and England made to feel like some dull oaf
is is smoke, enough to sting one person's eyes
and ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf.
1981
NGUGI WA THIONG'O
b. 1938 NgugT wa Thiong'o was born in Limuru, Kenya, where his father was a peasant farmer. He was educated at the Alliance High School in Kikuyu, Kenya; Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; and Leeds University in England. In the late 1960s, while teaching at University College, Nairobi, Kenya, he was one of the prime movers behind the abolition of the college's English department, arguing for its replacement by a Department of African Literature and Languages (two departments were formed, one of literature, the other of language). His novels include Weep Not, Child (1964), about the 1950s Ma u Ma u rebellion against British rule in Kenya, A Gram of Wheat (1967), about the war's aftermath, and Petals of Blood (1977), about the failure of the East African state, and he has written plays and novels in his native Gikuyu, also sharply critical of post-independence Kenya, such as the novel Matigarima Njiruungi (1986). In 1982, after his imprisonment in Kenya and the banning of his books there, NgugT
left to teach abroad, most recently at New York University.
At the beginning of Decolonising the Mind (1986), NgugT declares the book 'my farewell to English as a vehicle for any of my writings. From now on it is Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way.' Although NgugT has subsequently modified this position, he lays out starkly the case against English language and literature as tools of colonialism, which continue to have insidious effects long after formal decolonization. As the student of a British colonial education, NgugT came to feel that, because of the close relation between language and cultural memory, the imposition of English language and literature severs colonized peoples from their cultural experience?an experience best recovered and explored in indigenous languages.
From Decolonising the Mind From The Language of African Literature
HI
I was born into a large peasant family: father, four wives and about twenty-
eight children. I also belonged, as we all did in those days, to a wider extended
family and to the community as a whole.
We spoke Gikuyu 1 as we worked in the fields. We spoke Gikuyu in and
1. Bantu language spoken in western Kenya by approximately five million people.
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25 10 / NATION AND LANGUAGE
outside the home. I can vividly recall those evenings of story-telling around the fireside. It was mostly the grown-ups telling the children but everybody was interested and involved. We children would re-tell the stories the following day to other children who worked in the fields picking the pyrethrum flowers,2 tea-leaves or coffee beans of our European and African landlords.
The stories, with mostly animals as the main characters, were all told in Glkuyu. Hare, being small, weak but full of innovative wit and cunning, was our hero. We identified with him as he struggled against the brutes of prey like lion, leopard, hyena. His victories were our victories and we learnt that the apparently weak can outwit the strong. We followed the animals in their struggle against hostile nature?drought, rain, sun, wind?a confrontation often forcing them to search for forms of co-operation. But we were also interested in their struggles amongst themselves, and particularly between the beasts and the victims of prey. These twin struggles, against nature and other animals, reflected real-life struggles in the human world.
Not that we neglected stories with human beings as the main characters. There were two types of characters in such human-centred narratives: the species of truly human beings with qualities of courage, kindness, mercy, hatred of evil, concern for others; and a man-eat-man two-mouthed species with qualities of greed, selfishness, individualism and hatred of what was good for the larger co-operative community. Co-operation as the ultimate good in a community was a constant theme. It could unite human beings with animals against ogres and beasts of prey, as in the story of how dove, after being fed with castor-oil seeds, was sent to fetch a smith working far away from home and whose pregnant wife was being threatened by these man-eating two- mouthed ogres.
There were good and bad story-tellers. A good one could tell the same story over and over again, and it would always be fresh to us, the listeners. He or she could tell a story told by someone else and make it more alive and dramatic. The differences really were in the use of words and images and the inflexion of voices to effect different tones.
We therefore learnt to value words for their meaning and nuances. Language was not a mere string of words. It had a suggestive power well beyond the immediate and lexical meaning. Our appreciation of the suggestive magical power of language was reinforced by the games we played with words through riddles, proverbs, transpositions of syllables, or through nonsensical but musically arranged words. So we learnt the music of our language on top of the content. The language, through images and symbols, gave us a view of the world, but it had a beauty of its own. The home and the field were then our pre-primary school but what is important, for this discussion, is that the language of our evening teach-ins, and the language of our immediate and wider community, and the language of our work in the fields were one.
And then I went to school, a colonial school, and this harmony was broken. The language of my education was no longer the language of my culture. I first went to Kamaandura, missionary run, and then to another called Maanguuu run by nationalists grouped around the Glkuyu Independent and Karinga Schools Association. Our language of education was still Glkuyu. The very first time I was ever given an ovation for my writing was over a composition in Glkuyu. So for my first four years there was still harmony between the language of my formal education and that of the Limuru peasant community.
2. Flower used to produce a natural insecticide.
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NGUGT: DECOLONISING THE MIND / 253 7
It was after the declaration of a state of emergency over Kenya in 19523 that all the schools run by patriotic
