SCI-CULTURA

This post is in response to a meme that is making its way through the Afroblogosphere, having been tagged by Afromusing.

Why do I blog about Africa? To be honest, this is one of my most difficult posts because there are a multitude of reasons and layers within layers that  I couldn’t possibly convey effectively in a single post and feel understood. It’s also a very emotive and personal subject matter. That said, it is wholly relevant and appropriate. In short, the answer actually lies within the blog itself. I.e. Every post is a piece of the jigsaw and it is also evident when you read in between the lines and blog posts.

I will attempt to shed some light on my cryptic answer, by telling you a bit about myself. I am intrigued by human behaviour, beliefs, values and self expression e.g. through the arts, which is why culture is the obvious subject matter for me. Culture is a nebulous topic which therefore dictates diversity in content and that means the next post is a surprise even for me. I blog about African culture specifically because ever since I lived away from the African country of my birth (Kenya) as I grew into a young adult, I started to ask questions about things I had previously taken for granted. I would listen to myself whenever I spoke of “Africa” and feel like a fraud because I had the awareness that I didn’t actually know what this thing called Africa is and what being African really means. I am therefore chronicling my journey to craft a multi-pronged answer to these questions.

We are young nations that make up Africa and I strongly feel that we need to define Africa for ourselves. Brace yourselves for what will sound so cliché, but I am who I am because of Africa. In getting to know Africa, I get to know more of me through discovering another fragment of my identity. Admittedly, I could do this in my private journal, but I blog in a public space in order to document, much like a historian what inspires me about Africa. And so I do this first, for myself, and in doing so, I hope I to feed some minds and stir some debate and/or curiosity, and even challenge perceptions. I blog about Africa to observe and scrutinise the past in order to understand the present, as well as the dawning future. To explore the Africa of here and now. To explore the links that Africa makes with the rest of the world. To challenge and dispel the untruths of what this mythical singular place called Africa is. To showcase the diversity and depth that Africa has to offer; both on the continent and around the globe, by people who call themselves Africans and those of African ancestry either in recent memory or distant past.

I think that’s as succint as I could be. Salif Keita, help a sister out (you certainly need to crank up the volume for this one – I get goosebumps every single time):

Update 09/12/2008: I asked the Displaced African why he blogs about Africa and this is what he had to say.

Some of my friends (mainly the handful of readers of this blog!) have asked me why I am not blogging on the violence that has rocked our beloved Kenya since the fateful election fiasco. I find it impossible and frankly out of question to do so, given that I am not currently living in the country. What can I contribute when I am not there to fill my lungs with the rusty smell of dried blood; or to witness the glistening edge of a panga held high and tight in mid air under the hot sun, by the owner of fixed, glazed, determined eyes; or to look into the sad beady eyes of an orphaned child or a parent banished to being flooded with the razor-sharp cutting pangs of grief that inevitably come with mourning a child; or to feel the vibrations of the earth under me, not of the habitual tremors but of Kenyans, running for their lives.

Who am I to have an opinion from a safe, detached, albeit technologically shortened distance? Simply put, I do not qualify.

Like many other Kenyans in the Diaspora, I am living turbulent Kenya virtually – through blogs, online news articles, YouTube videos and regular candid conversations with family and friends. The violence broke out towards the end of my month-long sunny sabbatical in Kenya. I did not feel ready to leave, at a time that my beloved Kenya was going through such a momentous and tormentous time. I could feel it. We all could. A time that would be marked in the pages of our history with innocent blood and analysed by scholars and wananchi alike for eons to come. It was make or break time for this thing called Kenya, as Binyavanga Wainaina simply but effectively coined it. The layer upon layer of injustices, frustrations and suppressed anger that had been accumulating over the years and forming a palpable mound under our national carpet could no longer be quietly concealed. Or ignored. Or viewed through the rose-tinted lenses of 6% economic growth. The seams had burst at the edges and we watched, mouths agape in horror, as the unspeakable propagated throughout the land like malignant tumour cells turning against the body that nourishes them. People were dying. Women and girls were being raped. Homes were being torched. And more.

