A man in a white shirt on his way to somewhere stopped, looked, and saw

A man in a white shirt on his way to somewhere stopped, looked, and saw . . . Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS GANDA [End Page 40] “There are presumptions, in the world as it is now framed, of who the worthy victim is and who merits the power of full witness,” writes Caine Prize winner Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. In the following essay, she reflects on how witness frames what it means to be human. BUT FIRST: On June 18, 2022, at 14:06 hours, the Kenya Wild-life Services posted a notice to the world on Twitter: A King has rested. The message continued: “Sirikoi, one the most iconic lions of @KWSNairobiPark was born in January 2014 in the Sosian Valley. He came from the MF family one of the dominant and charismatic pride. He was a majestic lion with tactical [and] amazing hunting skills that enabled him take down big preys like giraffes and buffaloes [on his own].” The syntax and worldview has the signature of East Africa, where throughout history, the great ones do not die, they rest. That this witness and eulogy is offered to an iconic lion, a nonhuman, does not take away from this call by custodians, to the world, to make note of this passage. There is a beckoning embedded in this seemingly mundane notice that for perhaps a billion others reads like an exercise in wastage. Yet it points to a fundamental issue that sometimes gets overlooked: that of the meaning of the power of being, or the life that infuses us all under this mysterious cosmos, of the point that life, however it is lived, matters. But there is also a gesture to a particular vulnerability: the need to be attended to. Sirikoi’s feats are noted because his presence was attended to in a city that had made such “witness” possible. _______ Another animal fable, adapted from Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1988) and elaborated on in a long-ago conversation with the outstanding Kenya British visual artist Michael Armitage as we contemplated the idea of the artist as witness. Amplifying this idea, he remembered Achebe’s fable. Here is a simplified version from Anthills: The Leopard who had a craving for a tortoise-flesh gourmet meal sought Tortoise avidly all over the land. Tortoise became aware of Leopard’s lust for his flesh and proceeded to manage his presence, treading the earth with extra caution, staying close to shadows as he traversed roads that were far from Leopard’s usual roaming range. But as fate would have it, one dawn, Leopard, who was in a bad mood, was crisscrossing the savannah and turned down a lonely road. Lo and behold, there was Tortoise ambling along, whistling and ready to experience the brand-new day. “You! At last!” Leopard exclaimed. “I have caught you! Resign to your fate. Prepare to die.” Tortoise sighed. He had had a good run. Submitting to the inevitable, he said, “Fine. But allow me a final request?” Leopard, feeling magnanimous in this moment of triumph, agreed. Tortoise began to churn the soil with force. He scraped wide lines into the soil, creating holes, tearing and dumping vegetation over quite a significant radius. [End Page 41] Leopard became alarmed. “What are you doing? Why?” he cried out. Tortoise replied: “When I am dead and gone, all who pass by will bear witness to this place. They will read the disordered ground and conclude: “Two great beings struggled. It was a long and good fight. It was right here that a fierce and brave soul met his match.” _______ EAVESDROPPING ON A fascinating conversation in a coffee shop in Nairobi. I do not know who the individuals are, but one keeps going back to the notion of the “sovereign person.” It feels like a fresh amalgamation of ideas; it probably isn’t. Sovereign has linkages with authority and power, of independence and a certain supremacy over a situation. It perhaps implies a certain supra-ability to choose and act. I want to lean over and ask that person, But given the character of the world today, and a document

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