FAR FROM HOME, CLOSER TO MYSELF

From a village in southeastern Nigeria to the concert halls of America: a composer’s journey home to himself.

Innocent Okechukwu grew up with his grandparents, learning his people’s songs and drums before he ever saw a piano. At thirteen he entered a junior seminary. There a shy boy with a stammer found his voice through music: he practised piano in secret at night and wrote his first composition. He rose to senior prefect, joined the Dominicans, and believed his path was settled until his father’s death and a vote by his superiors changed everything.

What followed was a life rebuilt again and again:

• a church music post in Abuja;

• a First Class degree at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka;

• years teaching piano, violin and voice in Dubai, far from family and under an employer who tested his limits;

• graduate study in the United States, where a near-drowning left him with panic attacks and PTSD, and healing came slowly.

Along the way he learned to love openly. He found a husband, a second family, and a choir of men who sang his music back to him.

Far From Home, Closer to Myself is a memoir about faith and doubt, ambition and exile, and the courage it takes to stop performing a life and start living one. Told with honesty and warmth, and illustrated with personal photographs, it is for anyone who has had to leave home to find out who they are.