Author: Henry Munene
Date: March 4, 2007
Type of article: Literary Discourse
Source: The East African Standard http://www.eastandard.net/archives/index.php?mnu=details&id=1143965579&catid=291

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As the world inches closer to the reality of a tiny village, thanks to information and communication technology and other modern-day buzzwords, I think, culturally, we are turning modernity on its head.

In our strange way of thinking, modernity — at least on the modern, liberated African cultural front — strikes many of us as scoffing at everything that is not imported.

Now, I have heard about suits cheaply made in backstreet Nairobi, festooned with tags indicating they were "made in Italy" before being sold in another part of the city.

I am also familiar with the rather laughable culture of extolling the virtues of junk food, and dismissing everything that sustained our ancestors.

In addition, our people lived almost forever without the benefit of the so-called "modern medicine". Therefore, we buried the medicine men, torched the ritual equipment, flattened the shrines and laughed at the custodians of heritage. These were out of a fallacious conviction that all that we had was primitive and therefore what Achebe calls the "Pacification of the tribes of the Lower Niger", was a welcome.

I am a modern person who respects the freedom of people to choose how they want to live in the brave new world order. I hold no brief for those who would rather remain stuck a hundred centuries back. I, however, have serious problems with parts of the cultural orientation that is being praised as ‘cool and progressive’.

In our quest to appear liberated, we have extended our cultural wrists to be shackled with all manner of chains.

We have found tacky the age-old storytelling prowess of our people and instead, we have managed the bold and modern feat of producing zombies whose one achievement early in life is staring at the TV long enough to imbibe the mannerisms of cartoons and the sci-fi robots. In keeping with the modern trend of not disturbing the young ones, no one asks their children to read; not when the TV, DVD, iPod and other modern technological gizmos are beckoning.

So brave is our world that since old people — teachers, the neighbour — are so boring anyway, we let the boys and girls be.

Without religious, moral and other forms of guidance, we have let the coarse rap pornography, the junkies wielding guns on TV and the husky voice of red-light-district notoriety to give them so moving a sermon that, at sixteen, virginity is a blast from the past.

Things have gone so liberal that the boy, for whom you bought a toy gun when he was a toddler, has now learnt many stunts from the movies that he is now snuffing the brains around the neighbourhood.

He probably learnt about the brave, trigger-happy lifestyle from the movie where the cowboy pulled the trigger for the heck of it. Even after mugging people, no one taught him that life is precious and should not be cheapened. He will still shoot after stealing everything from his victims.

This is so much that if Africa has economically been a junkyard for trash from the West, then the same continent is officially a mass grave for the rotting vermin from all corners of the brave new world.

At the just-concluded World Social Forum, I met a woman from Latvia, who promotes reading habits among children. Latvia is not a rich country, but she says the people read.

So how could I help her, I asked. Since many in her country know virtually nothing about Kenya, how about suggesting to her some titles, especially those written by upcoming authors, so that the people of Latvia can get to learn more about Kenya.

Africa will be culturally irrelevant if what we shall present at the cultural rainbow that we call ‘the global village’ will only be a reflection of what we have aped from other cultures. I have met many writers who try to write like Jeffery Archer, Grisham, Clancy, Sheldon, Forsyth, Follet, Rusamunde Pilcher, Ludlum, Jack Higgins, Mary Higgins Clark and a host of other authors from outside Africa.

What I think is seriously ludicrous is trying to write a manuscript about, say, New York – the streets, hotels and everything there, as either seen on TV or lifted from the plot of a Western thriller – and the CIA how the agency operates – when we have never travelled out of our country, let alone our African continent to do the requisite geographical and cultural research.

The truth of the matter is that what will really count and create a niche for the African peoples at the global cultural arena is how faithful we are —and have been — to our identity all these years.

In other words, the people of New York, and other places, will have exhausted the explanation of the cultural tapestry of their backyard by the time we finish aping and getting down to writing about their world.

Pray, how can we present to the world things about which we learn through ethereal soap operas, unrealistic movies and other second hand media that leaves our boys and girls leading lives that are not lived even where the shows are produced?

You will soon have no relevance unless you sell the story that no one out there can beat you at – in terms of narrative techniques, setting and all other aspects of creativity. I bet that from Kenya, the rest of the world will be more interested in the wildebeest migration more than what goes on in the Westernised suburbs of Muthaiga, Kileleshwa, and the like.

The readers out there will read Njue Kamunde’s Kithingichi — My Father’s Bull, to see for themselves the time-tested art of story telling as it used to be conducted around the fireplace; more than they’ll want to read titles such as Inside the CIA, a script written by someone from a hotel room in Runyenjes, or Kasipul-Kabondo, without the benefit of having travelled abroad.

henmunene@yahoo.com