A reflection of the book: One who dreams is called a prophet (2020), By Dr. Sultan Somjee
To be a good writer (academic or otherwise), you have to be a good (re)reader. It follows naturally that the trick box for reading techniques never lacks. One technique that stands tall is SQ3R, – Survey. Question. Read. Recite. Review
I applied SQ3R to immerse myself in Dr. Somjee’s fourth book that captures four decades of work on African Indigenous Values and Peace Traditions. Additionally, on April 14, 2023, I had the opportunity to engage Dr. Somjee in an online interactive conversation on the journey of this book.
Here is my 'walk' of the book and the conversation with the author using SQ3R….
A. Survey (scanning to get a feel)
Its Massive. 600 plus pages. Scanning through the titles and the visuals, I feel native. Its rural, rural, rural. There are photos of traditional artefacts and people dressed in traditional attire. There are photos of the author in these cultural spaces. There are lots and lots of walking sticks. One picture littered with walking sticks. Another picture of a native looking map with sticks as pointers. Yet another picture with as many Masai men as there are walking sticks. For heaven’s sake even the chapter are in the sense of walking sticks!
B. Question (what answers do I seek?)
1. Surely - What’s the big deal in an African walking stick?
2. Is Indigenous just a fancy 'new' term in academic research or is there real substance that indigenous knowledge can contribute to African Social Transformation?
3. Ok – what is a socio-economist doing here. Yeah, I am sold to the idea of culture and context as significantly influencing people’s social and economic choices. But this might be going too native. Is there any relevance to the present day urbanized sub-Saharan Africa battling poverty, precarity and climate crisis?
C. Read
The book chronicles Alama’s walk in the Voice of Alama – an elder of a northern Kenyan Nilotic community. After repeated conflict with the neighboring community, Alama has been stripped of virtually all his worth. All cattle have been raided – he is left with just two old camels. His two wives have died. His children have been killed in conflict. He is humiliated in the eyes of his community being a failure as a warrior and as a man. He is left with just an old shack and a stick. Even in this weakened state, he is fighting back the festering desire for revenge. An eye for an eye. He is deeply disturbed. He desires for peace in his soul and for his community. The oracles advise him he can only find the source of peace through walking. He therefore takes his walking stick and begins the undulating journey crossing different communities and Kenyan landscapes – rural, urban, mountain, savannah – in search of the source of peace.
D. Recite (looking for answers to my questions)
1. Aha! The walking sticks. There is a deeper meaning! To the undiscerning eye its simply a support. But engaging any of the 2000+ African communities, most of whom have a walking stick as a feature of their identity, it carries so much meaning. For instance – the walking stick is oftentimes as straight as a die. Think of it – you really do not need that level of precision for the function of support. Yet there will be skilled men to source the right tree that will chisel the right stick and thereafter sweat out to smooth the stick to a shine. Reading the voice of Alama and other elders along the walk as they exchange their sticks, unravels deeper meaning.
For instance, among the Samburu the walking stick is the L’nger. Its straightness symbolizes the revered attributes of being a man in the community – uprightness (a man of his word), decisive (its either accept or leave but no in between), its smoothness a symbol of profound forgiveness and a reconciler. Perhaps the deepest meaning of all in most cases of the simple walking stick – a symbol of fending off any predator and charting through the path to protect and preserve life.
In the words of the author – why a walking stick? Well, instead of using big ticket items of African artefacts with monetary value such as the masks and other spiritual regalia – it is profound that the easily ignored walking stick carries with it such profound meaning and can unlock knowledge that the western way of thinking would have left it as a countable item or an element in a wider picture needing no further explanation.
2. Then what’s so fancy about indigenous? I was curious.
How did Dr. Somjee, a western educated ethnographer, decide to go off dancing with the Masai and recording their proverbs and asking about beads and colors that had “already” been recorded by western ethnographers. What was there to revisit?
I was surprised during the conversation with the author to discover that he had a similar experience in a traditional/cultural research field space as I had had in an urban research space! That sense of two unreconciling worlds. A dichotomy of sorts where what you see and experience seems not to find its way to the “formal” academic world in its “affidavits” of “references” and “journals” and “according to”. The gap that makes you feel somewhat a fraud. Somjee vulnerably narrated how even to present day as a decorated and celebrated researcher, he still constantly battles with these two worlds.
I edged closer to my screen to “hear” him clearer as I grew fascinated with how research in the modern world and the native world could connect.
Think of the mind of the researcher as a “window”. A window can be “tinted”. Therefore, something that was white can end up appearing green or grey from the tint. This is what western schooling does to the African researcher’s mind frame. So, Somjee was not the first ethnographer to engage the Gikuyu or Samburu or Tugen or Masai.
