Wamba’s friends and family tearfully remembered both a scholar and generous friend who enjoyed a diversity of activities.
Friends said Wamba loved listening to reggae and hip-hop music and served as a disc jockey at Harvard’s radio station, WHRB, while an undergraduate. He was also an active and influential member of the Harvard African Students Association.
Kevin Young ’93 recalled meeting Wamba at a party in 1990.
“I never knew [Wamba] to leave a party early or call it a night,” Young said. “It is strange and sad for him to leave us so early.”
“I don’t know who plans these ironies, but they are very sad and very cruel,” said Nana Twum Danso ’94, who was to have visited Wamba in Africa on the day of his memorial service.
But Danso concentrated mostly on her happy memories of Wamba, with whom she shared a passion for music and African culture.
“He was a leader, but you didn’t realize you were following him,” she said. “He had a way of bringing you along.”
Danso elicited the only laugh of the service when she said, “He was one of the smartest people I have ever met, and yet he wasn’t a geek—there are a lot of geeks at Harvard.”
Wamba’s impact, though, reached farther than just the Harvard community, according to Africana.com Chief Executive Officer Kenn Turner.
He read excerpts from a few of the more than 150 messages that have been posted on the website by Wamba’s classmates, friends, acquaintances and others whom he had never met but were inspired by his memoir, Kinship: A Family’s Journey in Africa and America.
In the memoir, Wamba wrote about his cross-cultural upbringing as the son of a Congolese rebel leader and a school teacher from Detroit.
He addressed the challenges that he and other African expatriates face and drew the conclusion that coming from two decidedly different worlds could sometimes mean belonging to neither.
At later receptions in the Carpenter Center and at Central Square’s Enormous Room, both Gates and Turner alluded to the eulogy delivered by actor Ossie Davis at the funeral of Malcolm X in 1965.
Turner addressed Wamba directly: “We bid you good night, our sweet, tall, proud, African prince.”