Kenyan scientist who has fallen in love with writing in United States

Author Joseph R Alila has written more than 10 novels and two epic poems.  [PHOTO: COURTESY/STANDARD]

By ABENEA NDAGO

“Do you know that during my Kenyatta University days, the late Professor could not touch the wheel of a car because of forgetfulness?”

That is the memory, which invades US-based Kenyan author JR Alila in reference to the weird ways of the late Prof William Ochieng, who recently died. With 12 novels and two epic poems in his literary basket, Alila deserves the name The Patriarch of Kenya’s Gulf Writing, since much of his work revolves around the Luo’s experiences and interactions with other communities around Nam Lolwe (Lake Victoria) centuries before the arrival of white people.

Some of his works travel back to The Sudan. He has now joined famous Kenyan writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, David Mailu, Meja Mwangi, the late Francis Imbuga, Micere Mugo, the list is endless. To him, writing is a calling.

“I write because there should be someone telling our human stories, beaming back our human failings, painting our social, spiritual, and political landscape in words. I love looking at life in hindsight.

My writings are about my collective experiences as I travelled around the world: in churches, on streets, herding goats. They are fiction to teach about charity; to warn that man who spends his days on the road,” he says.

The 1956-born father of five daughters and grandfather of three is now a professor of Isotope Chemistry (organometallic chemistry) in Schenectady, New York, but it was two of Kenya’s literary names who introduced him to writing.

Playwright contest

“While at KU,” he says, “I won a playwriting contest for adult Kenyans organised by Bookwise Limited. One Emman Omari, my roommate from 1978 to 1980, was an influence because all his friends were Literature students. I rubbed shoulders with the late Francis Imbuga who also read my scripts.”

Author Alila had left his Ndhiwa village in Homa Bay County to study Education Science at Kenyatta University (KU), from where he graduated in 1981. He thereafter taught at Asumbi Girls’ 1981 to 1984, before returning to KU for post-graduate studies till 1987, then taught at Egerton University up to 1994. That was the year he left the country to pursue doctoral studies at Binghamton University in the US.

The church elder also sees himself as a leader, a trait which nearly cost him his education at KU in the mid ‘80s. “Between 1986 and 1987,” he explains, “I led students in demanding for better, enhanced boom loan from the Government. We went to State House one morning. The boom increased about five-fold, but I was expelled a few months after that. I would only taste the new boom for four months after the Odhiambo Commission brought me back.

 A lot of young undergraduates could not complete their studies after they rioted over teachers’ pay. I was a victim: post-graduate students never went on strike. The Principal, a man I drank tea with every morning, stabbed me in the back. We left KU the same Friday, in June 1987.”Most of Alila’s novels are both historical and anthropological. This may explain why they are set books in some US universities, perhaps to help Americans understand President Obama’s cultural origins.

 They revolve around polygamy (doho), wife inheritance (ter), birthright (duong’), married life (keny), and other traditional rites, both obsolete and helpful. Apart from relying on the landscape and physical geography of South Nyanza, the books borrow a lot from Luo oral narratives.

Mythical character

The reader frequently meets the ong’ora, a mythical Luo character who the author describes as “the indefatigable man who roamed the village in the dead of night, scouring the landscape for lonely women whose hearts he could steal for brief moments of physical intimacy” (Sunset on Polygamy: 37).

However, mythical and countryside characters occasionally break the thick, rural web and connect with modernity in Kenya’s then nascent towns. Hence the prevalence of jonanga in Alila’s novels, “modern men or urbanites—who bathed at home (as opposed to the river)” (Sunset: 100). Such is also the case with Hank Hassan Ajwang,’ a character who becomes the US President in The Luo Dreamer’s Odyssey (2009).

The novel re-enacts bitter, historical feuds synonymous with the Luo people, pitting the three sons of Ramogi (Podho, Adhola, and Arua) against one another. Juma also seeks higher education at Alliance School in Birthright (2011), a novel in which two wives are locked in a life-and-death struggle over whose son is the genuine owner of traditional ‘birthright’.

“I write a lot about Luo culture because it is changing,” says Alila. “Our grandchildren may never know who we were if it is not written down. I am not my grandfather’s Luo; my children are not me. We are all travellers, and my writings could record a glimpse of that journey. I am a ‘transition Luo’: my grandchildren are Dutch, Italian, and Nigerian.”

Yet the view that Alila’s writing is strictly anthropological may be an illusion. Inside that cultural space, he majors only on the symbols of contest –marriageable women, polygamy, birthright, clan land.

If one reads Sunset (2007), they would understand the harrowing predicament of a certain Kenyan who is now married to 42 ‘wives.’ Jim is married to 4 wives (Felicia, Milka, Nyapora, and Maria – all a bunch of sex pests), and they torment him like boils in both armpits. Nyapora constantly barks at Jim: “Tell me, when were you last in my bed?” (p. 115).

Social tensions

Hence Alila’s ‘anthropology’ may be politics by a different name. The novel Not on My Skin (2012) is about social tensions in America. Both The Choirmaster and Sins of Our Hearts (2008) explore power, morality, and bigotry. As is Rateng and Bride (2008), which is centred on the 2007 elections, The Wise One of Ramogiland (2007) fictionalises ethnic power struggles in Kenya.

The Milayi Curse (2007) revolves around wealth, myth, and how to resolve inter-generational conflicts. Thirteen Curses on Mother Africa (2007) is “a mournful collection of poems on the cultural, social, economic, political, and medical state of the African continent, and a statement about her future on the world stage”. Whisper to My Aching Heart (2008) recollects the agony of widowhood in the context of inter-clan battles of the 1750s’ Luoland. Sunset on Polygamy recaptures the ‘clean harvest’ of pain caused by HIV/Aids around Nam Lolwe from the 1980s to the late ‘90s.

Ironically, the writer swears he is averse to politics. “Kenyan politics is strangely the same as what my mother campaigned for in 1963. As Moi famously said (or is claimed to have said to Raila when the latter merged his party with KANU), ‘Kenya has its owners.’

He says that, at Binghamton University, he has served Kenya well since 1994, with the school seeing waves of PhD graduates. In some years, 7 — 10 Kenyans get their PhD in Chemistry and other fields. He wishes all people worked for the nation and not the tribe.

“We have moved a few inches in a long journey,” he observes. “Even America still is tweaking their system centuries later. The future is not that bleak, principally because our children and grandchildren don’t hold our views. What we need is a functioning constitution with a judiciary, which has teeth strong enough to keep politicians on their toes. When that happens, no Kenyan would care who the president is.”

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