Untold And Forgotten: Stories Of Our History And Culture.

Why we need to write and tell stories about our history and culture.

It’s always interesting and amazing when our parents and grandparents tell us stories of our ancestors, and how these stories shaped society.

Storytelling has been and is still a common practice in many parts of the world, but today I will talk about the practice of oral traditional storytelling in African societies.

Storytelling in African societies.

One of the practices treasured most in African traditional societies was storytelling.

Storytelling was a shared and communal practice, and after the days work, people gathered and participated. the stories were told in various forms that included music, dance, poems, etc.

Storytelling was of great value to the societies, and it was used to teach people important lessons, morals, culture and was also a form of entertainment.

Because of storytelling history, culture and customs were passed on to the next generation, and it’s because of this that we still practice various customs to date.

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have — otherwise their surviving would have no meaning. — Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe is one of Africa’s early writers and emphasized the importance of storytelling and the storyteller’s in societies.

Why most stories are untold and forgotten in this century?

Storytelling in the African society was an oral tradition and because of this stories were not written down.

The fact that oral stories are not written down, it means that they can’t be passed down as historical records.

Oral traditional stories have been passed on for many generations and over time the details of the stories are altered and they lose credibility.

Most people heard the stories at a young age and because of old age forgot or recall bits of the stories.

Others who heard these stories did not pass them on and so they took them to the grave.

Because of these and many more reasons most of the oral traditional stories are untold and forgotten.

The outsider’s narrative.

When you research African traditions and culture today most of the content available or written is by the early explorers and scholars who came to Africa.

It’s these explorers and scholars who challenged the historical credibility and validity of the oral African stories.

But we can’t blame our ancestors they had no writing materials and couldn’t read or write.

Because the explorers and scholars didn’t believe in most of the oral traditional stories few stories were recorded.

Even though Africa is rich in history most of what we learn today is the history of Europeans in Africa.

“We can only see ourselves through European eyes, at the minimum. This makes us look at Africa with the eyes of an outsider, thus in effect giving up on our responsibility to secure the continent for African people.” — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

The narrative of our history is through the eyes of outsiders and we have also accepted what they tell us.

Because of the outsider’s narrative, many people outside Africa had and some still have misconceptions about Africa.

Do you believe people think Africans live together with wild animals and that we are all poor and speak African?

I once met a volunteer who was socked that we had five-star hotels. like seriously, you expected to find caves?

But I can’t blame them, we are to blame because we let the outsiders shape the narrative of our story, that is ours to tell.

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am — and what I need — is something I have to find out myself.” — Chinua Achebe

We can’t write history, but we can start to write what’s happening in our society today, so that we may change the narrative and misconceptions about Africa.

it’s time to change the narrative.

We can not learn our history and traditions from the outsider’s and so we need to pick up the mantle and tell our stories for the next generation.

Unlike our ancestors, we have the tools and resources to tell our stories in better ways.

We need to write, capture and record the events that are shaping our societies today because it’s what will be tomorrow’s history.

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” — Sue Monk Kidd, author.

We always tell stories every day about various topics and now it’s time to craft them for the next generation.

I know you have a story to tell, and so today write down that paragraph in a book or journal, however small it may seem. if you wrote a paragraph, and I added one, and another by someone else, before we know it, we will have a book.

If we all shared our narrative about our culture and history, I believe that the next generation will have a rich history and it will be passed on to generations forever.

“The Bible is a collection of various books and stories written by different authors inspired by one truth and together they form the greatest book in history.”

So if we all contributed to writing about our culture and history like the Bible, our stories together will make one great African history book for the next generation.


https://arnoldntende.medium.com/untold-and-forgotten-stories-of-our-history-and-culture-38316ebcc91e