IKEJEMBA: HE HAD IN HIM THE ELEMENTS SO MIXED…

[Okwy Okeke]

IKEJEMBA: HE HAD IN HIM THE ELEMENTS SO MIXED…

By Professor Michael Thelwell

preliminary remarks

In the face of so large and distinguished a gathering, it is impossible--and for a relative stranger possibly foolhardy—to attempt to greet everyone present by the appropriate title. But I have learned from the wise storytelling elder in Anthills of the Savannah (yet another important lesson from Achebe) that on such occasions where the high titles of rank and the praise names are too many to be called individually, it is permissible to avoid error and satisfy protocol by simply saying "to each person their due." So now I respectfully resort to that expedient by saying simply,

 

"To each man his due.”

“To each woman her due."

 

Rulers of the state, leaders of the people, custodians of this land, I salute you.

 

And of necessity to acknowledge the one in whose name we gather and whose

presence and spirit among us is palpable in ways that not even a stranger's eye could

fail to recognize.

 

Ugo Nabo, two eagles, we salute you.

Ugo Belu Noji, Eagle on Iroko, we salute you.

Ikejemba, the power that protects the people, we salute you

 

Before my formal remarks I beg your indulgence for a few words of a more personal nature. The opportunity to speak to this gathering in these circumstances undoubtedly is a very great honor indeed. But it is even moreso a daunting, almost paralyzing responsibility. On previous similar occasions when I have spoken about him, Ikejemba was physically present and visible. That was reassuring. But to appear before a gathering of his countrymen, kinsfolk, and foreign admirers without that reassuring /visible presence is daunting indeed. How does one summon language even close to doing justice, not merely to one of our world’s most consequential writers, but to one of the most superlatively achieved human beings any of us are likely to ever meet. This ain’t easy. You shall have to help me.

 

I happen to belong to that Afro-American generation to whom fell the historical duty of the Civil Rights movement. In that struggle to secure a just and honorable role for our people in the American republic, we were greatly encouraged and inspired by your own great struggle for political independence. My age-set in America believed that the fate of black people in the Diaspora could not be separated from the progress of the continent So did Chinua Achebe. Consequently we looked to this nation with intense hope and optimism, feeling that as Nigeria went, so would go Black Africa. So did many of you. So did Achebe.

 

Since those hopeful days the passage of half a century has presented this nation with some of history’s most intractable, difficult and heartrending challenges. Many of which unfortunately endure to this very day. But despite painful reverses and enduring problems, we remain unshaken in the belief that there yet resides in this great black nation the resources, both natural and human as well as the will, the vision, the energy and potential for leadership that in time will be summoned to enable this country to fulfill that historical mission and promise. We firmly believe that day is coming.

 

But it was Ikejimba who believed this most passionately and profoundly. That is the high and honorable vision for which he struggled his entire adult life. It is this central, fundamental and abiding love of his people, respect for the beauty and dignity of their culture and confidence in the potential of his nation, which inspired his writing, compelled his tireless service and which energized his every working hour. In that devotion he honored us all.

 

So that it is entirely appropriate, most fitting and indeed inspiring, that the entire Nation come together, as it is doing so impressively this week, to recognize and honor the manifold contributions of this great patriot. But there is yet another honor that is demanded. The ultimate honor can only be when this entire society recommits itself to the nobility of Achebe’s vision for his nation and comes together to take up his mission of struggle. The struggle to realize his high yet quite achievable aspirations for his people and country and, as he himself once put it, “to redeem a baleful history”. It is only in this way that Ikejemba can most truly be honored.

 

As a visitor, my saying this may well seem presumptuous. If so I am sorry. But please believe that I say it in all humility and only because I do believe it should and must be said. And repeatedly.

 

*       *      *

 

IN HIM THE ELEMENTS SO MIXED….

 

A word of warning: As you might have already surmised what follows will not be an exercise in conventional literary criticism. It certainly will not be couched in the language of what the academy refers to as “post-colonial literary theoretics”.  Nor will it be a eulogy and still less so a sermon.

 

Yet, on my first learning that our Brother had danced and joined the ancestors my mind immediately searched for language appropriate to his memory. Like a good Baptist preacher I guess I was looking “to take a text”, but not from the good book.  No doubt, consequence of my own colonial education, my mind immediately went to another great man of letters who –- though from a very different time and culture-- might fairly be considered Achebe’s equal.

 

The first line *which occurred “Why man, he doth bestraddle this narrow world like a colossus”, carried a certain truth. But Achebe was no Caesar and had little patience with them.

