Homage to the late poet; Kofi Owonor


By
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)


In one Sunday Nation article, Professor Ali A Mazrui analyzed the inter-politicality of The Jaramogi Odinga family and The Kennedy family by arriving at a difference that the Odinga’s have curse of long life but the Kennedy’s have a curse of early death through violent and untimely  mode of death .Mazrui made these analogies in reference to violent death of John F. Kennedy and the subsenguent Chappaquiddick bridge tragedy.Similarly,the salient difference between a European and American or a Japanese and African writer or African artist is that most of African writers die early in the mid of their lives through violent death but in contrast American and some European writers die peacefully and comfortably in their old age. Early and violent death is the dominant bane, fate and misfortune that now and then besmirch an African writer. This position is in recognition of a fact that my child-hood American popular literature writers in the name of Mario Puzzo author of the God Father and Robert Ludlum an author of several anti soviet spy series like; Borne dentity, Borne Ultimatum and Icarus Agenda plus very many others like The Matlock Paper had just to die recently in their late eighties. The most surprising of all is Phillip Roth whom I read at the age of twelve years while in my primary four.  Now I am forty years and this year 2013 Phillip Roth is still alive and active to the American literary civilization that he has been touted by the Ladbrokes as a probable candidate for Nobel Prize in literature. But sadly enough on 22 September 2013 in Nairobi the black angel of early  death has carried ahead its  foul duty by claiming the life of Africa’s most honorable literary scholar Professor Kofi Owonor during the helter-skelter of Alshabab terrorist lynch of the upscale West Gate Mall in Nairobi.
Actually this essay is meant to be a deep felt homage to the late Kofi Owonor, Killed by Islamic terrorists in Nairobi. However, the essay also goes ahead to decry the violent and early deaths of several other African writers. The deaths which have almost turned Africa into a literary dwarf if not a continent of artistic bovarism. Kofi Owonor, who peacefully and honorably came to attend Story Moja Literary festival to be held in Nairobi, was violently shot by the Islamic fundamentalist terror group known as Al shabab. Whose gunmen lynched the Mall in which was Kofi Owonor and his son. The terrorist were sending out the Muslim catchword on which if one fails to respond then he was known not to be a non- Muslim on to which he is shot or held hostage for ransom.Fatefull enough, Kofi Owonor was not muslim.He was an elder, an Africanist, a scholar, a poet, a realist, a rationalist, a Christian, a religious non-fundamentalist and a literary liberalist. He could not respond with any tincture of religious irrationalism to the question of the terrorist. He was shot dead and his son injured. Too sad. This is actually the time when Christian positivism goes beyond rigidity of other religious affectations in its classic assertiveness that the devil kills the flesh but not the soul. And indeed it is true the devilish terrorist killed Owonor’s flesh but not his literary soul. They are such and similar situations that made Amilcar Cabral to observe in his Unity and Struggle, in a section on Homage to Kwameh Nkrumah to rationalize that the sky is too enormous to be covered by the palm of a sadist nor to be vilified by the spitting of the filthy ones; Truly, like Nkrumah, Kofi Owonor was the sky of African intellect never to be covered by the brute of the cannon from the parrel of a Muslim terrorist.
Kofi Owonor is not alone neither are we alone. You, my dear reader and I  we are not in any historical nor literary solititude. In Africa God has blessed us with the opportunity of the dead relatives in the name of the living dead. We are not the first and the last to grief. Owonor is not the first and the last to dance with fate. Even Ali A. Mazrui in his literary expositions of 1974 otherwise published as the trial of Christopher Okigbo.A  novella in which Mazrui cursed ideology as an open window into the moving vehicle that let in  a very bad political accident to Nigeria in the name of Biafra war which claimed life of  Christopher Okigbo at the Nzukka battle front. This was one other sad moment at which Africa lost its young literary talent through violent death.
Reading of African literary biographies in all perspectives will not miss to make you attest to this testimony. Both in situ and in diaspora.Admirable African American writers like Malcolm X, and Dr Luther King all died through violent death. Even if in the recent past, the Daughter of Malcolm X revealed to Sahara Reporters, Nigerian Daily, that Louis Farrakhan was behind the assassination of her father, wisdom of the time commands us to know that it was evil politics of that time that made Malcolm X to die the way international politics of today in relation to crookedness which was entertained during the formation of the state of Israel that have made the son of Africa professor Kofi Owonor to die.
An in-depth analysis into the life and times of African writers and artists will show that the number of African cultural masters who die violently is more than the number of those who died normally in their old age. Some bit of listology will show help to adduce the pertinent facts; Patrice Lumumba, Steve Biko, Lucky Dube, Walter Rodney, Tom Mboya, J M Kariuki, Che que Vara, Ken Saro Wiwa, Anjella Chibalonza, and Jacob Luseno all but died through violent death. Lumumba died in a plane crash along with Darg Hammarskjöld only after penning some socialism guidelines. After writing I write what I want, a manifesto for black consciousness Steve Biko was arrested and tortured in the police cells during those days of apartheid in south Africa.Biko died violently while undergoing torture in police cells. Lucky Dube was fatefully shot by a confused ****. Walter Rodney who was persuaded by his student who is now the professor Isa Shivji at Dare salaam University not to go back to his country of Guyana, desisted this voice and went back only to be assassinated in the mid of the rabbles that domineered Guyanese politics those days of 1970’s. This happened when Rodney had written only two major books. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, being one of them. Tom Mboya was shot by a hired gunman in down-town Nairobi, some one kilometer away from the West Gate Mall, at which Kofi Owonor has been shot. Mboya could have written a lot. Even more than Rudyard Kipling and Quisling. But fate or bad luck had him violently die after he had only written two books; Challenges to Nationhood as well as Freedom and After. Both of them are classically nice reads until today. He had also submitted sessional paper no. 10 to the Kenya government which was a classical thesis on Africanization of scientific socialism.
J M Kariuki, Che and Saro Wiwa are all known for how they violently died. Powers that be and terrorists that be, expedited violent death against these writers. Thus, brothers and sisters in the literary community of Africa and the world as we mourn Kofi Owonor we must also let Africa to unite in spiritual effort to rebuke away the evil spirit that often perpetrate terror of violent death which  especially  claim away lives of African writers.

