Interestingly, in every seminar, participants point to the loss of traditional culture as one of the major causes of troubles such as the misuse of alcohol and drugs, irresponsible behavior toward women and girl children, high secondary school dropout rates (especially for girls), prostitution, theft, the breakup of family relationships, and the commercialization of religion. They express distress at the phenomenon of street children, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. As they analyze further the causes of their problems, many people come to the conclusion that their society has lost its accepted values and taboos and has, therefore, become both vulnerable and susceptible to any leader who promises them the immediate satisfaction of their felt needs.
In turn, the seminars aim to allow individuals to deepen their sense of self-knowledge and realize that to care for the environment is to take care of themselves and their children—that in healing the earth they are healing themselves. The Green Belt Movement's tree-planting program and Civic and Environmental Education seminars seek not only to empower the poor economically and politically, but also to encourage them to internalize a sense of working beyond self-interest and make a greater commitment to service for the common good.
In the course of the seminar, after participants have concluded that they are moving in the wrong direction, the question is put to them: “What do you do now?” It is at that point that attendees reach the state where they decide that they must take charge—not to continue going the wrong way, but to get off that bus, board the appropriate one, and start moving in the right direction.
Getting on the right bus will help them deal eventually with the long set of problems they have listed. At this point in the process, participants gain what in Kikuyu is called kwimenya, or kujijua in Kiswahili, or in English, “self-knowledge.” When they experience kwimenya, participants can confront the choices they made that led them to take the wrong bus. They can also begin to choose differently.
Attendees recognize that they cannot be fatalistic, but must acknowledge their own agency. They comprehend that they need not only to choose wisely which bus to take, but to exercise kwimenya on issues as significant as how they are governed, how they govern themselves, how they manage their resources, how they expand democratic space, whether they respect or violate each other's rights, and whether they create or destroy peace. They see that if they are going to get better governance, they have to participate in elections, and determine which leaders they want.
Exercising kwimenya entails being responsible oneself, but holding leaders responsible as well—in other words, not only protecting the soil on your own land and conserving nearby forests, but also demanding that the government protect the country's soil and forests from degradation and exploitation. The recognition of the need for both personal and political responsibility and accountability leads people to the realization of the central importance of democratic governance.
In my own personal journey, I realized that not only was I on the wrong bus, but everyone else was, too—and that one of the main reasons why we had gotten on the wrong bus was because we had lost our cultures. My analysis led me to conclude that if people are denied their culture, they are vulnerable to being exploited by their leaders and to being exploiters themselves.
The reawakening of kwimenya can provide individuals with deep psychological and spiritual clarity. There is enormous relief, as well as anger and sadness, when people realize that without a culture one not only is a slave, but also has in effect collaborated with the slave trader, and that the consequences have been long-lasting and devastating, extending back through generations. A new appreciation of culture gives traditional communities a chance, quite literally, to rediscover themselves, revalue and reclaim who they are, and get on the right bus.
RECLAIMING CULTURE
The challenge for the many parts of Africa that were decultured is to rediscover their cultural heritages, and use them to both reconnect with the past and help direct them in their political, spiritual, economic, and social development. Despite their apparent simplicity to outsiders, who might consider their own culture more complex and sophisticated as well as more relevant and practical, the expressions of one's own culture are much more meaningful and constructive to those who claim them than alien (and supposedly superior) holy scriptures, or masterpieces of literature and music produced by an occupying power. As wonderful and enriching to human experience as foreign heritages are to those who subscribe to and value them, they are nevertheless aspects of other peoples' experiences and heritage.
Indeed, through their strong power of suggestion, foreign cultures may reinforce a sense of inadequacy and nurture an inferiority complex in those constantly exposed to them and urged to perceive them as “better.” This is partly why foreign cultures play an important role in power politics, and in economic and social control. Once people have been conquered and are persuaded to accept that they not only are inherently inferior but also should gratefully receive the wisdom of the “superior” culture, their society is undermined, disempowered, and becomes willing to accept outside guidance and direction. This experience has been repeated throughout human history.
Citizens of former colonial powers are often baffled as to why indigenous or colonized peoples seem to suffer disproportionately from alcoholism, homelessness, mental illness, disease, lethargy, fatalism, or dependency. They cannot fathom why many of these peoples seem unable to relate to the modern world, why many of their children cannot stay in school, or why many do not thrive in the contemporary, industrialized world of big cities and corporate capitalism. They are surprised that their development programs don't produce the desired results and their attempts to alleviate the conditions under which so many indigenous or colonized peoples suffer may meet with passivity, indifference, resistance, or sometimes hostility.
