Wealth of wisdom in elders must be saved

A successful family relaxes at home. Men constantly need affirmation and acknowledgement even when their efforts do not bring financial returns. FOTOSEARCH 

 

By Macharia Munene

In Summary

There is doubt whether there is State will to help itself by helping the elders to reflect. Will it watch that wealth of wisdom disappear, only to lament later?

Funeral services bring people together and rekindle memories often presented as pleasant ones about the “departed”, but they do more than rekindle memories. They give opportunity for preachers to offer “service” and address audiences.

 

Sometimes the importance of the “departed” or associated relatives can be gleaned by examining who turned up and the prominence of the preachers.

Two such funerals were held last week. One was for Joseph Irungu Muthoga, an old man in the original Githiga of Murang’a on Tuesday. The other was for a distinguished PCEA clergyman, Rev Dr Godfrey Philip Ngumi, at Thogoto in Kiambu.

In themselves, the funerals were routine: eulogies, praises, and preaching. But there was some difference. In Irungu’s funeral, people came from Uganda and Tanzania mainly because of his son, Hosea Muchugu, who happened to be a prominent businessman in eastern Africa. Irungu’s eulogy tried to contextualise his life as part of Kenyan history rather than present the dry routine of birth, education, work, marriage, Christianity, sickness, and death.

ACK Bishop Allan Waithaka wondered whether those listening would have a story to be told when their time comes. At Ngumi’s funeral, besides the clergy from many denominations joining their PCEA colleagues, were prominent Kenyans.

Most important, there was John Gatu, a walking institution, and he had something to say. The common belief that every human has three critical moments of birth, marriage, and death and that people have choice only in marriage, he asserted, was erroneous. There was, he insisted, a fourth moment, “salvation”, which then makes a person’s choices two rather than one.

Given that salvation, Mutahi Thegu would argue, is a two-way traffic between God and the person, with God’s hand already stretched for the person to clasp, failure to reach to God becomes a terrible “choice” whose “consequences” are unknowable.

But as Gatu talked of the fourth moment and the second choice, the question that crops up is his seeming failure to make his life reflections and wisdom perpetually available to Kenyans in written form.

Gatu, among Kenyans of his generation, is not alone. While those with inability to reflect may be excused, the challenge is to those, like Gatu, who despite retiring, are known to have capacity of the mind and analysis. Retirement gives them time to reflect on life, humanity, and the lessons therein, usually in their memoirs. While some remain bitter about their experiences and try to shift blame, others are actually entertaining and informative instructions on the past.

Those who have succeeded include Simeon Nyachae, Duncan Ndegwa, Bethwell Allan Ogot, G.G. Kariuki, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. It would be tragic if members of Gatu’s generation fail to reflect and pass wisdom.

These elders, however, need State help to reflect and have their wisdom captured. There is doubt whether there is State will to help itself by helping the elders to reflect. Will it watch that wealth of wisdom disappear, only to lament later?

Prof Munene teaches at USIU-Africa