The disappearance of intellectual wealth in African communities is
directly linked to missionary work that killed professions such as
storytelling, rainmaking and divination, all of which had seasoned experts,
trade secrets and years’ worth of researched knowledge often dressed up in ritual for the consumer.
Secrets
Of course there were quacks and manipulators, and there was always incomplete research
that was tested on consumers, a new herb
that could either heal or kill. Life was its own lab. Rainmakers studied the
relationship between the plants and the smell of the air, cloud formation,
rhythm of the seasons. And when they came around like one of my grandfathers, Mghosi Tango who came from a long lineage of rainmakers, they carried with them a shekele with which they consulted the gods. Believing in the spiritual realm did not mean their knowledge was not anchored in empirical study.
Grandpa Tango lost his mojo to a proselytization flood that ridiculed his trade, and also to the local brew that soothed
the sorrows of those who found themselves without alternative expertise. Only
a western education and salaried employment in a new Africa saved those who
surrendered. Grandpa Tango had also been one of the keepers of the shrine at
Msavulenyi, just up the hill from our home, and when he died, a lot of
intellectual wealth was buried with him. Last I heard from my father, these
keepers of the shrine were trying to revive their institution because it came
with a lot of secret knowledge. What on earth did they know!
New rituals
The missionaries called all these bearers of ritualized intellectual
wealth practitioners of ungodly trades, witches, and that included master storytellers. The salvation-bringers demanded the total annihilation of the African identity, if that was ever possible, and manipulated in their own rituals. Convert villagers partook of the holy sacrament -- the ritual drinking of a new deity's blood and the eating of his body. The priest would chant: the body and blood of Christ; the supplicants would respond: Amen, and eat a piece of bread with wine. The Catholic missionaries taught that the bread and wine literally became flesh and blood of the deity at the point of consumption.
Pentecostal missionaries taught converts to sing and shouted in gibberish not so different from the indigenous diviners' switch to strange tongues during intercession with the ancestors. Somehow these new rituals were supposed to be "holier", and the African ones "pagan". These missionaries really should have done what the Romans did while using
Christianity to build empire. In the 4th century, the Romans
incorporated the beliefs and practices of local people, like the feast of Saturnalia,
which we all religiously celebrate as the birth of Christ. The failure to incorporate
African traditions in to the new Christian faith resulted in generations of
Africans with grotesque identity crises.
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| Cross Stitch artwork by Lisa Myers |
Luke Skywalker and Nyange
Among the Wadawida (Taita), some of the best storytellers disappeared
with the dawn of Christianity. Not everyone’s grandmother could tell stories
around the fireside, and if they did, not all were master storytellers. Very
few could create epic tales in the line of the Epic of Gilgamesh, The
Mahabharata, The Iliad, and more recent ones like Star Wars. The epic journey
of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars comes centuries after the equally entrancing
epic journey of Nyange, a character from a tale among the Wadawida.
The complete Epic of Nyange is as long and complex in plot and thought as
a Homeric poem, and finding someone who knows it in its entirety is like
finding the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. My siblings and I had the privilege
of knowing a master storyteller, grandma mѐ-Mwangi. She told us many incredible
tales by the fireside in the homestead where my father and his siblings grew up.
One was the Epic of Nyange. My sketchy recollection takes me to Nyange’s
encounter with tricksters who tested his wit; malicious characters who broke
his resolve; bullish encounters that drew him into physical fights, and yes, I
remember the song he would sing:
Nyange mpuke,
Nyange mpuke,
Nyange kamakamaka,
Nyange puka mndu,
Nyange puka mndu.
Army of the Lord
So long was the tale of Nyange that I almost remember it taking hours. It took that rare breed of artistry to remember
it, perform it with spellbinding mastery, and perhaps recreate intrigue with
each telling, as was the nature of orature. A lot of grandma mѐ-Mwangi's works are lost through frayed memory. The only other places they were stored was a tape-recording I lost, and a Swahili translation of some of the tales that my big brother did, and that too was lost.
I never
heard grandma mѐ-Mwangi say bwana ukaso (the Lord be praised), the common
greeting among believers in Taita. Maybe she never got saved, which would
explain her remarkable retention of all that intellectual wealth and her love for practicing it when she could. Saved griots shunned everything traditional. Not being
saved in Taita, especially for an elderly person, makes one a rebel of sorts, a conscientious objector who will
not serve in the army of the Lord! You can’t spit in any direction and not hit
a believer in Taita. And maybe, just maybe, we will one day recover some of the precious things we lost in the flood.
