From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2013
I watched with great sorrow as hundreds of mourners gathered in the Ghanaian capital Accra to commemorate the life of poet and statesman Kofi Awoonor at the National Theatre in Accra attended by family members and dignitaries. Awoonor was one of the victims of the Westgate mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya.
At 78 Awoonor was still young in mind. He was not only a literary icon in his native Ghana, he was known worldwide for his innovative style that translated the rhythms of his Ewe language into English.
Awoonor had been in Kenya with his son to take part in the Storymoja Hay Festival, a four-day literary event. Awoonor was cremated at a private ceremony last week. His son Afetsi, who was wounded in the attack, attended the memorial service with his hand in a sling.
Awoonor was a renowned writer, most notably for his poetry inspired by the oral tradition of the Ewe people, to which he belonged. Much of his best work was published in Ghana’s immediate post-independence period, part of which he spent in exile after the first president Kwame Nkrumah, whom Awoonor was close to, was overthrown in a coup.
Awoonor returned to Ghana in 1975 and was later arrested and tried over his suspected involvement in a coup, according to a biography from the US-based Poetry Foundation.
He was released after 10 months, and the foundation said his imprisonment influenced his book “The House by the Sea”.
Born George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams, Awoonor helped found the Ghana Playhouse and played a key role in the development of theatre and drama in the country. He did not only write and produce plays; he acted in them as well.
Awoonor sought to incorporate African vernacular traditions—notably the dirge song tradition of the Ewe people—into modern poetic form. His major themes- Christianity, exile, and death are important among them.
Awoonor’s other volumes of poetry include Night of My Blood (1971), Ride Me, Memory (1973), The House by the Sea (1978), and The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook (1992). His collected poems (through 1985) were published in Until the Morning After (1987).
The House by the Sea is a lovely tale that follows two stories – one set in the present in Devon and the other in 1966 Tuscany. The novel consists of two alternating stories, one set in present day England and the other in Italy several decades earlier.
The Italian storyline begins in 1966 with Floriana, a ten-year-old girl who lives with her drunken father in a small village in Tuscany. Looking over the crumbling wall of a beautiful villa by the sea, Floriana comes face to face with seventeen-year-old Dante, whose parents own the house.
Floriana dreams of one day marrying Dante and escaping from her lonely, miserable life but unfortunately things don’t go exactly as she planned.
The story then shifts to Devon in 2009 and Mariana and her husband Grey are gearing up for the summer at their hotel on the cliff by trying to find an artist in residence to help entice guests to earn enough money to prevent them having to sell the hotel.
The hotel is in financial difficulties and in an attempt to save her struggling business, Marina advertises for an ‘artist-in-residence’ to spend the summer at the hotel teaching guests to paint.
And so Rafa Santoro, an artist from Argentina, arrives in Devon and proves to be a big success – particularly with Marina’s stepdaughter, Clementine. But as Clementine begins to fall in love with Rafa, she starts to suspect that he may be hiding something.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ
UN Disarmament
Conference, 2002