THIS IS STRICTLY AN INTELLECTUAL INTERCOURSE SO IF YOU ARE NOT CAPABLE OF GRASPING THE ISSUES AT HAND, YOU ARE NOT OBLIGED TO COMMENT Last evening, on the fringes of an ongoing conference at Kenyatta University, i had the rare opportunity of having a one-on- one discourse with Prof. Taban Lo Lyiong. We talked about many things including the war in S. Sudan. As the conversation progressed, i kept on looking at him keenly and wondering silently how he could come up with the 17 curses for modern Jubans in Culture is Rutan; or how n earth he came to write Lexicographicide. Then another old white haired Prof joined us. This was Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, an African sociologist and anthropologist and the current Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) in Cape Town, South Africa. The discussion quickly turned to African scholarship and Prof. Lo Lyiong asked whether Ngugi wa Thiongo, who was one of the keynote speakers had arrived. I quickly replied that Ngugi did not honour the invitation at the eleventh hour. To which Prof. Prah lamented about African academicians who prefer to stay in the comfort zones of Europe and America instead of coming home to build Africa. It reminded me of scholars like Prof. Ali Mazrui, who could take up a job as JKUAT VC but would never come back to Kenya but preferred pontificating on scholarly issues from the diaspora, or my neighbour at Alego Ndere, the late Prof. E.S. Atieno Odhiambo, who after going into exile during the dark ages in Kenya, stayed there permanently only coming back when he imagined that Raila would be president. I then reminded the two old professors that Ngugi last came to Kenya as a celeb, some sort of Michael Jackson and not as an academic, and how from comfort zones of America, he defended Kibakis stolen presidency and the forceful mass transfer of populations by the Mungiki in the Rift Valley. The discussion then drifted to Ngugis logic of writing in Gikuyu and then translating his works to English himself and thereby earning double from a single writing. When Taban finally asked for my card and said he had to see a friend in Runda, i felt both humbled and intimidated!. As i drove home, the words of Mwa Njeri, my special adviser on relationships and social affairs, who, on learning that i was at one time with my entire family in Germany for over three years asked: Daktari, why did you come back?, i asked her, what should i have done Njeri? You should have remained there and worked and lived there, now akina Antonio and Graca will forget all the German. Her question reminded me of a similar question that a Nigerian friend of my wifes who had entered Germany by first swimming across the Atlantic from Morocco to Spain asked us in Frankfurt as we were making final preparations for our return. Then, i had to remind her that if my children want to stay in Germany and learn German, they were free to do so on their own merit, but not as my appendages, i had also to remind her that all my parents did was to take me barefoot, to the nearest primary school: Oseno Komolo Primary School ( Here, i felt the risk of sounding like Josiah Bounderby of Coketown!); so at least i had tried as a parent by giving them three years in Germany. So yesterday, as i parted from the two Profs, the words of Prof. Anyang Nyongo rang back in my mind:I brew with the enemy, but drink with my people!
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 07:04:12 +0000
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