Prof Okaka Opio Dokotum who read this poetic tribute to Prof Oculi at The Cathedral of the Church of Advent, Abuja on August 21st, 2025 is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Lira University in Uganda
Song for the son we lost A tribute to Prof. Okello Oculi
The balladeer of Lango has rested; The polemicist of Uganda and Africa Has bowed out from the fireside; We mourn your passing, Son of Dominic Oculi.
Okello Oculi’s complex images Summersault and dive like naked kids Splashing around in River Moroto, Poetry loaded with the magnificence Of Lango landscapes, culture and life, Spiced with new layers of meaning From his literary itinerancy And cultural assimilations! The dragon vomited violence To swallow and eat you up, But good earth, opened its mouth And drained it down to the dregs Letting you flee beyond a big pond, Onto an island, where you hid for a time And grew in knowledge and wisdom. Many of your tribesmen and friends Drunk blades of butcher knives But Jojok Amalo spared your neck; You lived to tell the tales of woe! You grew restless abroad Wanting rather to be home, But what with the vicious vulture circling Hunting you for prey? Herod was not dead yet, You couldn’t head back home. Naijaland would adopt you as its own, Give you a wife, beautiful children, And a big platform to serve humanity.
The cyclops did violence to verse, Shattered your hopes of tomorrow But you held onto the tattered dreams Of yesteryears; a past landscaped in pain. When the monster was exorcised By long range artilleries, You waited a little while And visited the ancient streams, But alas, you could not connect To the source of your muse Lost in the discordant labyrinth of emptiness You only heard cacophonies of laughter From post-independence hyenas.
We sat and cherished your presence, At great Makerere University, Where your images were cut and arranged, And your metaphors welded and polished, Our eyes sparkled with excitement At meeting Okello Oculi, the legend! But your eyes, gentle and kind, Hid tons of pain and regret, And many what ifs! You recalled transient images of yesteryears Translucent memories of what was home, For who could have calculated With mathematical precision The volumes of traumas of Post independence disillusionment That flushed you out of your country The very Pearl of Africa And made you a stranger to your own land? For you were stolen from Okwalongwen village, Dokolo District in East Lango And scattered to the four winds; How are we to gather these fragments And assemble a befitting eulogy When words buckle under the weight of history?
Like Paddington Bear, I hear you say That is where I come from, This is where my home is, This is where I may be buried; Here, heap earth upon me!
Rest with the ancestors, Amazing son of Lango!!
