Thoughts Upon A Passing: Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)

Three days ago was World Poetry Day. Two days ago, Chinua Achebe passed away. Today, I weep.

The only novel of his I have read is the world-acclaimed ‘Things Fall Apart’ but it was so impressive, I read it twice.  I also have read reviews of his last publication, ‘There was a Country’, which comes across as probably his most criticised work.

Achebe is popular as the Father of African literature in English language. When his death was announced, so many lovers of literature spent the day quoting witty and proverbial texts from any of his books that they had read. I simply tweeted ‘Chinua Achebe’.

On Wikipedia, you find this text that says: “Things Fall Apart went on to become one of the most important books in African literature. Selling over 8 million copies around the world, it was translated into 50 languages, making Achebe the most translated African writer of all time.”

‘There was a Country’ seems to be a book that defends Biafra’s role in the 1960s Biafran war which the region fought against the rest of Nigeria, in search of secession.  The cruelty with which the war was won, where the nation starved the Biafra region of food and supplies, causing the death of about a million people, makes the war one to forget. Achebe was a Biafran and after that war, he withdrew from public service, constantly criticising successive Nigerian governments till his death. He turned down state awards in both 2005 and 2011, in a statement of defiance of governments that did little to care for the people. His whole life was a protest and it showed remarkably in his work, Things Fall Apart. Reviews of his other works suggest that in all of them, he was staunch in his protest, earlier of colonialism and later of corruption and graft in his native Nigeria. During the Biafran war, he wrote more poetry because that was more convenient and that was what he could squeeze his emotion and life into at the time.

Chinua is gone. Did we not know he would? We did. Because that is the end destined for us all. And even as we mourn his passing, we reflect on the life he lived among us and the contribution he made to African literature in English.  There is no voice louder than his on the work he chose for his life to do.  At 82, he had played his part.

Achebe was close to Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo (very good friends with Achebe’s son) with whom he stood in the Biafran war. You can read this reviewed poem of Okigbo’s here on this blog. Okigbo died as an early casualty of the Biafran war himself in 1967. Chinua wrote for Okigbo this poem I will like to leave us all with. Let Paradise keep you, Chinua.

WAKE FOR OKIGBO

For whom are we searching?
For whom are we searching?
For Okigbo we are searching!

Nzomalizo!
Has he gone for firewood, let him return.
Has he gone to fetch water, let him return.
Has he gone to the marketplace, let him return.
For Okigbo we are searching!
Nzomalizo!
For whom are we searching?
For whom are we searching?
For Okigbo we are searching!
Nzomalizo!

Has he gone for firewood, may Ugboko not take him.
Has he gone to the stream, may Iyi not swallow him!
Has he gone to the market, then keep from him you
Tumult of the marketplace!
Has he gone to battle,
Please Ogbonuke step aside for him!
For Okigbo we are searching!
Nzomalizo!

They bring home a dance, who is to dance it for us?
They bring home a war, who will fight it for us?
The one we call repeatedly,
there’s something he alone can do
It is Okigbo we are calling!
Nzomalizo!
Witness the dance, how it arrives
The war, how it has broken out
But the caller of the dance is nowhere to be found
The brave one in battle is nowhere in sight!
Do you not see now that whom we call again
And again, there is something he alone can do?
It is Okigbo we are calling!
Nzomalizo!

The dance ends abruptly
The spirit dancers fold their dance and depart in midday
Rain soaks the stalwart, soaks the two-sided drum!
The flute is broken that elevates the spirit
The music pot shattered that accompanies the leg in
its measure
Brave one of my blood!
Brave one of Igbo land!
Brave one in the middle of so much blood!
Owner of riches in the dwelling place of spirit
Okigbo is the one I am calling!
Nzomalizo!

In memory of the poet Christopher Okigbo (1932-1967)
Translated from the Igbo by Ifeanyi Menkit. Ref: Poetry Foundation Ghana.

#BlogCamp13 and the slow turning mill of progress

Today, there was BlogCamp 2013(#BlogCamp13)  in Ghana. Ghana’s seasoned bloggerati engaged in those deep conversations that are a melting pot of ideas all the time. You ask about the theme? – Content is King! And so it was.

I missed it, yes, being so far away in Congo. But I followed the conversations no doubt. And now I feel like there is something really going on in Ghana that is changing the face of the country, probably forever.

People are occupying online space. The sheer numbers and quality of blogs that are springing up in Ghana are such that, there is a very present alternative to traditional media online now. Not even to say that some of the traditional newspapers are active with their online presence yet. For short, things are getting interesting online and slowly, the conversations are starting a prepared activist community already abuzz with interaction. We benefitted immensely from this in our elections last year.