However, different, he was born and raised in Kenya. Before his window got fully tainted into the Western mind frame, he could still sense the gap and dared to explore it. But this awareness still needed a powerful jolt of emotions.
Post Rwandan Genocide, the American Senate passed a huge “messianic” budget of about $20 million for American researchers to go and “educate” the conflict riddled East African region about peace. Somjee – then the head of Ethnography at the museums of Kenya – felt humiliated! These “experts” could hardly point out Kenya in a map and probably did not know it existed before the assignment. To add salt to injury – their cookbook framed Culture as the root cause of conflict in Kenya. Their tainted window solution – “Deculture” these natives and Voila! There shall be peace! Ouch! With 20 years of interacting with the beauty of the 40+ Kenyan cultural heritage this was a slap to his face! He dared to demonstrate not only were the cultures peaceful but they could teach this hot air western minds a ton about peace!
But was this not just the constructivist paradigm where the researcher argues knowledge is subjective and reality is socially and contextually created?
Not quite.
A
nd this comes out clearly in the voice that delivers the story of Alama. It is the indigenous voice.
Going indigenous is not about taking photos of walking sticks and cultural dances. It is a question of whose voice matters and, in whose voice, and whose benefit do you speak and approach your knowledge. The story is written in multiple voices of African elders laced with stories, metaphors and parables – just as it would authentically be told. In that voice, deeper meaning comes through.
For example, in Kiswahili “Naskia” translates to “I hear”. Yet in Kiswahili it will be spoken “Naskia Uchungu” that would literally translate to “I can hear pain”. Hearing, therefore, is really feeling.
Another interesting example comes from Nigeria Igbo language. Many names start with “chi” such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Chinua Achebe. The “Chi” denotes a multiple self so that it is not just the voice of Ngozi Adichie but also the voice of many in her lineage speaking through her symbolizing the unbroken cycle of life of the unborn, living, living dead and ancestors – UTU.
An indigenous paradigm is value laden.It is undergirded by UTU – the preservation of life. Knowledge is collected through surrender. The researcher lets go of ego and surrenders to experience through senses -what you see, hear, feel, touch, taste, respecting what comes through as a source of knowledge. It is operationalized in the principles of reciprocity, respect, relationality, accountability and responsibility.
It is in respecting the voice of the person that knowledge is told in his voice. Not because he is a native traditional person. But because his voice matters and brings to life the knowledge that matters!3. Is all this relevant to my present-day context researching an African urban precariat navigating the neo-liberal systemic strangles founded on the exploitative and extractive slavery and colonial heritage of Sub-Saharan Africa?
I posed the question to Dr. Somjee this way – In today’s Africa where we see the trilogy of poverty – Resource extraction – and conflict (reminiscent of the evil triangle of slave trade 4 centuries ago), is the indigenous paradigm sufficient?
Yes.
The simple answer shadows the call of courage to the African researcher. Alama’s journey to social transformation (in the sense of realizing meaningful, dignified life and livelihood) was a long walk within himself and in his community.
As virtually the whole world throws stones at the neo-liberal ideology the resounding question is “what is the credible sufficient alternative?”
In my present day African context – it is the call of courage to take this long walk and open up to the senses that we experience, and really speak in the voice of the lived experience of and meaning for the African person.
E. Review (holistic reflection)
The book title is “One who dreams is called a Prophet”
Why a dream? What is a dream? A dream is hope. It speaks to intentionality. It speaks to will. It summons energy.
Being African, researching in Africa today, can draw out the feeling of never-ending hopelessness. Yet in the title and in Alama’s journey the call is one of hope. Its reflective to see the contrast in the ending of the Colonial set story of Okwonkwo – an Igbo elder who similarly takes on a walking journey as Alama but ends up hopeless, hanging off a tree (Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, 1958), and Alama’s walk set in Post – Colonial Africa - one of resilience and hope. Alama eventually finds the source of peace – within – and is able to mobilize the two warring communities to stand up to the common enemy of extractive oil companies and a corrupt violence wielding government.
In a sense, whatever the place, time or space of research in the African context – the indigenous approach provides a credible paradigm of chiseling out the seemingly high systemic and structural walls that perpetuate exploitation, extraction, violence, precarity and poverty. This is through its authentic voice bringing forth knowledge of meaning and value to the people, and its unceasing drums of hope in the sense of UTU - preserving life.
Indeed, holding on to the dream through embracing alternative ways of seeing and producing knowledge in the voice and benefit of the African person – is a cornerstone of realizing Africa’s Social Transformation.
Dreams, 1923 by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
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