“If you should take my child, Lord,” wrote the late Jonathan Kariara in his famous poem “Grass Will Grow”, “give my hands strength to dig his grave, cover him with earth.” You almost certainly know this classic centrepiece of our cherished Poems From East Africa anthology.
Losing a child to death is understandably the most harrowing test to which any parent can be subjected. Philosophically, death comes when it will (kifo huja kijapo), and it is no respecter of age, power or status.
Still, in most of our societies, every parent’s fervent prayer is that they should not bury any of their children. Rather, the children should bury the parents. But alas, this logic is not always observed by the Grim Reaper, and I am not talking in abstracts.
For just about a week now, Kisumu’s civic and, especially, artistic community has been mourning the sudden passing of Phoebe Achieng Masira, the only daughter of my friend and colleague, Obat Akech Masira.
Obat, as you may remember, is the founding director of the Misango Arts Ensemble theatre troupe, and he is the Executive Director of Kisumu’s Mama Grace Onyango Cultural and Social Centre. He is also currently the chief Ambassador and promoter of FESTAC24, the Festival of African Arts and Culture, to be held in Kisumu in May next year.
Phoebe Achieng, his daughter, died in hospital last Sunday, succumbing to a combination of apparently simple ailments, like malaria, jaundice and anemia for a brief period. Born on Jamhuri Day 1992, the young woman was prominent in her own right on the Kisumu City social and creative scene.
A professional cosmetologist by training, she was best known as an events planner and manager, mostly admired for her meticulous attention to precision and detail.
Her father and family, who affectionately called her “Mum”, are utterly devastated, as they have confessed to the many friends and prominent personalities of Kisumu City and County who have called on them to offer their condolences.
These have included Governor Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o and the First Lady, “Ma’Lupita”, both keen supporters of the arts and of the Mama Grace Onyango Centre. Ndugu Obat and his family have decided that Phoebe be buried on Jamhuri Day this year. It would have been her 31st birthday.
As a father with an only daughter, I have an inkling of what a relationship between a girl and her dad can be. But I cannot claim any understanding of the intensity of the grief and sense of loss that engulf people like Obat Masira and others in similar situations.
Indeed, what made the anguish of losing Phoebe Achieng particularly poignant for me is that it came on top of at least three comparable bereavements, two recounted to me and one in my own family.
I told you recently of my joy at reconnecting and interacting with many longtime colleagues and friends in Eldoret, during a Moi University conference on African Studies.
My joy and excitement, however, were heavily dulled by the heart-wrenching sharing of two almost parallel experiences of bereavement by two of my closest colleagues at Moi University.
Both had, this year, lost their firstborn children. Both “children” were fully grownup individuals in their prime, well-settled in their professional and family lives. Both succumbed to cancer.
Bessie Amuka, who passed away towards the end of June this year, was the firstborn of Prof Peter Amuka, the literary guru and one of the founding parents of Literary Studies at Moi.
Bessie had a BSc degree in Information Sciences and an MA in Planning and she was in private practice in Mombasa. A family woman with three sons, one of whom is an undergraduate student at Strathmore University, Bessie was just a little over 40 when she fatally fell victim to breast cancer.
I had heard of the Amukas’ bereavement, and I was grateful to get to their home in Eldoret and “sit on the mat”, as the Liberians say, with Prof Amuka and his wife Claris, “Ma’Bessie”, chewing the bittersweet cud of memories.
Of the second bereavement, however, I was totally unaware, until I was told by the bereaved father himself, Dr Busolo Wegesa, also a member of our literary family at Moi University.
I was dumbfounded (nilipigwa na butwaa) by his revelations about the loss of his son, his firstborn, and I could not find it in me to ask any searching questions about the departed young man. But he, too, was a young graduate just settling into professional life in Nairobi when he was struck by what turned out to be a fatal form of cancer.
After many desperate attempts to save his life, he finally succumbed to the monster. Dr Wegesa was my student at Kenyatta University, so his children must be much younger than mine.
Anyway, even before I left Eldoret, tragedy struck at my home. The message said Kenneth, a favourite nephew of mine who had grown up with my children, had passed away, an apparent victim of a cardiac arrest (heart attack).
Kenneth is yet another member of this squad of our children shockingly leaving us in their prime. Moreover, in April this year, Kenneth’s younger brother, Philip, lost his wife. A few years earlier, the same family lost yet another son who was in his final years at university.
What is taking so many of our children even as they enter or settle into full maturity? After all, life is supposed to be improving for the successive generations. Kenyan life expectancy stands at something like 65 years for women and 60 for men.
Why are many of our children barely making 50 or even 40? What is to blame? Is it the increasingly stressful life the new generations face? Or is it the patently thickening environmental pollution around us?
