Preserving oral literature through ink

The fact that a people without culture are a lost people needs not to be emphasized! Rwanda like most other African societies is an oral society. As such writing and reading has kept eroding us despite making progress in other socio-economic set up. The silent disaster that is looming as a result of our complacency and lack of concern to document our literature is that we shall lose part of our cultural heritage for posterity. In the past, our fore parents would gather around fire places, both young and old and the children would learn from the adults and in this way information and cultural mores would be passed on from one generation to another. Through this interaction, children were often exposed to stories, riddles, poems all of which were intended to direct them to live successful and productive lives. And in this way our cultural mores would be passed on from generation to generation and hence be preserved for posterity. Today, fireplaces are no longer used as classrooms for cultural lessons. Fire place stories have been replaced with Television, Video games, Play stations and other Technological fall offs. We are busy parents and we hardly find time to interact with our children and as long as we can provide shelter, clothes, food and pay school fees for our children we are successful parents. We are wrong! To counteract the disastrous effects of technology we need to engage our children in books and reading. We need to write books both in Kinyarwanda and foreign languages such that we share our cultural heritages with those who cannot read our language. Particularly we need books in Kinyarwanda on culture, mores and traditions to replace stories that our forebears used to teach their children on important values. Otherwise our children will lose their core identities. As already aforementioned a people who can neither write nor read its language is a lost people! More so, we should be concerned with the kind of literature our children are exposed to in face of technology? A story is told about a young African boy who was accidently killed when he tried to make a bomb. He had gotten information from the internet! We might idly sit back and enjoy technology advancement, but we forget its disastrous effects. For example, whereas we can control the choice of books our children can read, we have no control of what programs our children watch on Television! In the light of all this, it’s time to re-invent our thinking and give a book its due glory. In the face of technology and other factors at play, can we preserve our language if we cannot write? Will writing make sense if we do not groom and develop a culture of reading? I do not think so. All those who have a stake and interest in the preservation and development of our culture should support and encourage indigenous authors. Language is the main repository of our cultures and to preserve our language is to preserve our culture. It’s in books that our beautiful stories, riddles, poem, proverbs will be passed onto the future generations to come. It’s in books that stories that taught us moral lessons and peaceful co-existence can be retold to our children. In short, books will help us preserve our rich cultural heritage for posterity. At the heart of the successful incorporation and development of such initiatives and programs is the Government. It is a state responsibility to ensure that favourable policies are designed to promote such initiatives. For example can the Ministries concerned (Ministry of Education/Ministry of Culture and Sports) set up a writers fund to support local authors? Also the Government should ensure that there are reasonable financial allocations on an annual basis for buying books, developing school and community libraries. Our curriculum needs to integrate creative writing and reading at the center of teaching and learning process. Teachers should not be taken off the hook; they determine children’s understanding, interpretation and acceptance of what they learn. So, teachers need to be sufficiently involved in education development and planning process. The author is an Educationist and founding member of Rwanda Book Development Initiativerwabodirwanda@yahoo.com