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THE GUARDIAN, Friday, May 17, 2013
Opinion Achebe (Ikejimba): When comes such another? By Chike Momah HINUA Achebe was a compelling figure, straight out of a Biblical saga. He was also, rather more prosaically, a friend who C was so close, he was like a brother. A few hours after his death was blazed around the world, I received a condolence call from a member of our Dallas, TX Igbo community. This friend asked me if I was sure Chinua and I did not share an umbilical cord. Another person, this time a Reverend gentleman, expressed his condolences in rather more risqué language. “Your friendship with Chinua,” he said, “reminds me of the biblical story of David and Jonathan.” I would be lying through my teeth if I said I was not flattered by the language in which the two condolences were couched. But while I gloried in the way my friendship with Chinua was perceived by these two gentlemen, two things struck me about the manner their perceptions were expressed. The reference to Chinua and I sharing an umbilical cord will be easily recognized for what it was: a humorous turn of phrase. But when the clergyman reached for his Bible in search of relational equivalences, he lighted on one of the most emotional passages in Holy Scripture: David lamenting the death of Jonathan, whose love for him, David sang, “was wonderful, passing the love of women!” The love of women? I ask you! The clergyman’s biblically inspired phraseology also set me thinking in an unusual direction. I thought about it for a long while, and then – eureka! – it hit me. Chinua Achebe’s story, the saga of his life, is a story of almost Biblical proportions. He rose so far above his humble birth, and above his innate humility – as a human being, a classmate in school, and a friend – that nothing about him seemed ordinary. And, amazingly, his stratospheric rise to greatness, fame and universal acclaim was, at least, twice predicted: first, in 1943, by his and my primary school Headmaster, Mr. Okongwu, as sagacious an observer of humanity as you are likely to meet; and, about a dozen years later, by Chinua himself, albeit innocently. Chinua did not prophecy, in so many words, that he would, one day, be a great man. But, about two years before he even began to write his epochal novel (Things fall apart; published in 1958), he wrote the following words to a mutual friend: “Yes, there may be many stars in the firmament, but some shine brighter than others.” My memory, at my fairly advanced age, is like a sieve but, as near as I can remember, those were his exact words. I know this because I saw and read the letter he wrote to the friend, and I was involved in the sequence of events that led to that innocent prediction. The mutual friend, I am happy to relate, also achieved considerable success, in his own right, as a novelist. Glory be! Headmaster Okongwu’s prophecy was couched in more
straightforward and unambiguous language. In 1943, as I was sweating over my preparations for the entrance examination to Government College, Umuahia (G.C.U. – a boys’ high school), along came my Headmaster. He regarded me for a moment or two, and then uttered his immortal words: “If,” he said, “you do well enough in the exam to gain admission to the school, I predict you will there meet a boy called Albert Achebe, and Albert will make the rain that will drench you!” (This was a boy he last saw in 1940, when Chinua was 10 years old.) In the upshot, I gained admission to GCU. Chinua also did, on a merit scholarship! This was in January 1944. The rest is history. In the middle of 1944, our first year in high school, Chinua was promoted, with five other boys, to class two. First drenching! From then till his high school graduation in 1948, he was the best student in his new class. That same year, he won a merit scholarship (one of only six or seven awarded that year) to the University College, Ibadan (U.C.I.). To study Medicine! U.C.I. was then the only institution for tertiary education in the country. He changed courses at the end of his freshman year, and I caught up with him one more time. This was in 1949. We both graduated, Bachelor of Arts, in the same subjects, in 1953. Throughout those four years, our professors and lecturers, again and again, let us know that Chinua was, not only the best student in the class, but also the best writer of English. He achieved