THE FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

(Right) Okara's THE VOICE

By Omoseye Bolaji

“The people who have the sweetest insides are the think-nothing people
and we here try to be like them. Like logs in the river we float and
go whither the current commands and nothing enters our insides to turn
the sweetness into bitterness,”

- from Gabriel Okara’s THE VOICE


When Pa Okara published his novel – THE VOICE – decades ago many critics and
reviewers interpreted the work as one exhorting, calling for moral
regeneration in African societies generally.

In the haunting book (The Voice) Okolo, the protagonist is on a
puzzling, nigh esoteric quest for “it” – loosely defined as “meaning
of life”; advising his people and others to ponder about the lives
they are living, their integrity, purpose of existence etc.
Ultimately, Okolo pays the price for his “treachery” and is killed on
the orders of King Izongo.

It is stressed again and again that most people will rather live
“empty” lives, lives without a purpose, and they would not like others
criticising them or calling for more integrity from them. Remarkably,
the book was published over forty years ago; yet its theme still
resonates till date.

Has Africa moved forward since the book was published? Not even an
obtuse optimist would say “yes”; the whole continent has been ravaged
with a plethora of negative things – including extraordinary
corruption, civil wars, maladministration, greed, diseases (not
forgetting the scourge of hiv aids), famine etc.

On an individual level, the type of people referred to as those who
are “like logs in the river we float and go whither the current
commands and nothing enters our insides to turn the sweetness into
bitterness” seem to proliferate in African nations, including in
Nigeria and South Africa. Yet it might well be a cosmetic situation.
But how do they manifest themselves? Do they really do any harm?

Here in South Africa, you see a medley of people milling around
apparently jobless and purposeless, wallowing in the same. Young and
old. You see them hanging around their houses, their neighbourhood,
nearby taverns and shebeens. You see a few of them and you’ve seen
them all…

Yet paradoxically, there is a serenity that surrounds people of this
ilk that indeed gives the impression that “the people with the
sweetest insides....” A friend of mine in South Africa once called
them the “flotsams and jetsam,” During summer, winter – never mind
autumn and spring – they are in profusion; often friendly, waving,
greeting good-natured in their apparent vacuousness.

Do these people have any real ambitions? What do they think about life
itself? Do they have plans to forge ahead in life? What do they do by
way of finding jobs, or furthering their education? These are answers
for the pertinent pundits and experts, perhaps. On a simplistic
level, what is clear enough is that they remind one of Okara’s famous
description.

Nor should we be naïve enough to think that many of these people are
as harmless as they look. From among their ranks the likes of thieves,
rapists, even murderers lurk. Perhaps this is in accordance with the
hoary saying that “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop,”