 

The next line which popped into my head, “ … come let us sit down on the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings…” was clearly less suitable on two counts. First, there is no sad story here but a celebration; a great spirit is going to take his deserved place high among his ancestors.  And then too, as our brother was fond of reminding us, his people the Igboes had no kings, evidence, he suggested, of a dominant democratic impulse at the heart of their culture. Which it clearly is.

 

But in that story there is something more, a concept which in a fundamental way is important about Achebe himself. Because he also told us that there once indeed, had been such a title within the culture until the ancestors, in their wisdom, decided to revisit the question. They decided that given human frailty, the impulse towards egotism, self-aggrandizement and finally despotism, they would impose certain requirements on the office. Henceforth, he who would be king must first pay all the debts of every single member of the clan. This had the intended discouraging effect on potential aspirants for the throne and the institution itself disappeared.

 

But embedded within the elders’ clever device there is a serious lesson about the concept of leadership and one which is present in all of Achebe’s writing as in his life. Leadership above all must be service. He that would be King must demonstrate the willingness and the ability undertake responsibility for the wellbeing of all the people.

 

So that line evoking “ … sad stories of the death of kings” was like the institution itself  abandoned.

 

Then, a wonderment!   Lines, appeared so apt in description and sentiment as to raise a serious question?  How could a Sixteenth Century Elizabethan dramatist possibly have predicted the presence and affect of our brother some six centuries prior to his appearance among us? Yet here they are:

 

“… His life was gentle. He had in him the elements so mixed

That nature might stand up and say to all the world,

This was a man.”

 

Were this a sermon, that would be my text, but it isn’t so it shall be my title

…”In him the elements so mixed…”

 

The world’s media concedes that “Achebe was a great writer” without really seeming to understand why that is so. Hence, the greater part of my remarks will engage some of the unique, unexplored reasons – reasons beyond questions of literary craft—that constitute the true greatness as I have observed it over many, many years.  And time permitting, to show how this unique and powerful effect is a function not merely of literary craft and genius but of something more rare and more beautiful in the persona of the man himself.

 

First the historical mission and accomplishment.

 

I know of no contemporary writer, in any language and out of any culture, whose oeuvre—in sustained excellence of craft; meaningful literary innovation; clarity of vision and purpose; cultural importance and interna­tional acceptance; as well as in universal popular affection and respect—approaches that of Chinua Achebe. In American letters, the only contem­porary work that invites comparison in reach and transformative effect is that of James Arthur Baldwin.

 

For Jimmy and Chinua were truly brothers of the spirit. It is not usual to meet two writers of such towering stature who were so pure and so eloquent in the mutuality of their affection, admiration and respect, each for the other. But this warm and powerful affinity was not accidental.

 

Out of the idiom of our Black experience, the vocabulary and values of our cultures and the styles of our sensibilities, these two brothers from the twin poles of our Diaspora—Africa and America -- fashioned prose instruments of an uncommon precision and compelling poetry which was deployed always in service to enlightenment and struggle. For Achebe and Baldwin were twins in much more than an obvious literary virtuosity, or in their prodigious endowment of mind and craft. Beneath surface differences in style, there lay a fundamental bedrock of shared vision and intention

 

And in that mission, and accomplishment, Baldwin recognized gladly—he said so to me often and movingly—in Achebe, his truest kindred of the spirit.

 

I know that Jimmy derived immense and continuing satisfaction—a writer's satisfaction— from Chinua's work. In the clean lines and effortless elegance of his prose, as from Chinua's unfailing clarity of cultural purpose. I shall always remember one winter evening finding him by a fire reading an Achebe essay, "Named for Victoria."

 

"Isn't the language a pleasure?" I asked. Jimmy raised his extraordinary eyes over the top of his book, peered at me over the rims of his reading glasses with his brow furrowed.

 

"A pleasure?" he repeated, "Michael, this language is not simply a pleasure, it is a benefaction." As I said, recognition—two masked, ancestral spirits finding and greeting one another.

 

For across the sea, a sympathetic magic was being performed. Out of the vast resources of African linguistic tradition and values, the poetic styles and idiom of proverbial expression, riddle, parable and song, sacred and secular myth and ritual, Chinualumogu Achebe, appropriating to his purposes the medium of the English language, was forging a prose universal in its reach while remaining uniquely African in image, reference and tonality. On the smithy of his art, all these elements were forged and transmuted into an imperishable prose instrument of black—which is to say universal—struggle and moral affirmation.  It is a language appropriate to the experience and organic to the sensibilities of the culture it presents. A prose of the most extraordinary lyrical lucidity, gracefully masking in its deceptive simplicity, undercurrents of the utmost profundity and originality of craft and purpose. Entirely natural and consonant with its subject, its universality lies in the integrity of its particularity.

