The Importance of Telling Our Own Stories

Having a Kenyan mother and a British father it was always important for me to embrace both of these cultures. It was also particularly important to my mother that I having been born in the UK was also exposed to my Africanness. From the day I was born my mother spoke to me in Luo — her mother tongue, which meant that I was able to communicate with my Kenyan family from the word go. Knowing my Kenyan mother tongue gave me a sense of identity, a connection to being African although I was growing up in a predominantly white middle-class environment.

I believe it is particularly important for anyone growing up in a bilingual family to be given the opportunity to learn both their mother tongue and the language of their father. In particular when one of the languages is an African language. Those parents who do not encourage it in their households are doing their children a disservice. Unfortunately due to the colonial influence, there is a tendency to neglect African languages with many Africans not speaking their mother tongue. But for me, now living in a foreign land (Germany) you may sometimes feel like you don’t belong or feel like an outsider. I strongly believe that having your own language to fall back on and having that strong connection to your culture is so very important.

Whenever I visit Kenya and speak my mother tongue to strangers it is always a kind of a spectacle. They are always fascinated by the fact that I speak Luo. They are shocked, firstly because they see this “mzungu” girl (meaning ‘white girl’ in Kiswahili) speak Luo, and secondly because they marvel at the fact that I speak it although I grew up in the UK and not Kenya, and only moved there when I was older. They always ask “How is this possible?!” Of course, I tell them that my mother is Kenyan, and I ask them why they marvel. “How am I supposed to speak to my great-grandmother if I don’t speak Luo?!”.

For many of the children I went to school with in Kenya their parents, in most cases, both Kenyan would always go on about how they wished their child spoke their native language. This confused me because with both parents being native speakers, they were literally the source when it came to their children learning their language. They had the opportunity to have the whole family speak their language to the children, whereas in my case it was only really my mother, aunt and grandmother who spoke Luo to me when I was still living in the UK.

Maybe it is because they are from the generation of Kenyans that were born before, during and just after the colonial period. The British had created a system that made English the number one language. If you did not speak English you were considered illiterate. In school, you were punished if you were caught speaking in your mother tongue which still happens to this day. It was impossible for you to achieve academic success if at school you did not pass your English exam. You would fail the year even if you may have been excellent in other subjects.

The British used Language as a strategy to control the Kenyans during their colonial rule, and unfortunately this bias toward English stuck and bourgeoisie Kenyans started to regard English as the superior language, despite the fact that at the time and even to this day for most Kenyans English was and is in the normal their second or third language.

I truly believe that as Kenyans and Africans English is not adequate for our experiences. It was used to limit us during the British rule and we need to now promote our own native languages more and more and revert to using them more widely. Especially because it continues to limit us and allow the West to exploit us and our continent. We need to learn for example from Asia, where if you want to do business, with Japanese or Chinese companies you have to speak their language and follow their customs. Why can we not do the same? We take up so much time perfecting our English, a language that is foreign to us while neglecting our own.

With the knowledge of a language (as a first language) comes the knowledge of one's cultures and traditions. These are the backbones of being able to function socially and otherwise. It gives one the ability to manoeuvre spaces, as well as have complete control over one's affairs without a sense of alienation and disorientation that comes with trying to function in a language that is not your mother tongue. Unfortunately, the grip on our language proficiency is still very much dominated by our colonial past, giving the Western countries an upper hand in their dealings with the African continent.

We are so much more than just a tourist destination or a country on the brink of civil war or epidemic.

I believe language plays a key part in changing the narrative of the African story. But for us Africans to tell our own stories we need to create in our own languages, be it in literature or business. And as a nation, what we produce must be accessible to every Kenyan whatever language he or she speaks. I feel that the history of us as people plays a huge role too. Our traditional languages are part of us. They are what defines us. They play a huge part in helping us articulate our historical customs and rituals, in particular, because so much of our history was erased. Our traditional languages are what still keep that history, our traditions alive. It also gives us a sense of self-worth. On average on the African continent, most people have a command of more than two languages. If we tell our own stories we change the narrative of how the rest of the world sees the continent.

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