I called to congratulate her on her 90th birthday. “Thank you, Ikeogu… I can’t believe I have got to 90… I never wanted to… But you know we can’t decide such things,” she said after my felicitation. And I wondered if she belonged to a different world from the rest of us who prized longevity beyond curtailment. She had apologised for cutting our conversation short to prepare for “a precious visit” from her daughter, indicating that she put her children first as every good parent should. Before leaving Nigeria for the 2014 African Literature Association conference held at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, I called to let her know that I would be visiting her country once more. She wished me a safe trip and asked me to let her know as soon as I arrived Johannesburg. I called her after I arrived Johannesburg on April 4, 2014. “I want to invite you to my house for a drink. Come no later than 5.30. I want you to meet my friends,” she said, sounding persuasive rather than peremptory. Long after 5.30, I was still locked in traffic with a cabby who didn’t seem to know his way. I called to let her know, suspecting she would call off the appointment, the time having elapsed. “Give the phone to the driver,” she requested. I did. And she patiently gave directions to the driver and told me she would wait after he returned the phone to me.
It was a rare evening spent in the company of her friends: Maureen Isaacson, Mary Beth and David Goldblatt. I was meeting the last two for the first time. Holding court, she steered our conversation effortlessly from the Pistorius trial in her country to the Boko Haram insurgency in mine, from literature to religion. And poetry was not left out of the bounties we shared at that gathering: I also read and sang “The Tree” to everyone’s delight, a poem I dedicated to her, in which I acknowledge her as “Mother of what I am and all that I may become”. Before leaving I offered her an autographed copy of The Lion and the Monkey, my children’s story first published in Nal’ibali, a South African journal based at the University of Cape Town, and Song of Success, my collection of poems for children published (with a sing-along CD) by HEBN, Ibadan. “Do you have all my books?” she asked as she received the books from me, her eyes agleam. “No,” I said. “Which ones do you have?” I mentioned those. Then she asked for one of her books. With an autograph that read “…Ikeogu Oke. With much love and celebration of your work.” she handed me a copy of My Son’s Story, her book brought by Maureen Isaacson. Then she said: “We must always give back”, a remark for which I thought Mahatma Gandhi should have added “Taking without Giving” to his famous list of deadly sins.
“When I return to Nigeria I will send you a copy of The Second Genesis. It is an anthology of contemporary world poetry published in India, in which the poem I have just performed for you is published,” I said as I gazed at the autograph in her now unsteady handwriting. “That’s if I’ll still be around,” she replied, hinting at something for which everyone present, except her, glanced at the next person apprehensively. “You’re not going anywhere,” I said after a long frozen silence. I received news of her death, on July 13, 2014, before I could send her the book with the poem. So, as she had hinted, she would not be around to receive the book if I sent it.
The most valued of the many precious things I got from her are the words: “I do not say things I don’t believe in” and “We must always give back”. For with them came her most prized lessons of integrity and positive reciprocity, by subtly urging me never to say things I don’t believe in and never to fail to give back. I have gratefully internalised both lessons. And to her now posthumous credit, I recently evoked them in “A Parable of Godknows”, a poem inspired by my compatriot Dr. Godknows Igali, another remarkable giver.
I salute her life of courage, grace, integrity, sacrifice, service, and tireless giving. She was, beyond a great writer and humanist, a philanthropist of virtue.