‘This poem takes its beginning from an oral tradition of the performance of the dirge. Listen carefully, it’s a dirge, it’s a funeral song. [He sings in Ghanaian language – interpreted]: “Oh tell them, tell Kpeti, tell Kovoedawo, tell them that they have forgotten their off-springs; that termites eat all the trees in their fences and mortals have taken their portions and we here eat sand. We can only go beyond and forget, we can only go beyond and forget…” ’
Words by Kofi Awonoor at the Garden City Literary Festival (2008) at the University of Port Harcourt. I sat in Kofi Awonoor’s class at UniPort and he sang a dirge. A song pregnant with history, culture and passion. He sang in his native Ewe. He explained to us that his grandmother had been a traditional mourner – he sang a dirge he had learnt from her.
As we set out to prepare for our maiden Garden City Literary Festival (now Port Harcourt Book Festival), we wanted to invite the best writers from the continent to join us on this first outing. With the help of Okey Ndibe (novelist, journalist and academic) I was able to secure Kofi Awonoor’s participation. When Awonoor agreed to attend I informed Wole Soyinka, who was also attending, and Soyinka told me to convey his greetings to Awonoor and tell him that he looked forward to them sharing a bottle of wine in Port Harcourt. I transmitted the message. Ambassador Awonoor arrived from Ghana, his home. When I met him, and in the time when I related to him at our festival, I admired his gentle demeanour, maturity and charm. Over the three or four days of the festival, Awonoor spoke at the opening ceremony, attended the symposium, facilitated a Master Class, took part in a Meet-the-Author session and was at the Command Performance of Elechi Amadi’s (then) latest book The Woman of Calabar at the Governor’s lodge.
I recall in one of his classes, when he was making a point about the importance of an authentic identity and begged to share an example of something interesting he had once witnessed: an African woman who had a European hair extension on and who flicked her hair like a European women. Awonoor said he felt sorry for the woman who was behaving like a European – an identity crisis. I have reason to believe he would have enjoyed the discussion on hair and the African identity that is strong in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest novel, Americanah.
Koffi Awonoor was born in 1935 at Wheta in the Volta Region of Ghana. He attended various mission schools in Eweland then proceeded to Achimota and later to the University of Ghana where he studied English. He was the pioneer editor of a journal Okyeame, in which his early poems were published. He went on to become research fellow at the Institute of African Studies and Chairman of the Ghana Film Corporation. He also founded the Ghana Playhouse. He left for London in 1967 and spent the next 10 years studying and teaching at Universities in the UK and the US. During these years he also published his major collection of poems, Night of My Blood (1971), his first novel, his critical work The Breast of the Earth and his study of three leading Ewe poets. He returned to Ghana in 1975 but was soon imprisoned for a year in alleged connection with a coup attempt. His book The House by the Sea is based on this experience while in jail.
Awonoor went on to become Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil and Cuba and then Permanent Representative to the United Nations where he headed the committee against apartheid. He was also a former Chairman of the Counsel of State.
One of the privileges of my work as Festival Director is the opportunity to meet great men like Kofi Awonoor.
Outside our ‘official’ interaction at the maiden GCLF, Kofi Awonoor is special to me on a personal note. I recall that when I introduced my husband to him, Awonoor immediately took a liking to him, saying he reminded Awonoor of a young man in his village. The brief encounter with him during the festival so endeared us to him that the following year, when we went to Accra on a family vacation, we did all we could to visit him. We sent an email to which we did not get a response until we had left Ghana. This was because, as we were to learn later, a young man operated his email account for him. By the time the email was brought to his notice, and he responded, we were back in Nigeria.
Koffi Awonoor represents what I aspire to be – a teacher, a writer, a diplomat. Interacting with him, short as that interaction may have been, I would liken to sitting in a class taking lessons in teaching, writing and diplomacy. I was looking forward to seeing him again at the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA) international conference that was meant to hold in Accra but because of his death, the conference has been postponed to next year.
Kofi Awonoor was cut down in a most unfortunate way. His life was brought to an abrupt end on September 21st, 2013 at the attack at Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. He was in Nairobi to participate in the Storymoja Hay Festival. He was due to perform on the evening of the day he died.
When Kofi Awonoor sat in that ‘class’ passing on his wealth of knowledge to aspiring writers like myself, he spoke, he read, he taught, he sang a dire.
Today I sing a dirge to Kofi Awonoor’s memory.
This dirge is a protest against injustice.
This dirge is a condemnation of the senseless slaughter of innocent people.
This dirge is a toast to the written word which has survived wars, repressions, oppression, to come up even stronger.
This dirge is a celebration of a consummate poet, intellectual, diplomat, visionary.
This dirge is a salute to the man – Kofi Awonoor.