Straight Talk with Chukwudi Obi

Oguta has a way of arriving quietly in the heart. It does not announce itself with skyscrapers or traffic horns; it breathes through water, palms, and the patient rhythm of boats cutting across the lake. I arrived on a harmattan-soft morning, when the sky looked rinsed and the air carried the smell of wet earth. Oguta Lake lay ahead, wide and reflective, its surface holding the early light like a secret. I had come for rest—at least that was the plan. Love, I believed then, was something that happened elsewhere. The lodge by the lake sat low and unassuming, shaded by coconut trees. Fishermen pushed out before dawn, their oars dipping with a practiced grace. By mid-morning, the town began to stir: women with baskets of smoked fish, children skidding barefoot along the sandy paths, the occasional motorbike coughing past with a sack of cassava flour tied to its back. I walked the shoreline, counting ripples, thinking of nothing and everything at once. That was where I met Amara. She stood...