The
Okafor Family

Mama, Papa — I started planning this in January, on a Tuesday night, sitting at my kitchen table in London while it was raining outside and my flight to Houston was nine months away and already I was excited. I started planning because I remembered what you said at the 2023 reunion, Papa — you said, "when I am gone, I want you all to keep gathering." You said it quietly, after the long dinner, when most of the cousins had gone to bed and it was just the older ones still at the table. I wrote it in my notebook that night. I have been thinking about it since. So I planned. Seven months, thirty-four messages, one wrong weekend in January that Chukwuemeka will never be allowed to forget. And here we are — everyone, in the same place, for three days. You made a family that wants to come home. That is not a small thing. That is everything. All my love from the planning committee (just me), Adaeze

To my children, my grandchildren, my brothers, my sisters, all of you — In 1981, your mother and I arrived in Houston with two suitcases. I had an offer from a hospital in the Texas Medical Center and your mother had a plan, and the plan was better than the offer, so we followed the plan. We could not have known, in 1981, that the two suitcases would become this. That is the thing I most want to say today: you cannot plan what we have built. You can only decide, again and again, that the family is the thing worth building. You have all decided that. You flew from four continents this weekend. That is your decision, not mine. I am eighty-one years old and I am the most fortunate man I know. — Papa

My husband wrote the serious speech. I am writing the true one. I have been cooking since Tuesday. There are four pots on the stove right now and two in the garage because we ran out of room. Chukwuemeka's wife tried to help on Wednesday and I thanked her and then redid the stew because it needed more time. I did not tell her this. Every reunion. Every time. I cook for three days so that for three days my whole family is fed. That is the thing I can give you that no one else can, and I give it every time. I love you all very much. Come and eat. The food is ready and there is more where that came from. — Mama

I need everyone to know that the wrong-weekend situation in January was NOT entirely my fault. The group chat had six different messages about dates in December and they were contradictory. I made a reasonable inference. Adaeze has, correctly, decided that I will hear about this for the rest of my natural life. In my defense: I am here. I flew fourteen hours from Lagos. My wife Chiamaka is here. My children are here. I am literally present, in the house, which is the whole point of the reunion. Papa, Mama — I love you. Adaeze — I love you also, though it is harder to say right now. The jollof is exceptional this year. I have already had two plates. That is my apology. — Chukwuemeka, from Lagos, the one who booked the wrong weekend

Uncle Emmanuel, Auntie Ngozi — I flew in from Accra on Thursday. When the cab pulled up and I could hear the voices from the street, I sat in the back seat for an extra minute before I got out. I was just listening. I have lived in four countries in my adult life. I have tried, in each one, to build something that felt like what this family feels like in the same room together. I have not fully succeeded. That is okay. It is a high bar. Thank you for setting the bar where you did. — Tobenna, from Accra, the one who sat in the cab for an extra minute

Grandpa — I am nineteen and in my first year at the University of Toronto and I have been a little homesick, not for Toronto specifically because I've only been there six months, but for this — for the specific sound of the whole family in the same house. I have been studying political science and my professor asked us to write about community last month and I wrote about the reunion and got an A and I want you to know that the A was entirely because of you. I love you very much. Will you tell me the story about 1981 again this weekend? The whole version, not the short one you tell the younger cousins. — Isioma, University of Toronto, the one who wrote the essay about the reunion

Papa — you told me once that you became a doctor because your father could not afford to be sick and so you decided to be the person who made the cost of being sick smaller for others. I became a doctor. I became a doctor because of that sentence. I have never told you this directly. I am telling you now, in front of the whole family, on this wall, which I think you would not hate as a place for it. You raised children who wanted to do something useful with their lives. We have tried our best. I love you. I'll see you at dinner. — Amara, Houston (the one who lives here and therefore had the least dramatic travel story this weekend)

To my mother-in-law Ngozi, and to the whole Okafor family — I married Chukwuemeka in 2011. On our wedding night, he told me, very seriously, that the most important thing I needed to know about his family was that the reunion was not optional. I did not fully understand what he meant until the first one I attended. I understood it within twenty minutes of arriving. You are the warmest, loudest, most generous people I have ever been in a room with. I came in as a guest that first year and I have never once felt like one since. Thank you for that. Thank you for making room. The jollof was worth the fourteen hours. — Chiamaka (Chukwuemeka's wife, the reasonable one)