 

Because Achebe’s magnificent prose instrument was forged in struggle. Indeed it could only have been forged Africa’s historical struggle. He engaged, and encouraged that emerging generation of writers which he did so much to nurture, to engage their inheritance: the turbulent confluence of powerful historical tides; the clash of conflicting cultures; the excitement and uncertainty of sweeping political change and the trauma of social dislocation; the tug and tension of contending literary traditions as well as the anxieties attendant to the clash of faiths and contentions of doctrine. Which is another way of saying that Achebe’s achievement is a measure of his triumphant engage­ment with his particular inheritance or burden. In this case the chaos and hope; the optimism and uncertainty; the passion, energy and the pain of a continent locked in struggle and at the cross roads of history. So Achebe's achievement begins in the recognition of necessity, cultural and historical necessity, illumined by an inspired literary intelligence informed by moral courage, professional integrity and a purposeful devotion uncommon in its selflessness.

 

In Achebe's case, this was to take a received European form—the novel—and fill it with new wine—a potent distillation of African tradition and sensibility, the mythic vision and poetic resonances-- idioms, imagery, metaphor and proverb--of powerful and ancient oral traditions. With these African resources, to create an invigorated new form, an instrument precise yet sturdy, flexible yet powerful enough to bear the weight and density of the cultural inheritance, while penetrating to  the center of contemporary necessity. To invent, so to say, the modern African novel.

 

The novel that began it all, Things Fall Apart, was born of duality, the very same cultural conflict that was its subject: the advent of European Christianity and its effects on a small African community. But this time, and this made all the difference, the novel proceeded through the perceptions and sensibilities of the Africans themselves.

 

In a narrative voice evocative of the tale-teller, the oral historian, it begins:

"Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond ... As a young man of eighteen, he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat ... in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights. The drums beat and the flutes sang…

 

We are smoothly conducted into a world where gods, ancestors and man dance their primal dance in stately step. Where the demands of tradition can be very cruel, but where social order and moral balance are maintained by elaborate and subtle protocols of law, custom and ritual articulated by the ancestors; where there is integrity of belief and action and where language has power and words value. In the masterly account of the 26 year-old Achebe, that dark heart found voice and utterance in tones so eloquent, so compelling and so affecting in the grave, restorative poetry of its truth, that the discourse began anew. The monologue ended forever. From now on, the chorus would two voices.

 

A novel of compelling power, but which announces its presence with such modest grace that the true dimension of its ambition and accomplishment steals only gently into the consciousness, ushering one without warning into a condition of sudden and abject admiration.

 

That was the beginning.  Which was to be followed by four highly accomplished novels each of which was as different technically from the one preceding it as it would be from the ones following. But are similar in one important regard: they all reflect our brother’s abiding concerns, being infused with a humanity which is as deep and as wide as can be found any where in literature.  They are pervaded by their author’s  profound sensitivity to injustice and an even fiercer sense of justice. Then too, they are all informed by an uncanny instinct for those definitive, illumining moments where past and future flash together in brief and telling conjunction, which have been called "those bloody intersections where history and literature meet."

 

In any terms this literary accomplishment would be wonderfully impressive. But to me it is the man himself , the persona or– as my mother would say, the character of the man that is even moreso impressive. This is reflected in a series of very meaningful choices.  When international recognition begun to flow his way at an early age he did not retreat, as do so many in like circumstances, into the narcissistic seclusion of  “the artist”, cultivating his “craft”, caressing his  “Art” polishing the “image”, proclaiming his “genius”, or in any of the unseemly literary politics of self promotion.

 

No, he turned in quite the opposite direction willingly, even joyously, embracing the obligation to service. When offered a fellowship to travel anywhere in the world he elected not some European literary capital but chose to visit Brazil and the United States. Why? Because those countries had the largest populations of African descended people outside of the continent itself he explained, and as he put it,  “ I wanted to go and see how our people were faring across the seas.”

 

When his first novel began to bring returns to the publisher, he along with a visionary editor, the late Alan Hill, persuaded the company to launch a new imprint, The Heinemann African Writers Series as a vehicle for writers from the continent.