References
Ali A. Mazrui; Trial of Christopher Okigbo
Amilcar Cabral; Unity and Struggle

(Holding fire and water together)

I don't know why the rain keeps writing the
name of Nigeria on the ground in every corner.
I don't know why we are this broken and
tortured like the fragments of the dust.
I don't know why the Dapchi girls returned yesterday while their chikbok friends are
still in captive.
I don't know why every street in Nigeria is
known with an imprint of good leaders.
I don't know why we cry yet point accusation. fingers back to ourselves, who is fooling who?
I don't know why the sun cry here with a
closed lips.
I don't know why we keep writing love stories
while our brothers and sisters perish in shame!
I don't just know why but I think you should know.
Are you not the one that collected a cup of rice, clean notes and Abrahamic lie from them?
I won't speak ill of this land again,  I won't!
I won't judge any one, no, I won't for  the
sake of my unborn children.
No, I won't for the sake of what happened to Dele Giwa and Saro Wiwa.
We poets are abnormal psychologically.
We paints abstraction from the abstracts creating fears that might hurt those true patriots.
My muse fell out from me yesterday night,
When my television opened to a scene of genocide.
Men on pants, women on trousers painting out the tears made for people inhabiting hell.
Their laughters and smiles were printed to be archived among themselves.
I won't speak ill  of this country, no, I won't!
Because of my unborn children,
I won't!
But I will tell just one tale for them to remember
Of how monkeys carted away with our monies!
Of how Snake swallowed our currency!
Of how good our leaders are, I think you know!
I have been holding these demons in me until last night they came out horribly in fierce protest to revisit this land again.
To tell of those girls ***** under the bridge,
To ask why boys like me are named after me,
To speak against shadows of death lurking here and there.
Nigeria is grey and black, red and violent,
Retrieving this oceans of mysteries from the hidden abyss of grave corruption is the passport tabled on the pyramid top to recreate a versatile muses of a lyrics calling for a right to write our rights.
Take a walk to memory lane pass your shadow,  that of your father,  mother & grandmas
You will see a Nigeria in another angle trying to free herself from the grip of corruption, then, revisit her tears and struggles you will know we are the cause of our own misfortunes.!

