In praise of the ageless men who shaped me

In an early poem, my teacher Taban lo Liyong makes the speaker in the poem to complain that whatever clever invention he comes up with, he soon finds that it has been done before. In frustration, the would-be inventor ends up blasting and cursing all

those smart aleck that anticipate his clever projects and render them irrelevant. “Pox them,” he concludes.

I would not wish the pox on anyone, but I felt almost like Lo Liyong’s character early this week. After I had proposed to you the “clever” schemes of community or family homes for the elderly, I chanced upon a juicy conversation about a day-care geriatric

centre in Cuba.

But mention of Taban lo Liyong brings this remarkable man, and another elderly teacher of mine, Professor Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz, sharply to mind. They are, to me, sterling exemplars of worthwhile senior citizenship. Of course I admit my partiality. 

The most respectful comment that I can make about Lo Liyong is that he has been, and remains, the most prolific writer in our region for the better part of half a century. The quality of his works may vary, but his production is continuous, and stimulatingly controversial.

Consider, for example, his book, The Last Word, which I called “very much a first word” on orature and related issues when I reviewed it in 1969. Maybe he eventually came to agree with me, as he published his The Second Last Word many years later.

It was also in that first Last Word that Lo Liyong voiced his now-proverbial lament about the literary barrenness of East Africa. It earned him the cackling ironic ridicule of Okot p’Bitek, who lamented Taban’s profound “deafness” to the rich verbal creativity

surrounding East Africans in their orature.

The heckling remark is recorded somewhere in the introduction to p’Bitek’s Horn of My Love, I believe. But it was part of the famous staged “quarrels” between p’Bitek and Lo Liyong that kept us then-aspiring scholars riveted to, not only the brilliance of

these literary titans, but also to the stimulating felicity of intellectual debate.

Curiously, Lo Liyong has stuck to his nearly 50-year old claim that Eastern African literary production is pathetically inadequate. This has, in recent times, earned him the wrath of my Bakoki, Prof Chris Lukorito Wanjala, who has accused him of wilful

obstinacy and arrogance. I dare not say which of the two literati is right.

Be that as it may, another aspect of Taban lo Liyong’s character, and one that is particularly relevant to this continued chat of ours about senior citizens, is his apparent agelessness. The man seems to be eternally youthful.

When I visited him in Juba in 2009, he took me out for an evening in the Jebel area, the name being the localisation of “jabal”, the Arabic for “rock”.

The place lived up to its name. At the joint where we had dinner, Mwalimu Taban took me round the gardens, where there was a stunning crop of rocks! Before I could say “jabal”, Taban, nimble and agile as a goat’s kid, was clambering up the sheer face of

the rock and inviting me to join him.

I did not, nor did our much younger companion from Makerere, Dr Okot Benge. From the top of the rock, the professor gazed down on us, presumably wondering what had happened to us feckless weaklings who could not appreciate the joys of

challenging physical exercise.

Maybe the only other teacher of mine that can compete with Taban lo Liyong in indefatigable youthful energy is my friend and mentor, Prof Mohamed Hassan Abdulaziz, the eminent UoN linguist. My most recent sighting of him was as he crossed the road,

sprightly and brisk, at “Holy Corner”, the crossroads adjacent to the university, where you have not only the Synagogue but also Saint Paul’s Chapel, the Lutheran Church and Saint Andrew’s Presbytery further up.

Professor Abdulaziz was probably going to class or to his study in the famous ED II Building on the Main Campus, as he has been doing for the better part of four decades. But this is not where his story began. My acquaintances can hardly believe me when

I tell them the good professor taught me in Dar es Salaam in 1966.

He had just returned from his studies at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies then, and I have two dear and vivid memories of my encounter with him. First, as I might have mentioned elsewhere, he was the first trained linguist to teach

me and my colleagues, and he introduced us to rigorous linguistic analysis.

ON A PERSONAL LEVEL

Secondly, on a personal level, he kindly let me have a look at his manuscript study of Muyaka’s poetry, which was my rather strange introduction to, not only Kiswahili verse, but also Kiswahili in general, as I spoke very little of it then, and read even less.

Later, when we reconnected in Nairobi, his generosity to me was even more pronounced. He recommended me for several professional appointments, including the stint at Kenyatta University, and it was at his urging that I undertook my full-fledged study of

Kiswahili methali. Once he told my daughter in my hearing that my Dar class was probably the brightest group of students he ever taught. I can only confirm that we were the first!

As I rejoice in the blessings of these wonderful ageless men who have contributed so much to my development, the moral of the tale is simply that old is gold, and we should hold our active elders in the highest esteem. The 20th Century had an almost

fanatical admiration for youth, maybe as a reaction to the death of horrifyingly large numbers of young people in the two world wars and, later, in disasters like the HIV-AIDS pandemic.

It became almost “indecent” to live long, and old people were increasingly regarded as irrelevancies. This even developed into systemic ageism, the institutionalised discrimination against old people.

But as the percentage of senior citizens grows higher and higher, their marginalisation should become increasingly unacceptable.

Prof Bukenya is one of the leading scholars of English and literature in East Africa.