the best result in our degree examination. Second drenching! I need not belabour the point. More drenching followed, fast and furious! Within five years of our graduation, Chinua published Things fall apart. Other novels followed, and success followed hard on success. The inevitable consequence followed. Chinua, force majeure, began to shift out of my orbit. He discovered, as his friends did too, that he had been drawn onto a world stage – to all of humanity, and not just to a narrow circle of friends and admirers. He was, as I have dared to proclaim elsewhere, the best writer of English that I think I have ever read. He is, for me, its most mellifluous exponent. If the reader disagrees with this spectacular claim, I plead that beauty is in the beholder’s eye. I speak for myself and, perhaps, for a continent. There is no writer, living or dead, who has demonstrated, in greater measure than Chinua, the ability to weave a tapestry of words taken from the Queen’s English and from the proverbs and aphorisms of his own mother tongue, Igbo. He certainly rose above the British colonial quagmire to which our people were condemned for a century and more, to write the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Stevenson and, yes, even Conrad, with a mastery that takes the breath away. When we were reading those authors, in high school and in college, we did not think – we dared not think – that we would produce a Chinua Achebe. Later, he was to pick a bone or two with
Conrad’s racially slanted writings, but that is another story! I might have sometimes been tempted to look at Chinua, and think (again, Biblically): Is this not the carpenter’s son? But I can say, truthfully, that I never succumbed to that temptation. He bestrode my world like the colossus that he was, and I rejoiced with him as he scaled the heights of literature to its pinnacle. No, he was no mere carpenter’s son for me. During the years Chinua and I were in high school and university, my contacts with the senior Achebe were few and far between. My memory of him is, at best, very sketchy now. But Chinua’s old man was no carpenter, though I have no doubt that he was largely responsible for chiseling Chinua, in his formative years, into the exquisite product that has dazzled the world for more than half a century, since Things fall apart was published in 1958. Chinua should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Prize committee members are probably the only persons, on earth, who know why he was denied this recognition of his literary stature, and of his influence on more than two or three generations of African writers. And on other writers worldwide! Tony Morrison (the Nobel laureate) acknowledged Chinua as one of her main literary inspirations in writing about her own people. Chinua’s most celebrated contemporary and fellow Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel laureate, also acknowledged Chinua as a trailblazer. Enough said! Chinua now belongs to the ages, his work on earth magnificently done. No one could have asked for more from even a genius of his breath-taking dimensions. Regrettably, Chinua had to live out the last 23 years of his life wheelchair-bound – the result of a vehicular accident in 1990. This is the reason, above all else, that my wife, Ethel and I (and Chinua’s other friends) are especially appreciative of the love and devotion of Odozi-ngwulu, his beautiful wife, Professor Dr. Christiana Achebe – Ana to Chinua himself, Christie to the rest of us! My appreciation also extends to their children, Chinelo, Ike, Chidi and Nwando, of whom one is a medical doctor, and the other three achieved doctorates in academia. Apropos of this, Ethel sometimes teasingly told Chinua he was the least educated member of his family! I was his bestman when he married Christie, and he was godfather to my son, Chukwudi (Chidi). His last book, There was a country – the story of Biafra, and of man’s inhumanity to man – was like a concluding and thunderous exclamation mark on his life as a writer! The buzz it generated has scarcely died down, as I write this. I stand, in humility, in the shadow of his greatness and, yes, of his almost Biblical stature! In the language of the Bard, when comes such another? • Momah, from Arlington, Texas, wrote this tribute as a second revision of a piece (Reflections on Chinua Achebe) which he wrote in 2000, and revised in 2007.