 

Over the next ten years, Achebe as general editor, scoured the continent for talent and under his guidance the series grew in size and influence, containing four hundred titles and launching the careers of any number of accomplished novelists. For a much too brief moment this series represented perhaps the most uniquely vigorous and purposeful body of writing in the modern world. But alas, driven as much by “market forces” as  fickle literary fashion most of these invaluable books, many of them classics, have been allowed to fall out of print. They must be retrieved; our cultures are impoverished by their loss.

 

Back at home the impulse was much the same. Achebe is one of the founding members of the Association of Nigerian Authors. And as an encouragement to young writers he founded and edited Okike  a splendid literary journal. Similarly, for the purpose of studying, defining and preserving the language and traditional culture of his people, he launched Uwa Ndi Igbo,  The World of the Igbo, a journal written in Igbo and English.   When his children were young and in service to the children of the nation, he wrote four remarkable books for children. The list goes on in directions --ProVice Chancellor of a University of Technology—even more alien in the modernist mind to the “literary life” and career.

 

But these are things you probably already know or could find on a resume.   Actions do indeed reveal commitments, one’s abiding concerns, constancy, energy and intellectual endowment, indeed character. But not necessarily the personality. Those qualities of spirit which abided always with him inspiring an affection inflected with a degree of real awe in all who knew him. 

 

“In him the elements so mixed…” Qualities of grace, decency, honor courage, compassion, wisdom and humour which in ways beyond language and impossible to articulate, somehow communicated themselves to his readers between the lines and across the words. Anyone who has even glanced over the outpouring of appreciation coming from across the world can see what I’m trying to say. There is something at once viscerally powerful but also clearly spiritual in readers’ descriptions of the works’ role in their lives and author’s the place in their hearts.

 

Take for example, the qualities of wisdom and honor.

 

I can’t recall that we had ever discussed the Nobel Prize. Perhaps a passing reference in some casual discussion, but certainly never as it might directly involve him. (And this was at a time when much of the world, at least the literary world, was continuously and loudly deploring the committee’s lack of judgment in that matter. But he, never.  Modesty? I think so. Discretion, perhaps. Pride, who knows?  As his people say “the eagle that flies too low might be mistaken for a crow.”)

 

So one day we were driving along and out of nowhere I take it upon myself to volunteer an unsolicited opinion.

 

“Take this Nobel business, I began boldly. “Everyone knows that there is no one on the literary firmament whose accomplishments can compare with yours.  The committee’s failure thus far to make the award is an utter travesty. It’s become an embarrassment to them. Your place in history is firmly established. You, of all people, certainly don’t need the validation of a bunch of Europeans?  In fact, were you to accept their prize it would be you bestowing honor and credibility on them, not they on you.  I concluded with self-righteous dismissal. “ Hell, we all know it is just a hollow white folks’ honorific anyway.”

 

Throughout the diatribe he had regarded me steadily and seriously with just the barest hint of a twinkle in his eye as he waited for my silence. Then,

“But Ekwueme,” he said quietly, “ surely you understand that in Africa no title is ever purely honorific.”

 

Thus neatly bringing the question into the proper perspective. What was important was not what the Europeans did, or imagined they were doing but its effect in Africa. No thought of any personal validation but only the extent to which even a hollow “European honorific” might contribute something useful to his arsenal of tools for his ongoing mission. 

 

But soon after this conversation the time would come when that pragmatic wisdom would run up against one of the higher values of that mission, the affirmation of African cultural autonomy. A choice would have to made.

 

This would be in 1986 when invitations to a conference in Stockholm began to arrive in Africa. The Swedish Committee on African Studies had decided to host a conference of African writers on the future of African literature. A goodly number of African writers accepted the call, but Ikejemba, then president of the Nigerian Authors Association was not among them. Nor did he ignore the invitation, but was at considerable pains to explain his reasons with his usual civility, tact and clarity.

 

I regret I cannot accept your generous invitation for the simple reason that I do not consider it appropriate for African writers to assemble in European capitals in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. In my humble opinion it smacks too much of those constitutional conferences arranged in London and Paris for our pre-independence political leaders.

 

The fault, however is not with the organizers such as yourselves, but with us the writers of Africa who at this point in time should have outgrown the desire for the easy option of using external platforms instead of grappling with the problem of creating structures of their own at home.

 

Believe me, this is not an attempt to belittle the effort and concern of your organization or indeed of the Swedish people who have repeatedly demonstrated their solidarity with African aspirations in many different ways. But I strongly believe that the time is overdue for Africans, especially African writers, to begin to take the initiative in deciding the things that belong to their peace.