But how could I stay on in Kenya and risk losing my academic job in London, my livelihood, my career?

My sabbatical was over and I had a rendezvous with KQ to airlift me out of the dark depths of pandemonium and despair. Non-stop to destination: London. I lied to myself that the spate of violence and atrocities would soon come to an end. Surely it was only a matter of time. After all, Kenyans are self-proclaimed and objectively labelled peace-lovers, and have been an oasis of hope and an example not only to our neighbours but sub-Saharan Africa at large. Surely come February we would be talking of nation-building and IPOs once again.

Back at work and the guilt started to creep in. At first it came as occasional nudges as I spent significant chunks of my working day online, reading anything and everything that I could get my mouse to click onto. And then it wound its way. Gently, quietly meandering through me like a slithering snake and slowly eating in like caustic acid until it found a comfortable place at the core of my being. It had consumed me. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally. Why did I leave in the first place? I walked the “streets paved with gold” with a blank, empty and disconnected gaze. Distracted and consumed by my disorderly thoughts. Physically I was in London, but my heart was still in Kenya. With time I started to become somewhat detached, despite continuing to immerse myself in the on-goings, but now with a less than frantic fervour. Actually it wasn’t immersion. It was more like floating. Suspended at the interface between two distinct worlds, air and water. Kenya and London. I didn’t quite fit in and connect with London like I usually did. Something was missing. I longed to laugh and really mean it. To fill my body with endorphins that would lift me up, soaring like a weightless bubble, floating on an ephemeral but exhilarating high. I wanted to avoid the sympathetic, concerned gaze from colleagues and non-Kenyan friends who sought my analytical rant on the shocking images and sounds that poured into their living rooms. I just wanted to be. To feel and not to have to put words to what I was feeling. And with time I noticed that surrounded by British accents, red double-decker buses and wool winter coats in determined, urgent stride, I had become somewhat detached from the escalating body count. I stared at the various shapes that formed numbers on my computer screen, unable to comprehend or imagine how each and every single one was being buried and mourned for in a Kenyan home. I also started to react like some of my non-Kenyan friends did when I was in Kenya – making calls or sending text messages to enquire after the people I love, having watched or read chilling BBC news reports that felt so close to home. It is home.

The SMS.

I awoke one morning to a simple yet poignant text message from a dear friend in Nairobi that declared, “Kenya is dying”. Just like that. Raw and piercing. No how are you? No niceties. No sugar-coating. Like a true friend. Those 3 words grabbed hold of me by the shoulders and shook me, releasing me from my self-imposed prison. I felt my body resonate with the vibrations of my pounding heart as I subconsciously drew in long, hurried, deep breaths into my rising and falling chest. Rising and falling. Rising and falling. It was my moment of truth and barefaced honesty. The time to face my demons. My demons are really myself… Fairytale Kenya no longer lives here. I have now allowed it. The emotions, the feelings, the thoughts, the fear, the disappointment, the anger, the unanswered questions sit with me. They rise through my being, drifting upwards like tendrils of smoke, flowing freely like a river that is powered by an unseen force. They reside within me and all over me. I can feel them on my skin as goosebumps and sitting underneath the domed spaces of my arched arm hairs. I can taste them in my mouth as they slide on my moist malleable tongue, forming syllables that are carried by the vibrations in my voicebox, making sounds that merge and collide to form coherent, articulated words.

What is more important – my career or my country? Everything is a choice. Not choosing is a choice.

For a person who thought I was living by a decent set of values, constantly challenging my perceptions of the world and broadening my outlook, and sometimes irritating those close to me with my idealist views, the saddening and depressing state of affairs in Kenya has greatly humbled me.

What am I willing to give up for my country?

