Memories of Akivaga and our two orature co-authors

Reacting to the recent departure of our colleague, the orature scholar Kichamu Akivaga (pictured), Dr Godwin Siundu of UoN implied a crucial question about the spoken word. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • With Jane Nandwa, the roles were somehow reversed. Though a much younger person than I, she was for a considerable length of time my boss at KU, as had been my beloved sister, Prof Ciarunji Chesaina, whom I also knew as a student at Makerere.
  • What struck one particularly about Jane Awinja Nandwa was her exuberant sense of humour.

Reacting to the recent departure of our colleague, the orature scholar Kichamu Akivaga, Dr Godwin Siundu of UoN implied a crucial question about the spoken word. Pointing to the significance of the pioneering work of scholars like Akivaga,  Siundu wonders where we should go from where they left off.

I will address that important point at length some other day. But, in the course of his comments, Dr Siundu paid me a surprising compliment, and I cannot resist the temptation to tell you about it and a few similar good things that have happened to me over the decades. I would also like to pay tribute to the two great sisters, Odaga and Nandwa, with whom Akivaga and I wrote about oral literature.

Nothing flatters an aging man more than telling him you thought he was younger than he really is. I believe the same is true of women. In my case, for example, I remember profusely thanking the late Justice Saeed Cockar for addressing me as a “young man”, back in the late 1980s.

We were at the tennis courts at the Nairobi Gymkhana and I suppose I looked considerably younger in my tennis kit, and my well-exercised body, than my then-incipient middle age. In any case, His Lordship generously pointed out to me that, compared to him, I was definitely a youth. All I could say was, “You’ve made my day, sir.”

This is the same feeling I had recently when my friend Siundu referred to me as one of the “successors” to Kichamu Akivaga. In this role I found myself in the same class as all my younger colleagues, including my friend Prof Peter Amuka and my former student Okumba Miruka. I felt that some members of our literary family imagine me to be younger than our dear departed friend.

I did not know Akivaga well, having met him only a few times off and on, mostly on the UoN Main Campus. But I suspect that I was a few years older than he or, at most his agemate. I had not even realised that he was a UDSM (Dar) alumnus, like me, until one of his former students at the Nairobi School, Khaemba Ongeti, mentioned the fact in his eulogy.

Anyway, we can always go to the archives and check out the dates and events. I am just insisting on my seniority, in years, not in wisdom, to this fine fallen hero of unshakeable commitment to scholarly, social and educational causes.

As far as authorship is concerned, I just realised that I am the only remaining member of the quartet of us who wrote the first textbooks aimed at what was then A-level classes. There was Akivaga and Odaga and Nandwa and Bukenya. So, as I said, I thought I should say a few words about these sisters, both of whom were better known to me than Akivaga.

Asenath Bole Odaga was one of the first graduate students I advised when I started teaching at university in Kenya. Since she was working in orature, and my noisy reputation was following me from Makerere, I suppose I was an obvious choice to work with her.

She was probably a little older than I, but what struck me about her was her profound humility and willingness to take advice. I feel embarrassed today when I remember how, puffed up with my own academic self-importance, I dictated my views and hypotheses to my matronly scholar, who probably knew much better than I what made sense in her field.

As I got to know Asenath better and discovered her prolific writings for both young and old, and her ardent love for the word, both written and spoken, my respect for her knew no bounds. When she set up the Lakeside Publishers in Kisumu and the Thu Tinda Bookshop in the centre of that city, I became her regular visitor and customer.

With Jane Nandwa, the roles were somehow reversed. Though a much younger person than I, she was for a considerable length of time my boss at KU, as had been my beloved sister, Prof Ciarunji Chesaina, whom I also knew as a student at Makerere. What struck one particularly about Jane Awinja Nandwa was her exuberant sense of humour.

Even when she was recounting heavy and sad experiences, and she had many, especially in the final days of her short life, Jane had a way of enlivening the narrative in such a way that you could not help enjoying it.

One of my favourites, narrated at the reception we held for her on her return from her PhD studies in Canada, was of how she had had to call in her neighbours in Alberta to show her how to turn off the American-type faucet that was flooding her bath tub and the whole apartment.

She also once recounted to me how a senior scholar had sneeringly ridiculed her for “wasting time on old women’s silly stories” when she embarked on her MA studies in oral literature at UoN. We should guard against stereotyping, but I think it is true that there is a performing tradition in Bunyore that Jane Nandwa, and her sisters, like the Abukutsa ladies, endearingly exemplified.

Indeed, one of Jane Nandwa’s lasting contributions to oral literature was the concrete demonstration and illustration of its performable nature. When you heard Jane narrate or sing, you could not resist the feeling that here was something well worth looking into.

One of her researched songs, The Beautiful Ones of Esibila, was so indelibly etched on my mind, from several of her performances, that I slipped snatches of it into my 2013 environment advocacy play, A Hole in the Sky. I suppose I could go on forever about this beautiful “daughter of thunder and the clouds, the Rain-God”, as her song has it.

Maybe I should entrust the whole story to Rebecca Nandwa, who followed our noble calling, so she can tell it to the world.

 

Prof Bukenya is one of the leading scholars of English and Literature in East Africa. [email protected]