 

I believe that in this clarity of principle Achebe was right. But given our earlier conversation I felt sure that our brother could not have failed to understand that this Swedish conference was a preliminary step, something of a scouting expedition to identify suitable candidates for future preferment.  If you will, an audition. And he must have known that his principled independence, its clarity and courtesy not withstanding, might deeply offend their self-regard and sense of entitlement to literary hegemony over the world. “So this proud African thinks they no longer need us, does he? Well, let’s show him, shall we?”

 

If, as I imagine it might have, Ikejemba’s thoughtfully reasoned declination of the Swedish invitation, did in fact prevent them from presenting him with the clearly earned award, then they, in their petulance, have done themselves-- and the integrity of their prize -- no service.

 

It was during the same visit (that of our instructive Nobel conversation) that I got a glimpse of another of Ikejimbe’s important qualities, an innate modesty.  A genuine absence of self-importance uncommon in most humans and quite unexpected in anyone of his stature and status.

 

One day I was leaving his office where we had been discussing his upcoming books, “Anthills” and that excellent essay collection “Hopes And Impediments” when he said quite casually,

 

“By the way, did I tell you that I’m dedicating the book of essays to you and Chinweizu?”

 

I froze, for the first time that I can remember, utterly without speech. My first impulse had been to leap into the air emitting raucous Jamaican cries of surprise, jubilation and gratitude. An honor I could never have even remotely contemplated. So obviously, I must not have heard him correctly. And had come very damned close to seriously embarrassing us both with those loud expressions of joy at something he hadn’t said and most probably had never thought of doing. At the very least he might think me presumptuous and self-important. To have so egregiously misheard him must indicate that I’d thought it likely, no? Perhaps even that I was deserving of so great a gesture on his part?  Then too I’d have made it necessary for this sensitive and kind man to have to explain to me, however tactfully, that no, he’d never said anything of the kind.

 

And while standing there embarrassed at my own stupidity, yet relieved at having so narrowly dodged a bullet, even if one of my own creation, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Somehow I never had the wit simply to ask.  “ Sorry my Brother, I didn’t hear. What did you say?” So I just stood there in arrested motion.

 

I have no idea what range of expressions may have crossed my face but he was looking at me, first with concern, which then turned to dismay. He actually began to apologize as if somehow he may have offended me. 

 

“I know I should have asked you”, he said, “but there wasn’t time… is there…is there anything wrong?”  As though any conscious human being, much less a black man, could find anything at all to be offended by in the prospect of the great Chinua Achebe’s dedicating a book to him?

 

“No. of course not,” I blurted, “Thank you.  I’m a such a fool… It’s kinda complicated.  Look I’ll explain later”. Not trusting speech I darted next door to my office to write him a long note explaining exactly what he had just seen in my curious behavior.

 

Which brings us to another of the engaging qualities of his, a joyous good humor lurking just beneath a demeanor of gravitas and seriousness, as if waiting to erupt into mirth. His sharply ironic sensibility, dry wit and precise timing combined with an unerring eye for the absurdities of human pretentiousness to remarkable effect. He could be outrageously and infectiously funny but without ever being cruel or punitive. I cannot remember ever hearing anything vindictive from the man or in the sharpness of his wit.

 

This too was in 1987 during his second sojourn at the W.E. B Dubois Department of Afro-American Studies in Amherst where I taught. While in residence there he had a great many speaking engagements around the country, which made me very happy since they all necessitated his getting to the airport.  At the speed limit this was a trip of an hour and half.  If one were real determined this could be stretched to nearly two hours, which I always did. I simply refused to allow anyone else to drive him there because I had come to treasure the opportunity the journey afforded for quiet, sustained conversations between us. 

 

One day his flight being delayed, we found ourselves with a couple hours to kill. It was midday and except for us the lounge was empty. The talk turned to the quirks, oddities and affectations of writers we knew. Inevitably enough it got to a writer, from my region of the world long resident in London, who had fashioned a career of simple-minded denigration of people of color, especially (but not limited to) those of his native Caribbean and Africa. They had often been thrown together at one literary event or another.  Chinua said not one word in denigration of the man, perhaps because it wasn’t necessary. Simply, by faithfully repeating, without comment,  --(he had a talent for wicked, wicked mimicry)-- the stream of inanities, absurdities and self revealing pomposities that ushered from this man’s mouth, he kept us both in stitches. So much so that on this day, people passing that airport lounge paused to stare in at the improbable spectacle of two middle aged, conservatively dressed black men so convulsed with laughter as to be weeping and in eminent danger of falling out of their seats unto the floor. I cannot imagine what they must have thought.  For days after, sometimes even when standing before a class, I could be observed struggling to suppress unexplained visitations of laughter. He had in him the elements so mixed…

