Prof Ogot's storytelling, mentoring and African scholarship journey

The passing of Prof Bethwel Allan Ogot on January 30, 2025, caught many by surprise, although at 96 he was in a ripe age. He had defied age and had remained the longest-serving emeritus professor in Kenya. He outlived his wife Grace Ogot, who died on March 18, 2015.

Ogot still supervised many graduate students at Maseno University and spoke at a couple of events per year, and continued writing.

He had an impressive academic career that spanned over seven decades

Ogot was the chairman of the Historical Association of Kenya and after he left, no other chairperson has steadied the association the way he did.

There are many who would argue that as a man of means, sometimes he single-handedly paid the association’s expenses from his pocket, the way he did in 1992 at Gulfstream Hotel in Kisumu and other places, but it was perhaps more to do with his great dedication to scholarship and interest in mentoring young scholars and serving humanity.

In 1992, we were made aware that Ogot paid for our meals and beverages and the entire conference expenses from his pocket with some support from Maseno University. That is how big his heart was. 

I first met Ogot in 1986 at the University of Nairobi when I had joined as a first year. We were little academic greenhorns, almost empty but equipped with open minds, eyes and ears, curious and keen to absorb any fascinating ideas thrown our way. We were curious when the heavyweight professors on campus entered any room because we had read their works in secondary school and high school, and wanted to hear from the horses’ mouths so to speak. Linking their faces to their books was exciting.

Older students would point us in their direction, saying “that is the famous Prof B. A. Ogot”, and we would all turn to look in their direction despite being whispered to, not to look there immediately. They never seemed to mind the attention.

My classmate, Edward Onyango Odiyo, would ask politely to shake their hands telling them that his village of Alego Kaugage had no professor, and he could not pass on such privilege of shaking the hand of a professor, and we would follow suit because as the Africa saying goes, when one cow moos for water, you give it to all and not just the one that mooed.

Then there were others like Prof Gideon Saulo Were, Prof E. S, Atieno Odhiambo, Prof Ahmed Idha Salim, Prof Joseph Nyasani, Prof Odera Oruka, Prof Chris Wanjala, Prof William Ochieng, Prof.Daniel Sifuna, Pro. Florida Karani, Prof Vincent Simiyu, Prof Simiyu Wandibba, Prof Henry Mutoro, Prof Godfrey Muriuki, among others. They all frequented the Senior Common Room in the Gandhi Wing of the University of Nairobi and bumping into one of them was frequent. 

Ogot was an academic giant and quite progressive in scholarship compared to his politics, which some regarded as conservative. He was an academic Goliath with a Solomonic mind and a towering figure in African intellectual discourses, known for his stimulating and wide-ranging contributions to African studies, especially social, cultural, political, and economic theories, and global affairs. He was astute and very aesthetic in the manner of speech and dress, and nuanced in changing scholarly genres and landscapes, embracing pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial and postmodern theories just as easily as he handled modernisation, dependency, underdevelopment, gender, feminist and globalisation theories.

He got on board on almost any intellectual debate and was able to insert himself in many anachronistic, pedantic and newer discourses with great ease for a scholar of his generation, where many of his contemporaries were circumscribed to their narrow disciplinary specialisations.

His interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to research allowed him to intervene and connect to many disciplines. 

Style and simplicity was part of Ogot’s modus operandi. He got traction and received gravitas in fashion as he did in his writing and speaking. He stood for his immaculate dressing and his face was not different from the face that appeared at the back of most of his books. There was something about him that radiated brightness, intelligence and academic prowess that were unique.

He was always reflective and insightful in his comments during seminars in Education Theatre I and II at the University of Nairobi. His comments were friendly, stimulating and deeply intellectual. In many of the seminars, he spoke last and most of us took out our note books and pens to write whenever he was on the floor because he tended to be encyclopedic, emitting a lot of academic ambers coming out as wisdom and historical facts which you did not want to miss, because the information was not found in any textbooks. 

Ogot’s reminiscences were so gratifying that you wanted him to digress all the time for each diversion that came out with rare originality and great insights. I recall the time he talked about his time at Ambira High School, Maseno School as a student and at Alliance High School as a teacher of Mathematics. He would remember most of his classmates and where they were and what they did or did not do, many of which we would read about later in his autobiography My Footprints in the Sands of Time, which was a master class and which I have had a chance to read more than three times.

