ANA Observes as Professor Joe Ushie burries his father

ANA OBSERVES AS PROFESSOR JOE USHIE BURRIES HIS FATHER

By Maik Ortserga

“When the okra stem has reached its menopause,
it leaves procreation to its twigs.” – Joe Ushie

The sober sky emitted a stream of cloudy tears down Obanliku hills. The women bearing fresh leaves encircle the somber Joe Ushie with their songs of sorrow. Suddenly, the sun gave the grief-stricken hill a kiss on the forehead to remove her tears and the time was ripe to bear the string of tributes that sprang up on the hills to mark the end of an era. The patriarch, Papa Stephen Ushie Ukpang, the father of an amiable scholar, writer and poet, Prof. Joe Ushie, in slow cadence, bent his cold feet on a journey through the dark alley in answer to the ear-splitting ancestor’s call that broke the hills.

And so it was that Prof. Joe Ushie buried his 112 years old father beneath a beautifully constructed hut in line with his people’s tradition at Akorshi-Bendi in Obanliku Local Government Area of Cross-River State. Pa Stephen Ushie Ukpang was born into the typical pre-colonial world of his fathers. As a young energetic man in the 1930s, he was engaged in conveying hammock-borne colonizers from Nigeria through the mountains into the Cameroons. As the surviving oldest head of an expansive community, he played his role well until death came knocking on his door on January 11,2019.

The President and Executive Council of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), as well as the Benue State Chapter, in the spirit of comradeship, were there in representative capacity to support their very own Joe Ushie in his moment of grief. Given that Pa Ushie’s burial coincided with the burial of the Poet Laureate Ikeogu Oke, I was directed by the President to bear our bunch of fresh leaves to the Obanliku hills where the patriarch took off on the ancestral journey on the 30th March, 2019. To our beloved Joe Ushie, what message can ANA give you other than these very lines lifted from the prologue to your volume of poetry entitled “Popular Stand and Other Poems.” So, “We came here as to the market place / And arrived at different times / And, as from the market place / We live at different times; / But at the end of the day / We all must leave / whether we sold at profit or loss”