 

Of amazing grace and strength. It was during this visit that I published my first piece on his writing in anticipation of the appearance of “Anthills of the Savannah”. Both Achebes –Christy and Chinua--professed to like the piece, ‘The Ironies of History Dancing with the Politics of Literature” pretty well.  Which must have been more the case than I had dared hope because, a few years later, I was invited to Nsukka to speak at  “Eagle on Iroko” the international symposium celebrating his sixtieth birthday. This would be the second great honor that I would receive at Ikejemba’s hands.

 

But what remained most strongly with me from the visit was the depth and strength of his peoples’ love and appreciation of their great kinsman and the warmth and hospitality they bestowed on us visitors.  The admiration of the work-- and indeed the great affection for the author-- demonstrated by an impressive number of visiting Western academics reassured me greatly. It was oddly comforting to discover that my admittedly very strong feelings about Ikejimba were so widely shared.  So I returned spiritually uplifted by the experience. For some six months I experienced a kind of mildly euphoric  wellbeing which would engulf me every time I thought of Nsukka and the Achebes.  That is until the morning of that phone call from Ike Achebe his oldest son. Ike’s voice was unworldly.

 

The previous night en route to Lagos, he told me, he and his father had suffered a severe accident. Ikejemba had been gravely injured, was fighting for life and in the event he survived, it was projected, might never walk again.  The government had chartered a special flight to London for specialized care. I would later learn that this rapid and salutary action had been at the urgent initiative of Dr Christy Achebe. 

 

I cannot remember saying much during that call but every cliché from bad novels –- one’s universe crashing around one, one’s life flashing before one’s eyes—seemed quite natural.  This was followed –once the reality of the news sank in—by a depth and intensity of anger such as I had never known. An anger all the more fierce because it was frustrated and impotent. Anger at the universe, the cosmos, the world, fate, all and any Gods there were. How could the ancestors allow such a thing? Why should this happen to Ikejemba of all people? Why him who had so much excellence to contribute, so many splendid, humane and progressive initiatives still to finish? So many more yet to conceive and bring into existence. So tireless, effective and purposeful a man? So good hearted and generous a person?   Why him and not me? Myself or any one of the millions like me whose presence would have no  affect on the shape of things to come.. I would willingly have traded places with him.

 

I was so consumed by the outrageous cosmic injustice of it all that except for class I barely left the house.  At home I rarely left the bed and hardly read anything. Instead, I swore a lot, brooded a lot and drank. Then brooded, drank and cursed some more. I am not at all sure how long this pathetic phase lasted , perhaps three weeks, perhaps more but it ended very suddenly and unexpectedly.  And also with a phone call.

 

Whatever time of day it was, when the phone rang I was still abed. The phone work me up. The familiar voice was distant and seemed weak but it was unmistakable. But another cliché, I literally did not believe my ears.

 

“Good God almighty, Chinua is this you? Surely this can’t possible?  Can it really be you? Where are you?”

 

“Yes it is me. Are you saying that you don’t know my voice?”

 

He was calling from the London hospital and being allowed to use the phone for the first time.  He was calling to assure me, and his many friends in Amherst who might be worried, that he was indeed alive and recovering. He also wanted to thank us properly for the assistance we had pulled together right after the news came. I assume he could have sent a letter but may have felt, and correctly so, that for his purposes the sound of his voice would be far more effective than any letter.  In this he was absolutely right.

 

I started to express my joy and gratitude for the call but this turned into an emotional and indignant rant about the terrible misfortune, the colossal injustice and unfairness of it all. All the anger I had been so carefully tending and nurturing like a rare flower came rushing out. He gently but firmly cut me off.

 

“I understand, he said, but you really shouldn’t feel that way.  That is not the way I feel at all. Actually, I feel quite fortunate?”

 

“Fortunate?”

 

“Yes, very lucky indeed… just to be alive. If you saw what’s left of the car you’d understand exactly.”

 

It wasn’t a long conversation but I hung up truly and deeply ashamed. A feeling I strive never to ever earn again. Another important lesson from Ikejimba .