The autobiography reads like a novel and many of the things he mentions he had shared in informal meetings around the fire such as at Gulfstream Hotel in Kisumu in 1992 and at Kericho Tea Hotel in 1993, at Baraton University in 1994 and Egerton University in 1995. He could engage us with stories from the past, until past 1 am, and we would still be glued, wanting to hear more. 

The interlocutor or discussant in many meetings with Ogot was always his former student Prof William Robert Ochieng who always prompted or reminded him what to tell us about, meaning that Ochieng had enjoyed such stories in the past and wanted us to benefit.

He would prompt his mentor to tell us about Ambira, Maseno School, Makerere University, Alliance High School, Royal Technical College, University College Nairobi, St Andrews University, University of Nairobi, and more. He promptly responded and shared deep information and facts, including how he met his wife, Grace Ogot, and how ethnicity made him miss out on becoming the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Nairobi together with David Wasawo and Simion Ominde, who were the only three Kenyan professors at the time, and how an academic nymph, Josephat Karanja, was plucked from his diplomatic posting in London and appointed Vice-Chancellor. 

The stories by Ogot were fascinating because they were well articulated and always informed by facts. He was a master storyteller who looked at your eyes to see the effects of your absorption. He always left you laughing and able to remember the stories many years later because of the manner in which he told them.

One day in Kisumu during one of the Historical Association of Kenya conferences, he told us the story of the President of Liberia, William Tubman. Under Tubman, Liberia became militarily involved in World War II in January 1944, when it declared war on Germany and Japan.  At the time, only Liberia and Ethiopia were two independent African countries. President Tubman read news that many countries across the world were declaring war against Germany, Italy and Japan, and he followed suit without the necessary military capability to respond if the powers took on Liberia against her declaration. 

Of course, Tubman did not believe that any major power could take his declaration of war seriously but Germany did and Adolf Hitler quickly arranged for a military flotilla to invade Liberia and teach the African country a lesson.

Ogot told us that as the news of the arrival of the German flotilla arrived in Monrovia, Tubman asked the church bells to be sounded and people thronged churches for prayer against the invaders. Tubman took the pulpit of the main church in Monrovia and asked the clergy to step aside and allow him to pray in church for the first time, while his diplomats cabled Britain, France and the United States for assistance.

Tubman prayed as follows: “God, the last time there was calamity in the world, you sent your only son Jesus Christ to come and save the world, but this time Lord, come down yourself” which sent us into great and prolonged laughter, for that was very hilarious. He had similar stories from his past which he shared and which remained deeply embedded in our minds. 

Ogot is regarded as the father of the study of the history of Kenya, just like Prof Simion Ominde is regarded as the father of the study of geography in Kenya and Pro. Filemona F. Indire was the father of the study of education and Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o was the father of the study of literature.  Ogot was therefore part of the first generation of pioneer African scholars in African universities. Ogot is perhaps the most successful historian that Kenya has ever produced and many of his works have become classics in Kenyan and African studies at home and abroad.

His seminal work on the history of the southern Luo remains the most comprehensive.

The Joka-Jok, Jok-Owiny and Jok-Omolo were introduced to African academic audiences by Ogot. The work relied mainly on oral sources and mapped more than 1,000 years of the history of the Lwo and Luo which inspired many studies using similar approaches such as History of the Luhya by Gideon Saulo Were, History of the Agikuyu (Godfrey Muriuki), History of the Kipsigis (Henry Mwanzi), History of the Mbere (Henry Stanley Kabeca Mwaniki), among others.

Ogot’s works inspired a new stream of African scholars such as Ugandan Grace Stuart Ibingira and Tanzanian Anselim Baluda Itandala.

Ogot literally dragged us into lectures by visiting speakers such as E. A. Ayandele, Adu Boahen, A. B. Itandala, Chinua Achebe, Ali Mazrui, Cyprian Ekwensi, among others whenever they were in Kenya. He never missed such lectures and he would be there on the front row, taking notes like a student in class, meaning that he never stopped learning, while some undergraduates in our midst were feeling important and too knowledgeable to take notes. 

Prof Amutabi is the director of the Centre for Science, Technology and Society Studies at the Technical University of Kenya