Her story
A life of quiet, enormous kindness
Ngozi Adaora Okafor was born in Nnewi in the spring of 1948, the second of seven children. Her father, a headmaster, taught her to read before she could walk properly, and she spent the rest of her life passing that gift on.
She trained as a teacher in Awka and in 1972 joined Holy Rosary Primary School in Enugu, where she taught for thirty-four years. Former pupils still stop her children in the market to say what she meant to them.
"Read to them every night, even when they are too tired to listen. Especially then."
In 1971 she married Engineer Emmanuel Okafor. Together they raised five children, welcomed eleven grandchildren, and kept a house on Chime Avenue where the gate was never locked and the pot was never empty.
She was a pillar of St. Mary's Catholic Church and a founding member of its Women's Guild. She loved hibiscus, crossword puzzles and the sound of children reading aloud.
