In his debut novel entitled "The beautiful ones are not yet born", Ayi Kwei Armah portrays the rampant corruption that characterized everyday life in his country by depicting ordinary characters that are trying to cope with ordinary life by bribing their ways to what they considered was success. Published in 1968, "The beautiful ones are not yet born is a novel in which Armah expresses his disgust on the level of corruption prevalent in Ghana during the first republic Nkrumah.
Corruption was so rampant and deep that every nook and cranny of Ghana showed it. Armah is also a poet, a short story and a playwright. His fame is however base on his novels and particularly "The beautiful ones" which is his first novel but has the touch of a mature novel written by a master novelist. The popularity of his novel is also linked to the theme he has so courageously chosen to address. Corruption was prevalent during the tenure of the first Ghanaian President, who was renowned for his socialist beliefs and dedication to African liberation.
Armah was the first advocate of the "African unity now" line of thinking. Great men are tested when they are in power. Nkrumah's government was not as popular as the movement he created and nurtured. And Armah came into the literary scene to denounce not Nkrumah in person but the clean regime he was trying to create but failed to deliver. He was ousted from power in a military coup while he was on a visit abroad.
Every country has its moment of brilliance and mediocrity in literature and journalism in particular. Ethiopian journalism witnessed its best moments more or less in the 1960s and 1970s. Literature and journalism have a way of mirroring one another. When literature is good, journalism follows suit or vice versa. They both bloom together or wither together or they rise together and fall together. But sometimes great talent comes with a kind of craziness or eccentricity. Genius is often believed to be linked with oddness. And this applies not only in writing. It is also true in other human enterprises.
The most publicly eccentric writer and freelance journalist in Ethiopia was perhaps the late Sebhat G/Egziabher who was also a columnist at the Ethiopian Herald and the Amharic language Addis Zemen where he was running a weekly column called, "Egre Menged" or "By the Way" or "By the Wayside". This column was popular because Sebhat was penning his observations of life he encountered on his daily journey to his neighborhood in the old Teret Sefer, translated as "The Neighborhood of Tales".
His stories were true, sometimes funny, sometimes sarcastic and at other times angry. He wrote about anything, including his vulgar encounters and his misadventures in the slums of his neighborhood. His love of drinks and women as well as his passion for life took him to the nearby alehouses where his fame was based and he encountered funny characters, drunkards and prostitutes as well as fallen intellectuals and crazy priests. His language was sometimes coarse but often polished. He was not comfortable with the so-called "high society people" and preferred to share time with the down and outs of society.
Sebhat is also mmorable for his peculiar demeanor as he traveled up and down Churchill Road, clutching his famous plastic wrapper in one hand and perhaps a book in the other. Walking with a slight hunch, his grey beard is visible even from a distance.
He had the perfect comportment of a philosopher as he walked his eyes fixed on the ground as if he was looking for new ideas for his weekly column or toying in his mind with memories of past happiness.
There was also a famous eccentric journalist, whose name was not famous as Sebhat's but was popular for his courage in speaking his mind and for his criticism for society norms and behaviors. Like Sebhat this eccentric journalist was also a voracious reader, an open book always in his hand. He was almost reading round the clock. His friends were telling tall tales about him saying that he was reading in the rest room, in bed maybe when he was making love to a woman.
Apparently, he was more in fond of books than with women. One of the tales about this eccentric journalist had gone "viral" in the reading or intellectual fraternity of the time after one of his friends disclosed that this same eccentric personality was seen in the street, peeing at a street corner, holding an open book in one hand and his dick in the other. He was reading and peeing at the same time and provoked the ire of passersby some of whom were laughing behind his back. This piece of news instantly reached Jimma Bar, located nearby the old ministry of information and the evening was filled with laughter and gossip at the eccentricity of the man whose addiction to reading had made me the talk of the town that day.
Neither is the eccentricity of genius confined to one country or one society. We are familiar with William Faulkner, the legendary American writer who was so fond of drinking that he was found sleeping in his hotel room on Stockholm while the Nobel awarding ceremony was proceeding in the royal palace. They woke him up after the prize awarding ceremony was over. He was the winner of the Nobel prize in literature that year.
As I said above, we had also our crops of eccentric men of letters whose lives are tales of both hard work and oddness. You remember the story of the first short story writer who penned the first tale of drunkenness. His name is Temesgen Gebre, the author of "The Drunkard of Gulele", a funny tale of adventure or misadventure by the author. Unsurprisingly, his first short story was also an autobiographical one in which the main character was no one else but the writer himself. As a rule, writers tend to write about something they know best and Temesgen the person was the best friend of Temesgen the drinking writer. By the way, the honesty and courage of the writer is appreciable if not admirable. We have not many people in society who tell us about themselves with similar frankness.
At the end of "the Drunkard of Gulele" there is a tragic twist to the fate of the main character whose name is Tebeje, alias Temesgen, and here is what happened to him at the end of a night of indulgence fell victim to an accident and found himself in a hospital. This columnist had translated this tale from Amharic into English because it embodies a universal morality: the destructive nature of evil habits.
Although he was still alive, he could not move away from that place and the vultures were threatening to attack him as he lay there. They were threatening to eat his flesh and leave him only with his bones. At night, the wolves threatened to cut him into pieces. Haunted as he was with such dreadful visions, he tried to move away but he could not. At last, he slept on the ground.
He spent four days sleeping in the pool of blood. His legs swell from the wound. Greenish fluid was oozing from his laceration. When an ambulance finally reached him, he had almost started to decompose.
They took him to Dr. Kramer who did not know what kind of help he could give him since Tebeje had lost much of his blood. The doctor decided not to make blood transfusion to him. He had earlier told Tebeje not to indulge in too much drinking lest he would end up in such a dreadful situation. The doctor found it even dangerous to touch Tebeje's infected body.
Tebeje moved his lips. Sweat was gushing down his face. He was soon quite unable to open his mouth.
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The surgeons undressed him and rubbed his body with a kind of cream. They gave him more than half a liter of blood. Since drink had weakened his heart, they realized he could not tolerate ether and instead, they gave him another drug to force him to sleep.
A doctor suggested to amputate one of Tebeje's legs from his knee.
Another surgeon decided to amputate his leg from his thigh down so that he would not drink again. They amputated him from his thigh. The same doctor ordered the nurses to weigh the amputated leg on the scale and put it between Tebeje's arms.
The nurses weighed the amputated leg and put it between Tebeje's arms. At the same moment, the dogs that were fighting over a bone came and fought to take his amputated leg away. They scared him so much that he came out of his slumber although it was difficult for him to remember all that happened in his dream.
He jumped out of his bed and cried in terror. He asked his servant how many legs he had.
"How many legs did you have usually, sir?" His servant asked him.
"I Had two!" He repeated three times.
"Three times two are six!" The servant said.
"I'm serious!" Tebeje shouted again, shaking all over.
"You have two legs indeed, sir!" The servant said.
Tebeje tried to bend and kiss his leg but he could not reach it. He turned his eyes to the sky and lamented, "Drink for me is as bad as death!" He said. It was night time.
"This vow will also be forgotten!" His servant answered.
This is indeed a portrait of eccentricity at its worst, as portrayed by the first Ethiopian short story writer who used his own experiences to give us a little known but immortal tale with a strong moral: don't push your eccentricity too much, lest it would spell your doom.