 

But did he really, could he actually be feeling fortunate? How could that be possible? But everything in his voice had rung with a simple and quite convincing sincerity. That, in those circumstances he could even think to call, simply to give reassurance to his friends was at first overwhelming.  But on reflection it became clear to me that he could think of so considerate a gesture only if he were truly feeling grateful to be alive.  He was not only telling the truth, he was acting it out.  Suddenly the depths of my childish, emotional self-indulgence,  amounting to nothing, more than narcissism and self-pity, became clear and very shameful to me. Which is as it should have been all along.

 

Look at yourself, I growled. You with your two sound legs and not a damned thing wrong with you laying up here in bed talking ‘bout  you” grieving”, you “angry at the universe”, you “mourning” for Chinua. While the man you claim to be grieving for, paraplegic though he be, is embracing the business of life with a vibrant spirit and responsible. Haul you wretched ass out of the bed, man.”

 

Which I did. I got up, tidied my room, shaved, showered and dressed after which went into the community to spread the good tidings.  After that amazing displace of grace under pressure from him, I thought it important to visit Chinua’s friends rather than phone them.

 

On strength. One particularly painful and lasting consequence of this accident is that for medical reasons Ikejimba was driven into exile from the land and people he had loved and served so well.  Here was a great writer, distanced from the rich culture, which had nurtured his creative work and which, to great extent had been its subject.  And how could so unwavering a patriot survive spiritually in a strange and alien land?

 

How? Because of a great storehouse of psychic strength, an obdurate, unyielding force of will and, most importantly the devotion and loyalty of a most formidable and capable woman, his wife Dr Christy Achebe, that’s how.  First, her rapid mobilization of allies and their determined and skilful presentations had secured the aircraft that in all likely hood saved his life. And, as I was discover he was not so terminally isolated as I had feared.  His people were here to welcome Ikejimba’s wisdom and his shrewd counsels, still in service to his people.

 

But make no mistake none of this could have been easy but Ikejimba not only survived but managed to function effectively from a wheel chair for over twenty years during which time he continued to teach as well as write.  Never during those long years have I ever heard him to utter a syllable complaint. The elements so mixed…grace and strength.

 

I think that now I should like, not merely to tell you, but show, to demonstrate to you an example of the extraordinary transformative  effect of Ikejemba’s writing on students from a different culture who represent the allegedly  post literary, “high tech” generation who  “do not read”. These are undergraduate students from a seminar on The Novels of Achebe which I offered at the University of Massachusetts some few years ago.

 

Now, I have taught courses in these works for forty years and they remains the most consistently gratifying of the many courses I have offered. For one thing afterwards the students always proclaim happily how very much they have learned; how complex, fascinating and rewarding the novels are; and how very surprised and delighted they were to discover how enjoyable the reading and learning process could be. And they recommend the course to friends.  That’s more than enough to keep any teacher going. But of course, I can take little credit for that, the secret of great teaching is to teach great books… So again I find myself in Ikejemba’s debt.

 

The question the ill-informed most frequently ask is, What, the same books for forty years? Aren’t you tired of them? Don’t you get bored,” to which I usually give them Dr. Johnson’s quip about London, the one to the effect that, “ Any man who is tired of London is tired of life,” merely substituting Achebe for London and letting it go at that. The fact is that each class is a unique collection of individuals, which during the course gradually assumes a collective personality which is unique. The next fact is the extraordinary quality of the novels. Having taught them with pleasure for forty years I still occasionally find myself picking one up in my spare time and enjoying it thoroughly.

But that’s not the point here. What I am about to show you concerns an approach I use to teaching Achebe. For the first three or four weeks before the students approach any of the novels I subject them to a crash course in the traditional culture. The cosmology, world view, linguistic traditions, Art, religious hierarchies and social conventions and styles.

 

By the third week, mutterings. When are we going get to Achebe? Isn’t this a course on Achebe? When you are ready. When you can read in an informed way rather than like ignorant Americans whose ideas of Africa go no further than famine, disaster, cannibals, missionaries and cooking pots. When you can read these books from the perspective of he cultures they represent.  When you can read them the way Okwonko or Obierika would read them could they read English.  Then when we begin cries of “Ohmigod, this is so much more interesting than when we read it in freshman year”. “ Wow, this is really great, I understand so much” and words to that effect.

 

In the class in question we had been going at it for three month when Ikejemba came to the University for a major lecture. Naturally the English Department chair called to ask would I introduce him. I declined. Normally I told her I’d be honored, but I happen to have a seminar going in which any one of the students would be capable and thrilled. Finally she was persuaded.

