TRIBUTE TO PROF. ATIENO ODHIAMBO

[JAHAATWACH]

Jukwaa?

I arrived back home with the saddening news of Prof, Atieno Odhiambo's demise.

Hope you will join me in celebrating the life of Prof. Atieno Odhiambo whose name I believe is familiar to most of Jukwaa member especially the leftists of the late 70s,80s and 90s.

He was impressionable during our various interactions with him over the years in Kango Ka Jaramogi in Sakwa Bondo, Ukweli Pastoral Centre (Kisumu),University of Nairobi and at the James Becker III Institute at Rice University in the lone star state of Texas.

Rest in peace Raywaya!

[adongo23456]

JAHAATWACH


I heard about the passing of the good professor but never saw it in the news so I thought may be it just some malicious remours.

Sorry to here the man is gone. Those are the people who inspired us as kids to pursue political activism. I was in high school when he used to write all sorts of critical commentaries on the Nyayo regime.

He was a close buddy of jaramogi and those days knowing jaramogi was itself a crime. Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Atieno Odhiambo, Micere Mugo are some of the people who made some of us feel, we have to step foot in that place called the University of Nairobi. By the time I got there, he was gone. I later met him here in Toronto as a guest of the University of Toronto.

He was no doubt one hell of an academic giant. Let him go in peace

adongo

[politicalmaniac]

Sad news indeed!

[job]

Obituary: Professor Atieno OdhiamboAtieno Odhiambo at Makerere: Thanks for the Memories...

I was privileged to know Prof. A. Odhiambo as my student long ago at Makerere University. How ironic that he should be gone while I am still hanging around. If there is an after-death consciousness, he & I will enjoy some happy times reminiscing about the good old days when we romped together as "youths" in Kampala. Many of you & others in your loop, may be interested in some of our "youthful" experiences.

When I reached Kampala in 1968 to take over as head of history at Makerere, Odhiambo was about to enter the final year of his B.A. degree. Quickly the all-white staff of the department made me aware that this young man was a potential first class candidate. If he did achieve such, it would be remarkable because in the long history of Makerere only one other had achieved such a distinction, Karugire who was in 1968 in England reading for the Ph.D..

Unibadan (University of Ibadan) from where I had just come, had never awarded a first class in history. In those good old days a first class examination was one which had such analytical insights that it would merit publication, a very high standard indeed & one reserved for the very top cream of the scholarly community. This was the British standard of those days & trained as I was in England, I held to it, believed in it & defended it. Like many of my English compatriots, I looked down upon the manner in which American universities carelessly threw around first class marks.

Before turning to my experiences with Atieno, I must deviate to discuss Karugire who had achieved his first class when Makerere exam scripts were monitored & second marked in London. Consequently no one ever questioned it. However Atieno's class was the first where the external examiner would come from Africa. In fact our examiner that year was Prof. B.A. Ogot from Nairobi. I knew that should Atieno score a first, nasty numbers would cry that standards were falling, propelled by those who had opposed abandoning the English connection. Furthermore with both Ogot & Odhiambo being Kenyans there would be other innuendos.

Karugire eventually completed his Ph.D & returned to teach with me at Makerere. I had some difficulty relating to him other than on an intellectual level. He was a stereotypical Muhima from the ancient kingdom of Nkore in Uganda. Eventually at a conference in Masaka, a number of us got into our cups & at a point Karugire came over to me & whispered "Would you like to see my cattle?" As we broke up the party around one a.m., he added "We will have to leave at 3 a.m." That shook me but groggy, hungover & sleepy we were on the road on at 3 a.m. to see the cows. We spoke little, with him occasionally telling me where we turned. At dawn about 6 a.m. we stood gazing at about 50 head of fine looking cows. He said nothing. So neither did I. We stood thus for 30 to 45 minutes. I was sure that in his language there was a vast vocabulary for the discussion of cattle but I only knew English with its paucity of expression. So we stood never saying a word. Karugire has now passed on, and if there is an after-life I hope that it includes fine white long horn-cattle. Or if Hinduism is correct, possibly he has returned to earth already as one of the bovine breed. Either option would make Karugire most happy. About 7 a.m. we were in the car driving back to Masaka. I thanked him for letting me share this experience with him & nothing more was said for three hours. Thereafter in the months ahead we were easy with each other, comfortable, brothers. That precious silent time we enjoyed together gave me a peek into the soul of the traditional Bahima. It's a memory I cherish.

