Grace Ogot has left us in an island of tears

Grace Ogot is no more.

Once again, the after-Africa has claimed a writer of note from our midst.

The rate at which the after-Africa is making claims of us is frightening but as Grace Ogot herself put it, “when you are frightened, don’t sit still, keep on doing something. The act of doing will give you back your courage.”

Let’s take a journey through her work.

The historic, 1962, conference on African Literature at Makerere University had a great impact on the literary landscape of East Africa, and Africa as a whole.

Apart from defining the parameters of an African literary aesthetic, that would also be in the service of political and cultural decolonisation, this conference, that was attended by young African writers — among them Chinua Achebe and Christopher Okigbo, both 32 years old, Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, both 28 years old, and Bloke Modisane at 39 — birthed powerful literary voices from East Africa.

Grace Emily Akinyi Ogot,  Achebe and Okigbo’s agemate, read her story, A Year of Sacrifice, and from then on embraced the pen.

Grace went on to publish The Promised Land in 1966, an anthology — Land Without Thunder in 1968, The Other Woman and Other Stories in 1976, The Island of Tears in 1980 and The Graduate in 1980.

As constant as the morning star, Grace was a writer ahead of her time and the finest of them all.

From an unknown voice, she developed foresight only found in the most gifted of writers.

 GREAT INSIGHTS

She started writing both in Dholuo and in English. She seemed to have read Mandela’s mind even before he said “if you talk to a man in a language he understands — that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language — that goes to his heart.”

Hence, she wrote in Dholuo, setting her stories around Lake Victoria while offering great insights into the Luo culture as she reconstructed the history of the Luo.

At the same time, she took cognisance of the limitation of using a local language — because she was writing for a larger audience beyond the confines of the Luo boundaries, and in Achebe’s words she used the language (English) because it had been given to her, to this end.

I have met budding writers who say they would like to start their writing careers by penning short stories.

I always point out that short stories are harder to write and that they should give themselves the freedom of expression by starting with the longer genre, that is the novel.

It only takes brave writers to consider the short story where each word counts.

One has to agonise over every little thing that goes into the creation of the short story — yet this is where Grace started.

Just as Ama Ato Aido observed, Grace must have realised that “the benefits of teaching the short story outweigh the ‘luggage’ of the numerous characters,” and she did not stop with her first anthology because again as Ama Ato Aido opines, while decrying the numbers of short stories, “the amounts are hardly ever copious!”

Grace was cut from a different cloth.

She addressed themes like no other female writer from Africa.

She did not shy away from the realities that was the typical African woman and as such wife.

Instead of being an aggressive feminist, she employed femininity to argue out the gender case.

In Chamamanda Ngozi’s words, Grace must have realised that “some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism,” which “comes from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how their sense of self-worth is diminished if they are not ‘naturally’ in charge as men.”

In her short story, The Bamboo Hut, Grace puts men in charge yet she manages to convince Chief Mboga that girls — Awiti, are as important as boys — Owiny.

Grace, again in Chimamanda’s words, imagined “a fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves.”

Grace’s portrayal of women as wives who desire to be respected and have working relationships with their husbands as they take up their roles, as wives, did not endear her to many feminists. Some suggested that she advocated for patriarchy than she did matriarchy.

Yet this may not entirely be true. Women in Grace’s works also demonstrate strength and integrity.

This can be seen in Elizabeth and Acholla — in The White Veil — who have kept themselves pure, and they fight to remain so, and would only like to give themselves to their fiancés upon marriage.

When the waiter asks Acholla what she will have while staring at her fiancée Owila, she actually “butts in” and tells the waiter what she would like to take, water — she has her own voice.

Further, Acholla, with the help of the prophetess eventually tricks and marries Owila — who she truly loved — instead of allowing him to marry Felomena.

Even though Grace portrays women in their traditional roles, she also shows that they can still be heard and felt with the bounds of well-grounded marriages; such was her vision.

Reading Tekayo, one can see Grace, in 1968, peeking into the future — the world as it is today — and seeing the unpleasant acts perpetuated against children.

Tekayo is an outstanding hunter and herder who happens to see an eagle flying by while he is taking his livestock out to pasture.

He realises that the eagle is carrying something and as he throws a stick at it, it drops its ‘package’, which happens to be a liver.

Tekayo picks it, roasts, and eats it for lunch.

The meat is so sumptuous that he dreams about it and even ventures into the jungle to kill animals in the hope of getting a similar delicacy.

However, all his efforts, do not yield anything — none of the meat from the animals he had killed was congenial to him. Tekayo grows desperate.

“He had killed all the different animals in the ‘Ghost Jungle.’ He had risked his life when he killed and ate the liver of a lion, a leopard and hyena, all of which were tabooed by his clan.”

Yet none of them tasted like the liver the eagle had dropped.

Eventually, this bizarre feeling  made him engage in a barbaric act of cannibalism. He killed the children and ate their livers! When it was discovered, he immediately committed suicide.

Isn’t this what is happening right now? Children are abused — molested, kidnapped and murdered by those closest to them; the ones they trust.

In some communities, parents sell their children into early marriages in exchange for money that they ‘nicely’ refer to as bride price.

In other places, girls are sexually abused only for the elders to resolve the matter by asking the perpetrator to give out a cow as a fine!

This is unacceptable and we need more people like Grace Ogot who can write against such acts.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

Death has robbed us of Kenya’s first female writer to be published — she was also a nurse, a journalist, a politician and a diplomat.

Certainly, it has taken away the thunder from our land, leaving us with an island full of tears but her thoughts will forever live with us as we aspire to reach the promised literary land.

Rest in peace, Grace Emily Akinyi Ogot.