 

When I explained the situation and asked for volunteers every hand in the class went up. We have to be fair I said. Each of you go home and write an introduction and we shall examine them together and select the best one. One was quite excellent but all the rest were very, very good. No solution there. Then I noticed that each introduction had a paragraph which could be pulled out and when structured with the others in the right sequence would constitute a coherent and fairly symmetrical introduction. So I sent them off to work with he paragraphs and selected the most nerdy, least socially adept young man to deliver it. 

 

(incidentally, I am told that he is become quite a player in the world of internet start ups and often says that the day he introduced Achebe was greatest day in his undergraduate career. Hmm perhaps an endowed chair in Achebe studies one day)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE-NOVELS-OF-ACHEBE CLAN GIVES THANKS

TO THE FOUNDER OF THEIR VILLAGE

 

To all of you gathered here, I greet you in the tradition of Igbo culture, which Mr. Achebe has so skillfully and generously shared with us.

 

UMASS -- Kwenu.

 

Clansmen and clanswomen of the Achebe course, Kwenu.

 

And to Professor Achebe, like Nwaka, Owner of Words, Eagle on Iroko, who has blessed us with his reading today, we salute you.

 

Kwenu.

 

Do I speak for our clan?

 

Kwenu

 

One of our kinsman, Rob Murray, said:

 

Some three months ago, a group of students assembled in Room 311, New Africa House for the purpose of commencing a class entitled "The Novels of Chinua Achebe." Since that time we the students who were treading very unfamiliar territory have been blessed. Blessed by the opportunity and the ability to come together at all, and blessed for the cause of our fortunate union, which was to read, discuss, and ultimately to learn from the work of our very distinguished guest, Dr. Chinua Achebe. How we are blessed once more by his visit. And what a class it has been.

 

Our kinswoman, Sidra Bukari, continued:

 

In a world where things do fall apart, where it is so very easy to feel no longer at ease, and where people employ the arrows of god or gods in which they believe to gain a sense of spirituality, there shines the literary genius of Chinua Achebe. From the anthills of the savannah to the remote corners of the western world, his works bear testimony to the power of literature to mould human intellect and spirit to levels otherwise neglected. Mr. Achebe is a man of all people who honors and uses the power of words . . .

 

 

A theme our brother John Sheehan embellished:

 

Language is our father: the father of culture; the creator of collective consciousness within which humanity can unite to raise our voices against all that is evil in this world. This is the power of language, and yet you, Mr. Achebe, grant this power to language. Mr. Achebe, Owner of Words, you are the creator of language.

 

For it is the writer who invokes this power of language by transforming its abstract nature into physical manifestations of enduring power. In the absence of a drummer to beat his instrument and set cadences, there can be no rhythm

 

And our kinswoman, Julie Agron, added:

           

We have stalked the forests with proud Okwonkwo, peered at the night sky with stubborn Ezeulu, and felt the bitter pangs of a newborn Nigeria. We have had the pleasure and the benefaction of meeting characters who not only illustrate, enliven, and embody their culture and times, but also are poignant portraits of our shared humanity. This is one element of Achebe's genius and skill, a talent for reaching the general by way of the particular which enables him to set his readers down in a world completely removed from our sphere of existence and make us feel completely at home there, expanding our realm of experience and understanding. Standing on the shoulders of this giant, we are like the tiny lizard that climbed to the top of the tall iroko tree to see the sunrise over the horizon. There are no more words.

 

And so to conclude. Those who are not sleeping may recall that we begun by evoking the  warm fraternal admiration and support that flourished between James Arthur Baldwin and Ikejimba Chinualumogu Achebe. There would be a certain symmetry with ur concluding with these two  writers.  In 1986 when Ikejemba was again resident at the University of Massachusetts, Jimmy Baldwin who was also supposed to be their succumbed to cancer. Ikejemba wrote an eloquent tribute to Jimmy, the final words of which will be our conclusion.  What Chinua wrote of Jimmy was this:

 

“As long as injustice exists, whether it be within the American nation itself or between it and its neighbors; as long as one third or less of mankind eats well and often to excess, while two thirds or more live perpetually with hunger… and the oldest of them all—the discrimination of men against women—as long as it persists; the words of James Arthur Baldwin will be there to bear witness and to inspire and elevate the struggle for human freedom.”

 

Ikejimba, I salute you.

Your devotion and eloquence has adorned

The movement in our time.

Ikejimba we thank and praise you.

There are no more words.

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

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We face forward,...we face neither East or West: we face forward.......Kwame Nkrumah

[Okwy Okeke]