There was the first social media awards also and a couple of very good blogs won awards.  Congratulations to these winners of Ghana Social Media Awards: @nas009 @GhTog @jabdulai @GanyobiNaa @Accradotalt @MutomboDaPoet,   @TechyAfrica, @Kodjo_Poetry and @ameyaw112 . Kudos. You can follow them on twitter and check their blogs out.

This is to hoping that the internet ushers us into unprecedented heights of local globalisation in Ghana and of Ghanaian content. You know what I mean.

.

The Master Brewer – Lade Wosornu

POET’S PROFILE – LADE WOSORNU

Prof. Lade Worsonu has been a prominent figure on the Ghanaian literary and academic landscape, being an essayist and columnist on a range of health issues in Ghanaian papers. He has worked extensively in health-related fields, with the WHO and across a number of African, Saudi Arabian and London universities.

He has nonetheless continues to dabble in the arts, having published a number of poetry volumes while still at his publishing best in many scientific journals. The poem I review here is one of his more prominent and more celebrated poems.

His personal website, http://www.wosornu.com, decrees that “his passion in life is to seek a closer walk with God. He strives for compassion such that he flings roses wherever he berths, bringing heaven-on-earth for others. No longer scared of terminal darkness, he sees his father of final light. Dancing to inner tunes of joy, barefoot on the embers of fortune, he prays to be of service to everyone, expect naught from any man, and, be God-sufficient by his sunset.”

The Master Brewer
There is a distillery in our brains
Its cane and malt, its hops and grains
Are the stuff our lives are made of.
Blizzard and snow, bush fires or drought
Matches won by penalty shoot-out
Fortunes lost at toss of a coin
Over these and their likes, you are no doyen.

The fuel for this distillery?
Your emotions. Willy-nilly
You stoke the fires as you vent your spleen.
And another dram drip into the vat –unseen

The master brewer is not the stars
Not yet the gods. He is you, your very self.
The final brew has no choice. It must be
Bitter bile or sweet honey. But you can choose
The magic potion, which can vouchsafe the taste:
Your intentions, your memories and your reactions.

REVIEW
This poem is a philosophical piece, likening the human body to some sort of industry, constantly at work, brewing. The distillery is in our brains (line 1) and it is fed in material by the stuff our lives are made of (line 3).

In the second stanza, Lade mentions a number of things which he describes in the final line of the stanza as things over which ‘you are no doyen’ (line 7). A doyen is a master of a group. Rightly, the things that are mentioned are outside his distillery, his industry, the body: blizzard, snow, fires, drought, the match-winning penalty shoot-out or the lost fortune over the toss of a coin. In effect, man has more power over himself over things outside him.

In the third stanza, he makes it clear that we stoke the fires of this distillery by our emotions: sometimes with intention, other times without. The phrase willy-nilly comes from ‘will I, nil I’, meaning ‘whether I wish it or not’. But as we ‘vent [our] spleen’ (line 10), small drops of fuel fire our distillery and our brewery keeps working on.

In the final stanza, Lade tells us how the taste of the final brew depends solely on us, not the gods or stars. Whether it is bitter bile or sweet honey depends on the ‘magic potion’ we put in it. And that potion, he concludes, is the make of our intentions, memories and reactions. The more positive your mindset, the sweeter the brew from your distillery; the more positive life becomes for you.

Interesting to see a blend of philosophy, art, mechanics and literature in the conjured imagery of yet another excellent poem.

[Ps: Sorry for all who received the poem titled 'Flag Of My Victory' in their emails and can't find it now on my blog. It was meant for my more personal blog and I have taken it from this one accordingly. For those still interested in it (and I encourage you to read it if you are Christian too), please click here.]

One Man and the Colour of Greatness

You seldom find inspiration in life, these fast-moving days. Many of you who have been reading my GhanaCentric blog have realised how I mention now and then my life as an engineer. And so I shall tell you a short tale of why I have been away from this blog for a while and what I’ve been doing on my time away. And what inspiration moves me to write now.

Skinner on the far left, Kayla on the far right, and Us, the Sixteen

I went to Houston on my first training as an engineer. For ten weeks, I underwent with nineteen others in my class, a leading on our first steps as mud engineers. For ten weeks, it felt like we were on a ship, commanded by one captain whose job made him both colleague and shipmate. Only that, it was his duty to get the ship to the tenth week without losing a man if possible.

We met high and low water but at the end, we got to the tenth week, having lost four men. A steep price to pay but also a refreshing journey for the sixteen of us left. And our captain!