What these well-meaning development specialists, philanthropists, politicians, and others perhaps don't fully appreciate is that indigenous or colonized people have been living a split life for centuries. In the colonial era and the decades following African independence, the cultures of the African peoples were trivialized and demonized by colonial administrators, missionaries, and local devotees. Then the pre- and postindependence leaders and the international community urged the peoples of Africa to modernize, move beyond their “tribal” inheritance, and embrace the newer cultures, readily available today in films and on television and the Internet.
African communities have been attempting to reconcile their traditional way of life with the foreign cultures that condemned their own and encouraged them to abandon it. What are people to do when everything they believe in—and everything that makes them who they are—has been called “Satanic” or “primitive” or “witchcraft” or “sorcery”? What do they turn to? What wisdom do they call upon? What can be done to resist? And when, as is usually the case, this heritage is solely oral, how can they rediscover and reclaim its positive aspects?
Before the arrival of the Europeans, Mount Kenya was called Kirinyaga, or “Place of Brightness,” by the people who lived in its shadow. The Kikuyus believed that God dwelled on the mountain, and that the rains, clean drinking water, green vegetation, and crops, all of which had a central place in their lives, flowed from it. When Christian missionaries arrived in the area toward the end of the nineteenth century, they told the local people that God did not live on Mount Kenya, but rather in heaven, and that the mountain and its forests, previously considered sacred grounds, could be encroached upon and the reverence accorded to them abandoned. The people believed this and were persuaded to consider their relationship with the mountain and, indeed, nature itself as primitive, worthless, and an obstacle to development and progress in an age of modernity and advances in science and technology. This did not happen only, of course, to the people who lived around Mount Kenya.
Over the next generations, the reverence and spirit that had led the communities to preserve specific species of tree, like the wild fig, and the forests on Mount
Kenya died away. When the white settlers and then the local communities themselves cut down the trees to plant coffee and tea and other agricultural products, encroaching farther and farther up the mountain, there was little resistance. From then on, they were seen as commodities only, to be privatized and exploited. The awe and sense of place that had allowed the communities around Mount Kenya to recognize, however unconsciously, that in order to safeguard their livelihoods they needed to protect the mountain's ecosystem, including its forests, were gone.
This is why culture is intimately linked with environmental conservation. Because communities that haven't yet undergone industrialization often retain a close, reverential connection with nature, and their lifestyle and natural resources are not yet commercialized, the areas where they live are rich in biological diversity. But these habitats are most in danger from globalization, privatization, and the piracy of biological materials, precisely because of the wealth of natural resources contained in the biodiversity. As a result, communities are losing their rights to the resources they have preserved throughout the ages as part of their cultural heritage. The belittling of indigenous culture continues for many minority groups. The source of the disdain these days, however, is more likely to be other Africans rather than people from other regions of the world.
The demonization of the indigenous cultures to which Africans were subjected for centuries extended into every facet of their lives, and left them vulnerable to diseases and social pathologies that dog them to this day. In the case of the Kikuyus, it led not only to the continuing deforestation of Mount Kenya and the degradation of the environment in the surrounding region, but also to the virtual disappearance of the cultivation of many indigenous foods like millet, sorghum, arrowroots, yams, and green vegetables, as well as the decimation of wildlife, all in favor of a small variety of cash crops. The colonizers and those who accepted their beliefs trivialized the old ways, including the owning of cattle as a sign of wealth, growing crops that evolved in the local environment for household consumption, and sourcing medicinals from local foods and plants. All of these were considered indicative of a “primitive” way of life. The loss of indigenous plants and the methods to grow them has contributed not only to food insecurity but also to malnutrition, hunger, and a reduction of local biological diversity.
In many African societies, traditional cuisine has also drastically changed, and for the worse. Instead of a largely meatless, saltless, and fatless diet, full of steamed or roasted vegetables, the colonized rich have adopted the perceived diet of the rich, with all the ailments that come with it, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, gout, and the loss of teeth. In the meantime, the poor have tried their best to catch up with the wealthier citizens, and soon suffer from malnutrition, hunger, and diseases associated with trying to chase an unsustainable lifestyle rather than maintaining a traditional, more nutritious diet.
The brewing and sale of alcohol during the colonial period provide another example of how cultural norms were subverted, introducing a new set of social problems that persist to this day. When the British came to Kenya, they banned the brewing of local beer and even initially forbade Africans to drink bottled (European) alcohol, lest they forget their place. However, once the British had built breweries and put the local ones out of business, they allowed, indeed promoted, the locals' consumption of foreign brands of alcohol, with ready cash the only constraint. Locals were given business licenses to open village bars for consumption of only the bottled brews from breweries owned by the colonialists. Before this, bars did not exist. People drank alcohol only at home or at community celebrations.