He liked his beer & he & I sat for hours at Bat Valley discussing African & world history. Unquestionably he was first class. Students - likely the matoke boys - who passed his flat on the way to classes used to joke about the three gallons of fresh milk left every day at his door by the milkman. He was not then married & lived alone. He was a true Muhima. Often he regaled me about the terrible cramps he suffered at boarding school from having to eat matoke & other vegetable foods. Coming home, his mother would scrub his dishes separately & he would eat separately from the family. By the time he was ritually pure he had to go back to school & suffer the cramps again. It was a terrible life but he made it humourous when we got into the liquid at Bat Valley.

For his B.A. honours history, Odhiambo had to present an honours essay based on original research & he chose Mau Mau, a topic which was taboo to study in Kenya. The thesis question asked to analyse the nature of Mau Mau. In his argument he came down on the contention that Mau Mau was primarily a nationalistic movement. Ogot always read the research essays first & declared Atieno's was the best he had ever read on Mau Mau.

A solid first. Paper after paper, solid first, bare first, not quite & so it went as we all held our breath. Finally it came down to the paper on East Africa & the line up was such that a solid first here & he would make it. If he slipped here, he would not. A major essay on the exam involved five topics from which the student could choose one, It so happened that one option was "the nature of Mau Mau." Exams were set in stone before students had chosen their research topics, so there was no collusion to throw the paper to Atieno.

Ogot's heart sank when he saw that Atieno had chosen to write on Mau Mau. He told me as he began to mark the East African papers he was convinced Atieno had blown his chances of an A. Ogot felt he could not, in all honesty, award an A merely because of luck. So he began to read with a heavy heart while I came back to the lecturer of the East African course & told him Atieno had blown it. After classes that day I rushed over to the hotel where Ogot sat buried in mounds of scripts. He was confounded. He reported that while Atieno had proved in his thesis that Mau Mau was a nationalist movement, on the exams he very convincingly demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that Mau Mau was unquestionably a Kikuyu civil war. Both Ogot & I felt this was the essence of a true historian with a flexible & agile mind. In short it was brilliant. While we got down to adding & averaging, it became obvious that even without the East African paper, Odhiambo had easily cleared the hurdle into first class.

As I feared when the word spread, the nastiness went around the rumour mill in the faculty. Webster a Canadian was not a true Englishman & acted like an American in throwing A's around. Naturally Ogot was in cahoots. Standards were falling. Webster had Africanized the syllabus. It was now easier because the French Revolution was no longer a special subject. Nevertheless Atieno easily won a scholarship & was off on his brilliant career. Contrary to popular opinion in my experience African external examiners were tougher in monitoring exams than the English had ever been.

Atieno was unusually mature for an undergraduate & always the leader in whatever group he found himself. One night during that year when I was his professor, he & I & about three other senior students began the evening at Bat Valley, the restaurant-bar close to the university & almost the history lounge because occasionally we held our weekly seminars there. I don't recall historians drinking at any other watering hole in Kampala. That evening we made the rounds & ended up at Susanah, after which a blank until I woke up at 8.30 a.m. at home with a class to teach at 10, no car in the driveway & six miles to the main campus. Shortly up drove Atieno in my car & all was well with the world. Even more to be appreciated, no word of our dissolute evening reached either the students or faculty gossip networks.

Unfortunately while I was the head of department, I never did teach Atieno because none of the final courses he chose were mine. However I read many of his essays during the year since the entire staff was conscious of his potential. If he failed -I mean if he scored an upper second - we all had to read it to see what had happened. Junior lecturers occasionally were timid & feared to award less than an A, so would pass the essays on to the more experienced to confirm their judgement. Consequently the entire staff, including myself, was involved in the production of Atieno's first class.

One critic wrote that the history staff "had for a year known that Odhiambo would score a first. They guaranteed it. Many staff were intimidated by him & were fearful to grade anything he wrote at less than an A." Of course, my staff could never, & had never "known" but had "hoped" he would score a first. With the external examiner system, the staff could never "guarantee" it. However the critic was basically correct. My staff did nurture him, worried about him & were cheering for him. His life & his accomplishments demonstrate beyond question that we were right.

On behalf of that old Makerere staff scattered across the world & some in the other world, let me say that all of us were better teachers & better humans for having known Atieno Odhiambo.

-James Bertin Webster

[politicalmaniac]

What a great man!