Our instructor taught us what it meant to aspire for greatness, and after his work was done, on the night we were to graduate, he played a presentation of a video that was a charge to go above the ordinary. I don’t remember everything he said that night but I’ll never forget how Mr Skinner made me feel: how he made us all feel that night in that dinner ground. For the rest of his presentation was of a teary man, filled with no less a measure of the passion he had taught us from day one with, repeating to us the words, ‘Be Great’! It’s hard to forget.

Today, in far-away Congo where I have been sent on assignment, on the last night before the week I probably set foot on a rig for the first time, I review here a poem I wrote him the afternoon after graduation, sitting by a Hilton poolside. Here goes…

Of A Man, and Greatness

Moments have turned into days
First slower, and now they’re razed
Raced to this end, our first parting, last goodbyes
No thriving fireplace to tell our stories
Nor days to laugh about our shared past
Hasty ends hurry us away, poles apart
You, noble and true, have shown us your heart.

So few are the men who have trod your path
A keeper of the sixteen, us, your new conquest
Knight-errant, you said to us, ‘Be Great!’
When e’er that phrase attends our ears
With new zeal, better passion, like you taught us,
And sweet greatness will ooze from our touch, minding
Skinner, the one who was great before us!

REVIEW
The whole poem is a sort of parting and looking ahead piece, based on the last night before it was written – the graduation night. Go back up and look at the poem again. Pick the first letter of the first line and set it aside. Then pick the second letter of the second line and set it aside. The third of the third, the fourth of the fourth, and so forth till you’re done with both stanzas separately. If you miss it, I have boldened those alphabets for you. Tell me what you form in the end.

The first two lines sum up how ‘moments’, slow passing times, had ‘turned into days’ and now they were all done – ‘razed’. The days had ‘raced to this end’ (line 3) and brought us to the point of our ‘first parting’ and ‘last goodbyes’ (line 3). In line 4, the words ‘no thriving’ mean that we didn’t have a long night to say our goodbyes. The fireplace did not burn on and on. In fact, our final night together was a 3-hour and something time, to debrief alliances from our captain and be packing to leave in the days to come. We had neither thriving fireplace nor, even longer ‘days’ (line 5) to make merry about our immediate ‘shared past’. The parting was sudden; ‘hasty ends’ (line 6) that were going to needlessly then but also necessarily now set us ‘poles apart’ (line 6) for work sake. Our instructor was a man who gave every bit of his liberties to make sure that we made it through the high-stakes training we got through. I mentioned that four men were lost on the way, consequent to them coming up short on some grades. It was hard, and for each of them, it was visible to see that as much as it affected these fallen men, their jobs all but gone, Mr Skinner felt it too.

So the second stanza says it well. Inspiration doesn’t come cheap and as much as Mr Skinner inspired us all for greatness on board his ship, it is few men who are able to walk in his paths (line 8), and by bringing us safely to the end of the road, the sixteen of us have become his ‘new conquest’ (line 9). He has been our keeper.

The night I walked out of graduation, I felt that if there was nothing else I could be as a mud engineer, I had a commission to ‘Be Great’ (line 10). The affectedness with which those words rung during Mr Skinner’s presentation, made them resound like an echo. Be Great, Be Great, heck do anything you want but Be Great. I felt like greatness in that very room. I felt like, somebody give me a work station right now and let me show them the colour of greatness. I was inspired for mud engineering. I was inspired for my job.

One thing I realised and I say now on the benefit of hindsight, is the fact that Skinner actually had the moral right to tell us to be great because he himself was. He did his job like that was all he lived for. That’s a captain worthy of any ship. And the ease with which he took us through lesson after lesson, day after day, experiment after experiment, is what makes me call him ‘knight-errant’ (line 10) – a seeker of conquest, an adventurer!

So it is that, there shall no longer be a mention of greatness but his memory will come to mind, Mr. Skinner, so many miles across the oceans, somewhere in Texas. The last lines say that whenever again any duty comes to us, all of us who sat in that class with him through it all, we shall rise with new zeal and better passion, remembering greatness. Remembering our call to greatness, but also, remembering, as the last line puts it, ‘Skinner, the one who was great before us’ (line 14).

If you got it right, the alphabets you set aside, wrapped up in the poem, represent my instructor’s name – Michael Skinner! Each alphabet hidden in its right place in its respective sentence. That’s reaching for greatness!

Resonance, Beauty

This poem, untitled, yet beautiful in all its meaning, was submitted by one reader of my blog, Collins Boakye. I have mulled the content and found it saying a story deeper in resonance than the lines suggest on surface. It has an ellement of antiquity to it and speaks both across time, across to a deity and down to the generations. I absolutely love every bit of it and in due time, I will attempt a review of it. Happy reading.

