I had an interesting conversation with a Gambian friend not too long ago. Being a Mandinka, I asked him to tell me their version of how the world and humans came to be. His response was simple: “I’m not sure there’s anything like that anymore; now, it will be hard to differentiate between Madinka tradition and Islamic tradition”. I had this same conversation with a South African friend. I asked this Zulu brother to tell me about the Zulu story of creation. Sizwe stared at me with a puzzled look and proceeded to tell me about Adam and Eve!
Well, after I picked up myself from the floor with laughter, I tried to tell him about the Akan account of creation but I soon realised my own knowledge on the topic was not very impressive either. I spent a good part of the day searching my memory for what I can remember of Nana Nyankopon and how he created man, but I was drawing blanks. And it was not just the creation I did not know. My knowledge of my cultural heritage as an Akan turns out to be shocking. I could not give you dates for traditional festivals, I could not tell you much about the Abusua and its constituents, proceedings of a naming ceremony, names and their meanings and significance and I could not even name the days of the week without stopping to have a deep think. And I am not alone in this boat. Many of my peers are just like me. We are a generation of Gas/Akans/Ewes/Zulus/Mandinkas who know very little about our heritage as a people. And if you think we are bad, take a look at the generations behind us. Most of them who have been born on the continent cannot even have a fluent conversation in their native language. What we have now is a generation without a firm cultural grounding. We lack a good understanding of who we are as a people, so we drift through life like a rubber bag in the wind. We look upon our own with scorn but hurriedly adopt foreign cultures and try to make them our own.
But we cannot blame ourselves for the kind of up bringing we received. The blame lies with our society, our parents and an educational system that has largely outlived its purpose. Growing up, most of our parents and the school curricula belittled and condemned most of our cultural practices as heathen, desolate, irrelevant, pagan etc.
What children learn at school about our cultural practices is only superficial. And parents have not done a sterling job either, mainly due to religious and economic pressures. I know parents who will put their tv on mute when libations are offered during televised state ceremonies but allow their children to watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks and buy them Harry Potter books to read! Somehow the Caucasian witchcraft is acceptable in their homes but our ancestral means of communicating with the Supreme Being is utterly unacceptable. We are the product of the actions or inactions of our parents, societies and a largely irrelevant educational system. It is therefore not surprising that we have become scornful of and disinterested in our culture.
I know there are those who question the relevance of the preservation of our cultural heritage. To them I say, ask yourselves if it matters. Does it matter if the expert kora player is Japanese? Or the expert on Shona language is German? Does it matter if your children grow up believing their history begun with the coming of the Europeans to our shores? Does it matter if all that you know about yourself is only what someone else has written about you? A society without a specific heritage to lay claim to, will inevitably turn to material goods and superficial urban culture to fill that vacuum. Being divorced from ones cultural heritage is to be removed from ones source of morality. What results is a broken society with no moral compass because the people have no idea where they have come from or where they are heading.
Like the proverbial bird on the Sankofa Adinkra symbol, let us take from the past what is good to enrich the present. Let’s not ignore the profound wisdom in our proverbs and philosophy, let’s not dismiss the strength in the unity of our extended family units and let’s not disregard the importance of our past in our future.
