Prof. Kofi Awoonor, your name will be mentioned in dispatches

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

September 24, 2013

Death in such an atrocious circumstance should not be wished upon anybody. But did those murderers ever know your work, read a single line of your poem, or grasped the pathos of it all before they killed you?

Rest in peace, Professor Efo Kofi Awoonor. Your "name will be mentioned in dispatches." And I should add that it would come this time with the medals too!

I knew Prof. Awoonor.  He was a friend and a mentor. He encouraged me to keep the craft as a writer going; at a younger age while working at GBC-TV.

At that time, he was the Managing Director of the then Ghana Film Unit. And I had just started in television production. I revered him as a role model.

The last time I saw him was in 2007 when my wife and I visited him at his house in Haatso, a suburb in Accra. Fortunately, I had my video camera with me and I got him to speak on some subjects of interest.  I haven't met him since.

But the phrase “your name will be mentioned in dispatches” particularly sticks to my mind now because it brings to mind another memory of a kind generous man I knew back then, Charles Segbefia, a colleague at GBC and a mutual friend of Efo Kofi Awunoor.

Between Charles and Kofi there was always a shared camaraderie.  A burst of laughter, with a dredge on memory and history.

The word “dispatches” was a hook to a story and a greeting shared between them, and a handle to some humor that also served to remind them of a particular piece of history as it related to the fortunes of African soldiers in WWII.

I was to remain ignorant to the essence of the story and the attendant humor in the phrase “mentioned in dispatches” until I asked Prof. Awoonor about it when all three of us came to live in New York City.

“Efo,” meaning elder, "what does your name will be mentioned in dispatches mean,” I asked him one day.

What followed was a humorous description of the fate of the soldiers of the West African Forces who had fought in WWII with numerous instances of bravery cited, particularly in places like Burma.

According to Efo Kofi Awoonor, the brave acts of the African soldiers back then were recognized only on paper - in the various dispatches that were sent to headquarters.  

Meanwhile, the same brave acts on the front lines, for which they were cited on paper, earned real medals for the white officers who were some distances away from the actual scenes of those same brave acts, which the African soldiers were mentioned for in the “Dispatches.”

It was barbed humor, meant to mean hard work but no substantive reward.

There at once was Prof. Awoonor, displaying the attitude that brought him to the status of the nationalist. The spirit that sparked and energized his soul; was also to earn him a place in history as a poet, a writer, a politician, a statesman, and now as a martyr to senseless brutality.

Prof. Awoonor was known early in the days of Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP as one of the "Socialist Boys".

Those "socialist boys" were the intellectual giants among the members of the old CPP party. They were marked as the hope for future dynamic leadership of the country after Nkrumah.

Truly, the coup of February 24, 1966, was to scatter this group and to dissipate within Ghana the energy of a period that many had hopefully considered Africa’s renaissance.

Prof Awoonor was a key part of that renaissance.

After years of absence from our mutual home of Ghana, we met again in New York City, when I arrived there to continue with graduate work at Columbia University School of the Arts.  He was already teaching at Stony Brook University, as a Professor of Comparative Literature. 

We continued the close relationship of a mentor and a mentee.  

“Behold Efo” I said to him at the first encounter in NYC, “we are now the travelers. Hopefully, we will not return home covered with debt.”

The reference was to a poem the professor had written when he was in Ghana and was the boss of the Ghana Film Unit.

I used to visit him at his office very often.  And we sat after work to have sessions of conversation with him on literature, politics, and a myriad of other subjects.

One advice he always gave those days was that a writer should not be timid.  As a poet and a writer, Professor Awoonor was a very intense in his creations, and also in his demand that an artist could not be timid. 

This was his ethos and he spoke it in a way as if to remind all, including himself, that the essence of Art is the courage to create.

On one occasion in Ghana, we met at Keta, on the beach, to shoot scenes to illustrate points from some of his poems for educational television programs at GBC-TV.  His friend Charles Segbefia and another writer whose name I faintly recall now as a Mr. Dawes were there with him.

In the clips for the program, Prof. Awoonor strolled on the beach as he recited one of his poems, titled "Discovery." The words have rung significantly in memory ever since. And now more so after his death.

“My people, I have been somewhere

If I turn here, the rain beats me

If I turn there the sun burns me

The firewood of this world

Is for only those who can take heart

That is why not all can gather it.

The world is not good for anybody

But you are so happy with your fate;

Alas! the travellers are back

All covered with debt

Something has happened to me

The thing’s so great that I cannot weep.

What debt Efo Kofi owed mother Africa he paid fully with his writings and poetry.  And now with buckets of his blood, spilled in the terrorist siege and rage in Kenya, on September 21, 2013, he has added more to his sacrifices.

I strain to understand how such a despicable, immoral act could take away a life so illustrious as Efo’s.  What or who do we replace him with? Certainly not with those who snuffed his life!

Not that every life is not precious. But can we replace Efo’s life with any of these killers who shouted: “God is great”?

Which God was it who asked them to kill Efo, yours or mine?

Efo Kofi's God was indigenously African and omnipotent to the core. Those who murdered him cannot share this same God with him unless they start thinking about God’s grace and boundless mercies.

This murder can’t be the desire of the God of salvation and compassion.

This murderous act cannot be a desire for salvation.

This act is the incarnation of evil itself.

The last time we spoke, we disagreed on some issues of ideology and politics. But this would be a conversation for another day.  

Prof. Kofi Awoonor, as a writer, had a very complex character. He was brave in his ideals. He might have been wrong in some instances and on some issues. But he was never timid, as was appropriate for a writer of his stature.

When I heard about Kofi's death, I thought of him facing his murderers.  My thoughts were that he would not have shown fear.  He could not be timid when he faced his murders.

And now my eulogy to Efo Kofi

When the dirges are written

And sang in cadences

In the rhythm of memory

May Efo Kofi stand tall

In the lineup

Of writers and ancestors. 

Rest In Peace, Efo Kofi Awoonor.   May your soul rest in peace.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, publisher, www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, September 24, 2013 

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