Dominican angels of maternal/infant health By Nwachukwu Egbunike N the cluttered conversation about Nigeria, bad news sells. However, there are many who Isilently work for a change and hardly make a noise about their work. It is easy to criticize, a critique hardly provides solutions; but to walk a talk, valour is imperative. And for unostentatiously being a pillar to women and children, cutting the cold hands of death from snatching this vulnerable subset of our society for the past 10 years; the St. Dominic Catholic Hospital, Ogungbade Village, Ibadan deserve our praise. Although Ibadan hosts the foremost health institution in the country, that alone cannot (and should not) cater for a city with an estimated population of about two million people. Considering also that most of the inhabitants of Ibadan live within the fringes of the city, then one appreciates the context of my praise for these nuns and their hospital. And as such, the burden of primary health care falls on non-forprofit and religious institutions that are propelled by social justice. Now the grim statistics: Nigeria ranks as second in the global maternal and infant mortality deaths. In 2010, an estimated 608 deaths per 100,000 deliveries in Nigeria was recorded. According to UNICEF, Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five year olds and 145 women of childbearing age daily. This makes the country the second largest contributor to the under-five and maternal mortality rate in the world. Yet in “The Changing face of Global Child Demographic”, the authors, Danzhen You et al (The Lancet, Volume 381, Issue 9868, pages 701-
703, March 2, 2013) insist that this ugly trend is gradually being changed. They note that: “by the middle of this century, almost one in every three births and nearly one in every three children younger than 18 years will be in sub-Saharan Africa… Several factors will contribute to realisation of this scenario, such as improving child survival and continuing high fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa, which contrasts with sharply falling rates in the rest of the world.” But there are many things that the number crunching above did not and cannot capture. It is the voices behind these numbers; the anguish of the mothers crying for their dead children, the shattered hopes of families who lose both mother and/or child, and silent toil of their care-givers. The unsung heroes who have provided affordable and qualitative primary health care to rural and semi-rural Nigerian women are hardly recognised. And within these ranks, one can easily situate the courage of the Dominican Sisters of Nigeria. These nuns have championed primary health care through the St. Dominic Catholic Hospital, Ogungbade Village, Ibadan since 2003. The Dominican Sisters of Nigeria are part of the global Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Sienna. The charisim of the Sisters of St. Dominic is spreading the compassion of Christ to others through educational and medical apostolic work. St. Dominic Hospital in Ogungbade Village is a materialisation of the missionary spirit of the Sisters. And in this case, the essence is captured in health – reaching all through the compassion of Christ, especially in children under five years and pregnant women.
St. Dominic Hospital had an interesting history. The Sisters of St. Dominic had established their convent in Ogungbade Village, off Ife Road, in Ibadan. Soon the community, which apparently had no other source of medical intervention, started bringing their sick ones to the nuns. As the traffic of patients continued to increase, the sisters began a clinic in a small boy’s quarters with the community. They had barely up to 10 members of staff and most of their patients were treated as out-patients with few admissions. Obviously they did not do surgeries and had to refer difficult labour cases to other hospitals. This growing demand prompted the need for a more formal structure. Thus in 2007, the sod was turned and within three years, (2010) the present St. Dominic Hospital was commissioned. The hospital has 64 beds with an array of medical professionals: doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists, paramedical and administrative staff. They run a 24-hour service and have consultants in various specialities involved. Such areas are obstetrics and gynaecology, orthopaedics, general surgery, urology, neurosurgery plastic surgery, cardiology and paediatrics. They have free malaria tests for children and free malaria treatment for our pregnant women. St. Dominic Hospital also offers medical outreaches to many of the villages around us, giving health talks and treatments. This includes collaborative effort with NGOs involved in HIV prevention, especially mother to child transmission. They are also engaged to foreign capacity aid; for instance, they are expecting a team of U.S. orthopaedic surgeons to perform leg deformity corrective surgery before the end of the year.
However, it has not been a stress free walk for St. Dominic Hospital. While it took courage to walk their talk (better still to walk the path laid out by the needs of others), there are still many hurdles to skip. And in the words of the Medical Director, Dr. Taiwo Obisesan: “we are anxiously looking forward to see a well equipped and well staffed hospital serving the community, involving in various research works, collaborating with similar organisations here or abroad. Above all we hope in the nearest future to be able to train house officers, nurses, and medical laboratory scientists and run Residency Programme in Family Medicine and other areas.” Nonetheless, it is disheartening that treacherous craters litter the path to this hospital. As a matter of public interest, the Oyo State Government should urgently extend its current road construction drive to Ogungbade Village. For the erosion on the road that leads to St. Dominic Hospital might easily induce a pre-term labour in a gravid woman. A bit of asphalt on that road will certainly do the sisters, the hospital’s patients/staff and the entire community some good. The future of Nigeria’s health care system revolves around primary health care. The life of many women and children lies precariously and only a systemic intervention can reset this rot. Nonetheless, this sustained and deliberate change has to be propelled by a collective effort from public and private concerns. That is why St. Dominic Hospital deserves praise because despite all odds, they have faithfully carried this burden for the public good. • Egbunike wrote this in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of St. Dominic Catholic Hospital, Ogungbade Village, Ibadan.