By this time, all the traditional strictures on the use of alcohol—such as allowing its consumption only in middle age and reserving its use for ceremonies or festivals—had been done away with by the colonial authorities. When the festivals and ceremonies themselves were also banned, a culture of drinking alcohol without a reason, age limits, or social controls was encouraged. Drinking halls sprouted in every shopping center and opened their doors to men, women, youth, and today, even children. When colonial laws gave Africans the freedom to drink alcohol in village bars without the restraint of cultural norms, many locals drank themselves to destruction. As elsewhere in Africa, the banning of indigenous practices had relatively little to do with maintaining purity, spreading civilization, or stimulating a love of Christ—or, for that matter, warding off the temptations of Satan. It had a lot to do with rubber, gold, diamonds, oil, slaves, and cash.
In Kenya now, alcohol and cigarettes appear to receive more attention from advertising agencies than food and medicine. The pursuit of profits is so aggressive that in small towns it is easier to identify the brands of beer and cigarettes than to know the names of the shops they're sold in or those of the centers where the shops are located. Even today, in some communities, the brewing of local alcohol is still prohibited by colonial legislation held over as part of national law. Partly because of poverty, many people often consume illegal and adulterated alcohol bought and sold in secret; many such brews have destroyed health and caused blindness and death, not to mention the breakdown of families.
TOWARD HEALING AND RECOGNITION
At long last, development agencies, religious leaders, academic institutions, and even some government officials are beginning to acknowledge the multiple facets of culture in Africa, and its role in the political, economic, and social life of African communities and nations. Environmentalists and international institutions are also coming to realize culture's centrality in the protection of biological diversity. For all human beings, wherever we were born or grew up, the environment fostered our values, nurtured our bodies, and developed our religions. It defined who we are and how we see ourselves. No one culture is applicable to all human beings; none can satisfy all communities. Just as we are finally starting to see the value of biological diversity, we are also belatedly recognizing that humanity needs to find beauty in its diversity of cultures and accept that there are many languages, religions, attires, dances, songs, symbols, festivals, and traditions, and that this cultural diversity should be seen as a natural heritage of humankind.
In addition, efforts are being made to undo some of the cultural and psychological damage inflicted on Africa by the many forces that have competed with themselves on her soil. For example, church leaders are facilitating what is being called the Africanization of the Church of Christ. African priests, for instance, will now accept indigenous names instead of demanding that an African take a European name at baptism. Performing African dances in churches (albeit with changed words and meaning) is now quite common. Farm produce and livestock rather than cash is now an acceptable part of the offertory.
New converts are not forced to discard their traditional clothing and adornments in favor of Western dress, and they can proudly accept Christian fraternity without the need to look like a Westerner. All this would probably make the original missionaries and converts turn in their graves, but it is a reflection of the new consciousness and tolerance for different cultures that many Africans—including those in mainstream Christian religions—are acknowledging.
This isn't to say that there aren't still difficulties. Even now, some African religious leaders find it difficult to preach in favor of their own culture when they have been preaching against and distancing themselves from it for many years. It takes courage to be in charge of one's own identity and recognize that one was deliberately misinformed.
Nonetheless, progressive religious leaders from Africa and Europe have begun finding political and social space for African cultures. Hence the significance of the message from the then head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop George Carey of Canterbury, in December 1993, when he publicly apologized in Nairobi on behalf of those missionaries who had condemned all aspects of African spirituality and traditions. He conceded that some facets of the culture were completely compatible with the teachings of Christ, even though some of them may have been incompatible with
European culture, traditions, and values. Dr. Carey said he hoped that this wrong would be put right so that the confidence and self-respect of the African way of life, including aspects of its spirituality, sense of justice, respect for life, and basic human rights, might be restored for Africa's benefit.
In September 1995, Pope John Paul II similarly apologized to Africans for the sins committed by missionaries when he came to Nairobi to present the report of the African Synod on the Catholic Church in Africa. He also acknowledged that not all African heritage was Satanic or incompatible with Christ's teachings. Indeed, at an open mass at Uhuru Park in Nairobi, the pope was treated to aspects of church liturgy that were borrowed from African cultures and would have been unacceptable to the missionaries and the African priests who followed in their footsteps.
The pope encouraged Africa's religious leaders to recognize that a people's culture is dynamic and must be influenced by other cultures it interacts with. Therefore, African cultures will have been affected and influenced by the cultural traditions and practices from the Europeans, Indians, and Arabs who left their mark on the continent of Africa. Nevertheless, he concluded, Africans themselves had to decide what they wished to take from other cultures, to claim what is good and retain it, and decide what was worthless at this time in their development and needed to be abandoned. Others cannot do this for Africans, the pope emphasized, without perpetuating the culture of patronizing the African people.
The Challenge for Africa Page 17