Sanya Osha

 

Harry’s Crew

As a young man and throughout his eventful life, Harry Garuba was a quietly charismatic figure who formed relationships with many life-long friends and with people who were oftentimes more colourful than he was.

In the bloom of youth, when he was still in his twenties, as an already remarkable lecturer at the Department of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Harry cut quite a dashing figure on campus. Since he was often about the same age as many of his students or sometimes even younger, he mingled and forged strong ties with many of them.

Two of his very dear friends were Onookome Okome and Chuks Okoye, both PhD candidates at the Department of Theatre Arts. They shared a room at the annex of Balewa Postgraduate Hall, situated right in front of the university bookshop. There was nothing elaborate about this partially hidden outpost of Balewa Hall. It was ringed by a thick high edge of bougainvillea which lent it a pristine and secluded feel away from the prying eyes of the world.

The rooms of the quarter were in fact built from light wood and the place had the ambience of a miniature trailer park only that it was small and cozy. Chuks’s and Okome’s room was where all their poet friends would go for quick afternoon naps, cookouts on the lawn and full-blown birthday parties.

Chuks was a blunt, no-nonsense fellow. He didn’t write poetry but instead he painted and wrote plays. He was also an excellent cook with a caustic tongue who threw legendary get-togethers. He had an eclectic taste in music introducing the crew that converged around Harry to the wistful tunes of Michael Franks, a South African born L.A. based  jazz vocalist.

How can one forget being ushered onto the soundscapes of the inimitable John Lee Hooker, one of the great blues icons of the twentieth century? Hooker was a favourite of Chuks. Chuks had an impeccable eye and ear for the arts but he didn’t suffer fools gladly and if he possessed a touch of romanticism, it was definitely submerged. The trait that came to the fore more often than not was a clear-eyed sense of rationality that worked as an infallible bullshit detector.

Dayo Olumide, Harry’s erstwhile lover, was a stunning beauty who wrote equally remarkable poetry. She had many gifts for someone born into a good degree of financial stability and political prominence. Her father had been a top ranking naval officer so her circle of friends reflected her distinguished familial background. She was friends with all the cool kids on campus but she was also considered a bohemian associate of the poets, certainly not an easy combination to maintain by any means.

Dayo’s poetry was in a way very similar to Harry’s. It is probably safe to say he had influenced her poetically.  She wrote in the same deliberate yet free-flowing style of handwriting that Harry employed.  A person’s handwriting is often an indicator of the state and landscape of a person’s soul. There was beauty in Dayo’s handwriting and she possessed an Anais Nin-like insight into the feminine spirit. Her sensibilities throbbed with soul and an ineluctable female strength. But she was also a free-spirited individual who was beholden to no one but to her own independent adventures.

Another striking figure that passed through Harry’s life with a meteoric shine was Ogom, a tall striking figure who wrote no poetry but carried herself as a work of art. She wasn’t exactly the sort of girly, make-up wearing sort of chick. Instead she was a strong girl who could hang out with the coarsest of sailors and give back as good as she got. Apparently, she didn’t mind the dreaminess of poets and one really pictured her travelling the world breaking hearts everywhere she went until she eventually found some weird pursuit to hold her down. Surprisingly, after she obtained her degree, she promptly married and settled down to a life of normalcy and domesticity.

Over the course of several years many figures drifted into Harry’s ever-expanding crew of friends, lovers, poets and non-poets. Each of them bring in tow distinctive colours and flavours that immensely enriched our lives. But one preoccupation remained constant; our collective love and fascination for literature.

However, Harry also knew how to enjoy life. As noted, he formed relationships with a bevy of talented and beautiful women. Women who often wrote poetry and loved the arts just like him.

Harry had time for his friends no matter their status in life. In the late 1980s when some of us came together at Chuks’s Balewa Hall annex room, it was usually a blast. Yvonne Chaka Chaka, a then sultry South African chanteur had just burst into the scene with an exotic slice of Afropop called ‘Umqombomthi’. One evening, seduced by Chaka Chaka’s exotic sultriness, Harry uncharacteristically took to the dance floor. Tall, slim and elegant, he slid downwards like a dark river, coursing down the undulating face of a hill. Prince’s era defining hit, ‘Sign ‘o the times’, also made an impact on the crew. I recall Harry enthusiastically getting down to that one too. It was a well deserved break from the constant ministrations he served to literature- with a capital L.

And then in an imaginary interview, a hypothetical Harry was asked what he thought about the current state of Nigerian literature. Here is his long drawn out response:

Don’t get me wrong. Winning international writing prizes can be very good. But somehow a disturbing trend is happening in African literature especially the writing that is taking place outside South Africa, which is perhaps the most vibrant cultural melting-pot on the African continent.

African writing has always sought validation from without. It appears the cultural capitals of the world such as London, New York, Paris and Lisbon more or less define what our literary tastes should be. This has been so because the headquarters of the most powerful publishing houses are located in the West even if they sometimes operate small outposts in Africa. When books are written, they need to get reviewed in appropriate publications in order to develop a critical mass. Sometimes major publishing houses organise book tours and launches to facilitate the public reception of books. Only major Western publishing houses can organise such events. They are usually the ones who can facilitate the process of entering books for all kinds of prizes. Even with the emergence of the internet as a major source of distribution we cannot underestimate the global powers of the majors.

However, the drawback is if African writers must always depend on the Western cultural institutions, then we would be creating a very narrow and specific kind of writer which says much about the parochial nature of current African writing. It means we can only have one kind of writer who panders to the whims of certain Western literary cliques. If this state of affairs persists for too long then there wouldn’t be much interesting African writing going on.

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