©John Chizoba Vincent
FromAPenRefusingFrustrations

Jacob Ekirapa! who killed you?
Your body was found puddled,
In blood that oozed out behind your head,
In your car you slept humble as in life,
Gorged in a trench downslope Kanduyi,
You were smiling in death as you ever did in life
Mindless to the murderer’s lethal object that crushed
Your head from the nape, an early a shot to the realm of deads,

Your Life in Lodwar City was Godly and peaceful
Serving God via varsity teaching as service to mankind
You quarreled not but you ever oozed intellect,
The Turkana chicken that roosted in your hearth you never
Went foxy to un-feather, deep in purity, a godly conscience,
As colleagues and friends were on a pageant of amorous mighty,
In a rampage, chasing women, money and Tusker at costs possible
Within the range of snobbish freedom that Lodwar-heat allowed,
Then you beautifully pitched and harvested a job at home,

Only to work at home with vintage discipline,
Serving the County people, Bungoma of your birth,
Least in your ken that the owl is ogling at you
With the certain lust of death, it killed you whole-meal
As if it has never killed, as if it has never killed, as if...
Killing you was the apex of glory for those that fear a spark
Of talent, discipline, brilliance, ****** hygiene, generosity and
Technical competence in the nerves of a youth which you evinced,

Jacocb Ekirapa! Who killed you?  was it a man or a woman?
Did the Bukusu people **** you because you are son of a Teso?
Or the a Teso killed because you had a job and then becoming rich?
The accident theory was a smoke-screen, to throw us off-sleuth
You killer hides behind a stage managed crush of your new car,
God could have allowed dialogue between the dead and the living
For you to tell me the man who killed you, why he killed you and how,
You are a friend that death robbed me, leaving me in a lurch of full despair,
In this world that is full of gossipers, sadists, bigots, wrys, sardonics, waifs, saddos,
Thieves, stooges, copy-cats, tribalists, self-congratulators, killers, egotistic egoists,
Making me now a neurotic listologist, but all in all, your death hit me hard below my belt,
Like the lunch treat of full Tilapia and Ugali you often did to me in the Oasis of Lodwar town,

Life on earth is a precursor of death, and death a harbinger of eternity
An obvious quoith for the arrow of your soul, truly, amid the 24 elders of heaven,
An obvious station of your un-blemished soul, Godly defiance to the folly of your killers,
Stupid, imbecile, idiotic, buffoonish black Africans that killed you, their own Sun, educated son
They **** a milch-cow that saves them from kwashiorkor, marasmus and poverty, a black man is comfortable in despair of poverty where voodoo looms, but not in a clime where young-men are schooled, clean, educated, employed and rich-a promise of tomorrow,
They killed you but forgive them, they also killed Ken Saro Wiwa, Stephen Adongosi, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King, Jacob Juma, John Kituyi, Meshack Yebeyi, Dr. Masinde of Kanduyi-thence, they are like that, they **** their own solutions only to fall back into mire of poverty-these black idiots,

Let the hot sun go.
Let the sweet breeze blow.
Let the big sea grow
As the rivers flow.
And the oboist blow
At dusk, his oboe.
That darkness should grow.

This day is once more sinking
And the night is tired of waiting.
The poor cower in grief.
The rich cackling in relief.
Night, no longer of blackness
But of thick darkness
In which courage is slaughtered
Again and again.
And fear has grown beards
In the hearts of men.

Let the hot sun go
Let the sweet breeze blow
Let the big sea grow
As the rivers flow.
And the oboist blow
At dusk, his oboe
That the night should show.

The cruelty of our green god
Shall be felt one morning at Ogoni.
He will hit you on the brow,
Whether you were guilty or not
Until you are hung on a noose.

t may be at dusk or dawn.
It may be the verdict of a kangaroo court.
But once it’s done,
There will be only tears to show.
Let the dark night go.
Let that old **** crow.
Let the morning flow.
Let the tide go low
As the rivers flow.
That a day should grow
With bright light to show.

A fateful new day
With dews fresh on the leaves.
No one smelt death
Until suddenly we heard him:
“Come out here!
You and your eight brothers
Whose days I have numbered.”

Hence their noose kissed the necks
Of the victims.
Victims of black gold.
And the world was spitting fire
And you groaned away in a deep sleep.
What a noisy way to sleep!