Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Re-Membering Africa

 

 

Remaining True to Tradition

A Child Scratches for Survival

Africa, where did our humanity and hospitality go?

A friend wrote to me these lines which give me hope (this Christmas) as I think of this child and many others like her:

You'll Never Walk Alone

When you walk through a storm

hold your head up high

And don't be afraid of the dark.

At the end of a storm is a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind,

Walk on through the rain,

Though your dreams be tossed and blown.

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone,

You'll never, ever walk alone.

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone,

You'll never, ever walk alone.

Whose Traditions Do I Hand Down?

It is now exactly five years since I enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Birmingham in England. It seems like yesterday. The journey has not been easy, though. Anyhow, Last month as I walked into the Aston Webb Building C to submit my dissertation, I remembered my first day at the campus. It was a cool, breezy September 24, 2004. I had already missed out with the orientation. So, armed with the campus map I promised myself to get the most out of my self-guided tour around the campus. The first thing that caught my attention was the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial tower standing majestically right opposite Aston Webb building. I was later to learn that this tower was designed after the tower of Siena Town hall in Italy, the tallest free standing clock tower in the world. The tower stands some 325 feet and was designed to be seen for miles around as an emblem of the University’s prestige.

As I entered the administration block, I could also not help noticing the statues of Beethoven, Virgil, Michelangelo, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Watt, Faraday, and Darwin engraved into the façade of Aston Webb building all looking down as though inviting me into the halls of learning where the future of education lies; but only after the academic traditions of the past (most importantly continuing under the great cultural heritage of European education). With all those figures from the past, one feels a dwarf, especially one who is from Africa. For a moment, I thought the stationary figures from the past casting their knowing looks on me were in fact mocking me.

Once inside the building, as I took in the architectural beauty of Aston Webb Rotunda and its architectural design, I wondered how long it may have taken the builders to bring the long magnificent Aston Webb building into being. Standing in the corridor of C block is the towering white marble statue of King Edward VII with words of his inaugural speech on July 1909 inscribed under the statue’s plinth inviting the young students to “initiate and hand down worthy traditions” to their successors. So as I wandered around I wondered which traditions I was handing down.

It also occurred to me that on 7th July 1909 when the King was officially opening the University, his representative governor was busy curving out the Kenya colony declaring it a White-man’s country. As the natives were coming out of the traditional world of war, magic and indigenous knowledge, the university was opening up avenues for young men and women who would walk the land of my ancestors declaring it the property of his majesty. It would take me five years to try and understand a past that none of my ancestors were kind enough to leave behind or was that memory emasculated? To a great measure, most of that past was obviously decapitated by the King’s young men and women, some of whom may have walked the same hallway I was now walking.

As I await my examiners’ decision whether to bestow to me the power to read (having spent years in the cold archives of Edinburgh, Cambridge, SAOS, London, Birmingham among others) I feel very proud of my accomplishment. I am excited with the research that I have undertaken. On the other hand, however, I feel sad about the very accomplishment. For whom and for what have I so much labored? Though it is difficult to answer this, I dedicate my research to the men and women whom colonialism hoped to perpetually enslave yet their resilience and ability to subvert the colonial order made them the enemy of the very King who graces the hall of the academy where, I will be (hopefully) honored to be called a Doctor of Philosophy.

Obama's visit

While I empathize with Mutuma Muthiu’s frustrations (see http://www.nation.co.ke/blogs/-/446718/622710/-/view/asBlogPost/-/12hisdm/-/index.html), I think we should not lose sight of the fact that Obama is the first sitting USA president to bring Africa to the wider conversation immediately after the G8. His visit to Ghana is a good gesture of a man who genuinely wants to engage but misinformed. It will take equally genuine Africans like Muthiu and me to inform Obama.

Is Kenya a Failed State?

Many Kenyans have been debating this question for some time now (see http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/621292/-/4luy4j/-/index.html). This is my initial take on the question. It should not worry us now that the US has declared our beloved republic a failed state. What should concern us is the leadership quagmire we are in at this point in history. It is a fact that our leaders are visionless. Secondly, no state can boast of its achievements if its citizens live under the shadow of Mungiki, ethnic cleansing, car jackers and night gangs. A state that cannot protect its own is to me a failed one.

Tribe: Any solution in sight?

Kenyan anthropologists need to wake up and think of an alternative term from the pejorative term “tribe”. Must we continue with colonial stereotype even in the postcolonial/postmodern world? When shall we grow up?