This episode in Kenya has given me a renewed and deeper sense of utmost revered respect and gratitude to Kenya’s fallen, largely forgotten heroes. Men and women who put aside their children, their spouses, their friends and gave all they had – their lives – so that I could grow up in post-independence Kenya. So that I may never know what it is like to pay allegiance to the monarch of a distant, foreign land. So that I may have full rights in the land that my ancestors from a number of communities trode upon and eventually nourished with their decomposing flesh. The earth that now feeds me. So that I may have the choice of where I would live. So that I may vote for my leaders. I have since dismounted from my anti-colonialism high horse as Kenyans are violating some of these rights as they attack, oppress and kill fellow Kenyans.

As the tears silently glide their way downwards, my windswept face their only witness, in stark contrast to the loud, unruly thoughts that fill my grey matter, the question I ask myself now is what can I do that is meaningful for Kenya seeing as I have chosen to stay here?

Since early childhood, as I suspect in any African home, we grew up with the mantra “respect your elders”. This has been inexorably engrained in my brain, like a moulded figure in dried cement, and frankly is a decent code to live by. Whether aged 10 or 40, no well-mannered younger person would hesitate to give their seat up for an older person or allow them to be heavily laden with luggage. When speaking to an elder (with exceptions of course e.g. playful grandparents), the eyes along with the tone of voice drop and a humble posture adopted. In later life, when the younger person is of working age, they tend to the elder ones’ needs with love and respect. A connection to Ancestral veneration is apparent, which is characteristic to African Spirituality, widely practised prior to the bush fire-like spread currently dominant religions such as Christianity and Islam. In traditional communities, upholding elders with high regard was standard practice – not only did they possess wisdom from their many years on earth, but they too would soon be joining the realm of the Ancestors in the spiritual plane. (I will address African Spirituality in a separate post)

My great disappointment in my nurtured idealist views when I became an adult, was the realisation that older people in my circles that I was supposed to respect by virtue of their age, were making judgements or carrying out actions that were in conflict with my own values. How then could I respect such a person? As an African in the Diaspora who is a statistic of migration patterns and globalisation that have reasonably contributed to the creation of multicultural societies, the pluralism of my identity – and I suspect for others in a similar situation – can be as much of a blessing as it can be a curse. There are certain overt traditions that we continue to live by whilst others that remain tacit, that can be a source of conflict, both with yourself and with people in your circles. Some of these traditions that I am alluding to are not explicitly defined; they are implicit in people’s demeanour and responses. In some instances I tread with caution and figure it out as I go along. One of my dilemmas has been how to handle interactions with older people who demand respect when I feel that they do not deserve it based on their discourse or behaviour. Interestingly, respect may be defined in a myriad of ways, depending on your environment. For example, not speaking unless you were spoken to was a code of conduct that my high school teachers during my eventful stint in a Kenyan national boarding school sneeringly enforced, and got me into trouble numerous times until I learnt that the definition at home was not in tandem with the one at school. Although it is so clichéd to dwell on hindsight as the best teacher, I can look back with 20-20 clarity that those teachers were forcibly demanding respect as opposed to gaining it from us. The concept of a Kenyan boarding school is far too complex to go into, but although it wasn’t apparent at the time, it was certainly character building! Someone must be blogging on it before lights out…I digress.

What then is the answer to how to uphold your own values without being ostracised in your community for speaking your mind, which is (wrongly) translated to being disrespectful of your elders ? How do you handle Auntie or Uncle so-and-so who grates you with racist / tribalistic / sexist / homophobic / just plain ignorant comments that proliferate one of the many –isms and does not allow room for an open discussion? After a number of failed attempts to respectfully explain my views to an apparently disinterested elder, my strategy is now avoidance at all costs. And if we happen to bump into each other at an event, family or otherwise, I say a quick hello and exchange nicieties (if at all), followed by a swift exit. Shame isn’t it?