‘There was a Time’

Abstract

African writing and criticism have been accused of ‘ecohesitation’. This essay uses Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel Wizard of the Crow (2006) to challenge this notion. Mourning the disappearance of the luxuriant forests in the fictive Republic of Aburiria, Ngugi's novel interrogates external as well as internal influences on African nature, offering a highly sophisticated reading of the postcolonial African state and reminding us that ecological consciousness has always been constitutive of African literature.

Keywords:

• ecocriticism
• African literature
• mourning
• dislocation
• Wizard of the Crow
• replenishment

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for providing the grant used in conducting research on this article as a Fellow of the African Humanities Program (AHP).

Notes

Ngugi's earlier novels which among other things engage with the question of dislocation are Petals of Blood (1977) and Devil on the Cross (1982).

The funeral service of the phenomenal singer and diva Whitney Houston on 18 February 2012 at New Hope Baptist Church, Newark, New Jersey, USA is perhaps one of the most recent illustrations of virtual mourning. During the hours-long service, major digital television stations around the world like CNN and Sky News did a live coverage of the funeral service, thus providing millions of people around the world with the opportunity to be simultaneously involved in the final rites of passage.

The situation in Aburiria lends cogency to the real-world call for tree planting where deforestation has become endemic (Huth and Possingham, 2011: 293). Such practice of tree planting can occur at both primary and secondary levels (Barlow et al., 2007: 212; Weaver and Schwagerl, 2008: 598), knowing that the exposure of the soil to excessive sunlight on account of deforestation results not only in the dislocation of biodiversity, but also in the loss of nutrients which translates into soil infertility (Earth Island Journal, 2008: 5). The need for reforestation is all the more pressing in view of other ecological findings about Kenya which reveal an unfortunate increase in vulnerability to malaria infection in deforested areas (Afrane et al., 2008: 1533).