The day I pitted Wanjala against Lo Liyong to the delight of readers

Prof Chris Wanjala, who died last week in Eldoret. He will be buried today at his home in Lwandeti, Kakamega County. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

The phrase “From the Cradle to the Grave” is often uttered as if the journey of life were bipolar and the two extreme ends of birth and death were coordinates apart, two physically distant places apart from each other. But what if the cradle were the grave and life actually ended where it began? For such was certainly the case with Prof Chris Lukorito Wanjala, born in Chesamisi village 74 years ago and buried today at Lwandeti, Kakamega, not far from his birth place. The cradle became the grave and in a teaser of sorts, life, like karma, came full circle. A clear tribute to the African village as the ultimate claimant to us, however high we may have soared in the journey of life.

The world to which the village cast the late Wanjala was undergoing tumultuous change. He was born against the backdrop of gunfire as the Second World War raged and only three years shy of the bombing of Hiroshima. Then unlike, his father before him, found himself almost by accident in an English-like school which was to lay the foundations of the future man.

Whereas a lot of water may have gone under the bridge in the intervening years, The Chris Wanjala of public interest would be the teacher and reader of literature, and most importantly, the Wanjala who laid a claim to the distinction of literary critic, the interpreter of the creative word, with all the dogfights which come with that territory. The ugliest of those dogfights was one long epic duel between Prof Wanjala and the rugged man of the trenches, Prof Taban Lo Liyong. The quarrel was over whether East Africa was still a literary desert as once claimed by Lo Liyong’ in hisThe Last Word. According to Wanjala, Taban was just being cynical, refusing to acknowledge the outputs of a whole new generation of writers while wistfully living in the past. On his part, Lo Liyong rubbished Wanjala and his writing and challenged his capacity to tell good literature from mediocrity.

What mattered in the end, however, was not who was right and who was wrong. All that mattered was that a healthy literary debate was going on, perhaps itself proving that East Africa was not a literary desert. Similar dogfights happened between Wanjala and Prof William Ochieng, a historian who often spent time talking literature and almost blurring the line between the two subjects. For the fights between Wanjala and Lo Liyong I only have myself to blame. In an interview done for theSunday Nation, I fished out Lo Liyong from self-imposed exile and got him talking to the world again. In his trademark brashness, he came out fighting, blaming everybody for the lack of fresh literature in East Africa and thus catching the attention of Wanjala.

The territory that Wanjala strode of course had, and perhaps still has, a notable population. The pithy and fairly highbrow Prof Henry Indangasi and my beloved teacher Austin Bukenya are notable players in that space. Indangasi is the gentleman of literature, who would rather keep his cool than engage in the murky mudslinging that comes with these open arguments about literature. Bukenya is a clean fighter who, with his mastery of the English language, is trained in the art of never appearing to insult. And so he would deploy his linguistic arsenal and you would never know what hit you. In my own judgment Wanjala was not Abiola Irele, the celebrated literary critic from Nigeria. But you need to understand that coming from a warrior tradition, I like the guy who comes out for an occasional open fight, even at the risk of punching above his weight. For that reason, I give it to Wanjala for spicing up the debate even if sometimes he came up short.

The man of letters who was buried yesterday was also not shy to join the even murkier fray that is Kenyan politics. And a lot of things, especially disdainful things, have been said about the decision by Chris Wanjala to involve himself with politics in the early 90s. Kanu was under siege from a new oppositionist wave and looked to bolster its ranks with an intellectual or pseudo-intellectual bulwark against the rising tide. For better or for worse, it fell upon the four professors from Western Kenya: Chris Wanjala, William Ochieng, Henry Mwanzi and George Eshiwani, to provide Kanu with that badly needed intellectual cover. It needs to be said on their behalf, however, that political formations the world over have always raided university campuses for men and women. Inevitably, providing service to political causes would come at a price.

I would be reluctant to refer to the late Wanjala as theEagle on the Iroko, a term which was coined on the 70th Birthday celebration for Chinua Achebe in upstate New York and later became the title of a collection to commemorate that day. But at the requiem mass for Wanjala at the Parklands Baptist Church, a cleric, without provocation, described Wanjala as an eagle. He went on to explain how at old age the eagle would mount the highest hill, de-feather himself, shed off the old scales and seek renewal.

Renewal for the late Prof Wanjala comes in the form of the family he left behind. You would imagine that with all the books to be read or written, with all the lectures to be given and public spats to be had, Wanjala would not have had enough time for his children. Well, he did and all testimony was of a father who loved his children and brought them up with a near-Dickensian discipline, and to some extent creating in them disciples of the book. And if the eagle indeed renewed himself, then Prof Wanjala has in his son, Dr Alex Wanjala, an academic, if not literary heir.

The late Wanjala would often quote or refer to the famous literary journal of his day,Transition. As a generation renews its feathers like an eagle, these indeed are times of transition.

 

The author is a writer, publisher and Chairman of Mara Education Trust.