Prof Bethwel Ogot speaks during a book launch at his home in Yala, Siaya County on March 17, 2018.
I travelled from Nairobi to Kisumu in late December last year. Like so many Kenyans from the western side of this country, I was going to “see” my ushago people.
One has to deliver Christmas home and perform the usual ritual of collecting the tales with which to entertain the city-dwellers at the end of the of the holiday season.
But for me, I had a second more pressing reason for going to Kisumu. I needed to talk to Prof Bethwell Ogot. I wished to hear his thoughts on the monster of interethnic tensions that has shadowed Kenya’s postcolonial history.
Why is Kenya stuck in an unending cycle of supposed ethnic rivalries? Is it a real, lived experience, is it just in the minds of some Kenyans, that because one comes from a particular ethnic community, they are superior from someone else from a different community?
How has ethnonationalism or tribalism as some prefer to call it undermined “project Kenya”, the ideal of creating a nation-state in which every Kenyan would feel free to travel anywhere, settle wherever they liked, marry whomever they fell in love with, establish a business in any part of the country, live their entire life without fear of being judged as an alien in any part of Kenya?
Why did I think that Ogot would answers these questions satisfactorily? Aren’t there other Kenyans who could equally help to me to understand this seeming conundrum? Well, I had met Ogot first as an undergraduate student of history at Moi University. Not in person. But in a book.
I had come across his seminal book, History of the Southern Luo: Volume 1, Migration and Settlement, by sheer luck. I was mesmerised that someone could undertake such a study. What the reader encounters in this book is such a vivid description of the history of the Luo who migrated into Kenya, their encounters on the way to their present settlements, the environment that they lived in - a most arresting narration, really, of who the Luo or Lwo, were and are (as at the time of his writing his thesis and later publishing it as a book). How did he acquire the information that is in this seminal work?
The entire history of the Luo that Ogot wrote was based on oral sources. He interviewed hundreds of people, mostly Luo. But how would you know the history of a people when they are not isolated; they have neighbours, with whom they intermarry, they trade, they share customs, they share religion etc?
Ogot would include the Kisii, Teso, Luhya, Kuria, among other communities that the Luo had encountered during migration or lived next to. Wherever the Luo passed, they borrowed some of the ways of life of these other communities, and in turn influenced those communities. This interface, this interaction, this intermingling and influencing one another became a key thesis in Ogot’s work. It was a foundational argument in “project Kenya” ideal of his generation.
It definitely played a key role in Ogot’s intellectual investment in culture, a shared culture as key to development of the country. Whenever I met Ogot, he would emphasise to me the need to appreciate the shared blood and cultures of different Kenyans. He would ask me: “show me a pure Luo or Luhya today?” He would narrate how almost all Luo peoples today have the blood of all the peoples whose lands they passed through or who neighbour them.
He would remind me that almost all Kalenjin clans (assuming we agreed that there is a group called Kalenjin) have Maasai blood in them. He would tell me to remind my friends and family who are Kikuyu to find out how much of Dorobo or Maasai or Kamba blood they have. Thereafter, Mzee, as he was fondly called in his later years, would revert to the significance of history in the making of a nation.
So, as we celebrate the life of Ogot, at a time when public discourse is trapped in some kind of ethnonationalistic fever, shouldn’t we ponder what he and his generation this country that refuses to format itself into a nation-state? Should we not memorialise Ogot by remembering his colleagues and students who researched, spoke of and promoted the ideal of a country that would celebrate the achievements of any of its sons and daughters irrespective of skin color, tribe, religion, social class or political convictions?
These are the ideals that the likes of Tom Mboya, JM Kariuki, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Martin Shikuku, Ronald Ngala, among other politicians; clergy such as Bishop Henry Okullu, Bishop Alexander Muge, Bishop Timothy Njoya etc; intellectuals such as Atieno Odhiambo, Ali Mazrui, Rok Ajulu, Washington Jalang’o etc; several artists, athletes, teachers, doctors, civil servants, among other Kenyans, who enthusiastically ushered in what they perceived as a united and forward looking country and persevered even in the most difficult of circumstances to promote the interests of this country, stood for.
Ogot would find a way of reminding me — and I guess any other person who spoke to him about Kenya — that education was the foundation of any future success that the individual or the collective sought. For Ogot, education cleared the cobwebs of ignorance and uncalled for prejudice, he would tell me in conversation.
It did not surprise me, therefore, when he published a short biography of Odero Akang’o, as they would say in Gem, his thurmate. Chief Akang’o is widely celebrated in Gem and other parts of western Kenya for having singularly promoted education. Legend goes that Odera Akang’o would cane adults who did not send their children to school.
Odera Akang’o’s name is easily dropped in conversations about education in Luoland. The fruits of his passion for education would be felt later in Gem and other parts of Luoland. Was it really a surprise that Gem produced Bethwell Ogot?
Yet, Ogot passes on whilst still dreaming of a full-fledged university in honour of Odera Akang’o in Gem, Yala. Although there is a Maseno University Campus in Yala town, named after Odera Akang’o, what would it really take to honour Prof Bethwell Allan Ogot’s dream of having an independent university or higher education research institution in honour of chief and educationist Odera Akang’o?
Still, how shall we memorialise Ogot — a university, a center for history and intercultural studies? This is a man who, as the Chancellor of Moi University, contributed to the university setting up several constituent colleges that are today universities on their own. A university is called so because it is the melting pot of different ideas and ideals, from the universe, near and far. Is there really a better way to (re)construct Kenya than through university education.
But why did Ogot believe so much in thought and culture as instruments of change? During my visit to his home together with my colleague, Adams Oloo, Ogot said this to us: the history of Luo migration is really a history of peaceful conquest. The Luo only conquered others through assimilation.
The Luo did not convert to some other community; they instead intermarried and through cultural exchange, made the other communities feel a need to live peacefully with them. In the long run, the neighbouring communities borrowed their songs, dances, food, beliefs, philosophies etc.
I am paraphrasing the inimitable grandfather of Kenyan history, but if such are lessons that history can teach Kenyans about co-existence, why can’t we learn from history and restart “project Kenya?”
The writer teaches literature at the University of Nairobi. [email protected]
