The Challenge for Africa (23 page)

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.

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.

Undoubtedly, the cultures that existed in the past had problems: an overdependence on an elite who determined what was acceptable and what wasn't; and an attitude that assigned every setback to God's will. Some of what occurred, and continues to this day, was and is cruel and ignorant. As we've seen in recent years in Kenya, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, and other countries, Africans are still maiming and killing each other in senseless conflicts, as well as forcing vast numbers of people from their homes to live in misery in unsanitary and overcrowded encampments.

However, there is nothing particularly African about human beings preying upon one another, or people attacking each other because of their religious affiliation or ethnic or racial background, or women being discriminated against. Furthermore, I am inclined to believe that because the precolonial societies were mostly intact and had a robust cultural life, the African cultures that were demonized by the colonizers and the missionaries had some sense of
kwimenya
that allowed them to survive the vicissitudes of the weather, the occasional wars between other groups, and cultural upheavals.
Kwimenya
would have enabled them to open up to the progressive ideas of human rights and self-determination without the jettisoning of everything their culture valued. And, surely, one attribute these societies possessed was a recognition that there was no one else to whom they could turn to solve the problems that affected them—no international donors or agencies, no government beyond their own immediate council, no big brother to look after them—apart from the resources found within their own culture. Consequently, they were forced to embrace their challenges and seek solutions for themselves.

One resource for precolonial Africans that is sorely missed is the traditional healer or medicine man or woman, which in Western terms would be defined, at least in part, as a psychiatrist. Both provide a similar service, in that they attempt to plumb the psyche in ways that cannot ordinarily be reached by either surgery or drugs. They possess a natural ability to listen and empathize, and are skilled in responding to emotional trauma and suffering. As repositories of the wisdom gathered over generations, traditional healers served an important function in indigenous societies. If the colonial administrators had not demonized them—as they had their own traditional healers—they might have been introduced to reading and writing and thus been able to share, in written form, their knowledge as it evolved with the times.