When sorrow becomes the banner of life
It is you we come to
When tears run through our body and blood comes through our eyes
It is you we come to
When hope sleeps
We have no one to see than despair
It is you we come to
When misery visits your sons and daughters
It is you we come to
Blind our hearts
Shut our eyes
We will relish in our pain
Oh why! Why ! Why! The rooster is crowing at mid- day
Our spoils has become our plague.
Is there a story we have not heard?
Afar, there cries our mothers and children
We cannot take it anymore
Take us back..

Farewell, Mr. President!

Today, Ghana lost her president! It’s the 24th of July 2012 and this day will never be forgotten.

I heard the news here in my workplace cafeteria from faraway Houston at lunchtime. Somehow, my appetite had gone!

It is not personal knowledge of Mills that makes me sit in my room now, three hours since I got back from work, unable to do anything but just grieve, that moves me to write. It is the heart of a willing man, a weak yet strong man, an insulted yet peaceful man, a President, which moves me to write.

When he became my president, John Evans Atta Mills carried upon himself the targeted ridicule meant for anyone who joined his government and who fell short of public love. For the sake of the people he worked with, he was insulted, yet he bore it. He defended his government and with it, endured the long, difficult days in the Castle when people scorned him for the errors of his ministers. They declared him dead many times before today! But he fought. He fought to keep his name and integrity intact. He took upon himself the shame that his subordinates would have taken. And in doing so, he crucified himself.

Let me say this! Mr. Mills was not the most popular president Ghana ever had but there was no other president, not even Nkrumah, who everybody in Ghana, from child to adult, boy to girl, man to woman, would address as Uncle!
He was our Uncle Atta. Our President, far away, but close enough to think he was our parents’ brother. Our Uncle!

I mourn his passing. Ghana mourns his passing.

I got online to chat with my brother back in Ghana to know what was going on back home, right when I got back from work. Ghana is silent! I love my brother – his picture is my Facebook cover photo – and today, we all confessed that Uncle Atta’s passing has shaken us in a way that even our dad’s passing two years and a half ago, had probably not! Maybe then, we decided to be strong for the rest of the family. Today, it is impossible to be strong for all of Ghana! Even all of Africa!

I didn’t personally know the man, but I watched him. I learnt from him humility and fortitude of spirit, calm and a raging courage. And as I type this, alone in my room, I cry.

Even through his sickness, he wanted to continue to be president. And every muscle in him that moved him to say, “I want to be president for another four years”, said so because, in spite of the fact that we made the presidency difficult for him with our impatience, he loved us! He had a heart that was big enough to take it all, and a will that was too tried to be tested! There will not be another Atta Mills!

Fare thee well, Mr President! We will remember all your sacrifices for the good of our country, in sickness and in health, till death has done us part! Ghana, here lies a president, another like whom you will never meet.

Mr. President, you taught us good, you taught us peace and you taught us God! Ghana will never forget you!

Picture credit: Leadership

Once Upon A Rhyme

My days on Tiber’s banks here chime
Not a wage to plead a dime
I needn’t praise my love for thyme,
Nor epiphany from losted time
But I rhyme!!
Argos gates do daily toll
Clanging bells ‘pon Fante knoll
What will I, what fate dole?
Yet to plead a saintly soul.
I shall write, that be right
Or my heart shall leave me sole
Dark of night, day or light
This be where I cease my flight
Where the haunting devil flees
I shall rest, my humbled pleas
There can no one take this place
Nor the devil nor his race
I shall write, in blood, in tears
Casted out, ye purged fears
Then a scribe I’ll e’er remain
‘Pon the death of all else stray.

It’s 2a.m on the 3rd day of May 2012 in the year of our Lord. This poem abegged of me be written, wouldn’t let me sleep. Yanked me off my bed, awrestling! Tossed me, turned me, threw the sheets off my hided face. Impossible my eyes if they to close. My mind keeps singing her dainty tunes and chimes I hear for her rugged tones. It eats me, yea drinks me! Plants me a silly knock if I should resist. And lo, here it be written.

Then, says I, let me review thee!! Then nay, it begs me sweetly lie. Poem, O poem, what wrong have I on thee bestowed? That thou shall cast thy troubles ‘pon me? I dare not try a way t’explain, lest sleep afix its eyes on me. What hated drowse thou churns on me, O poem!! That even in my half-asleep, thou wakest me and now in my half-awake, thou sleepest me?