbulent hippie era of the 1960s in America. This is a narrative of a life of adventure in terms of circumstances of birth, hazards, triumphs, love saga, passion, and fate that qualifies as an Odyssey.