We went to school to study English and forget our local wisdom tales

Dear Buregyeya;
The rains are doing us justice and it is interrupting planting time. You may know that while you people in town cry that rains affect you, us in the village rejoice for we know that our plants now have plenty of water and it is good we shall get some food at harvest time. When you come for Christmas, be rest assured that we shall have plenty of food. I also hope that the people in Rwakitura are well and in good health. But this is not what I intend to share with you.
While I was going to my gardens as usual, rain cut my journey short, and as I took refuge here in the neighbourhood for it to subsidise so I continue with my goings-on, I remembered the famous Kiga folk tale, “Kabwondera, emaanzi y’embeba” (loosely translated as “Kabwondera, the brave rat”).
Immediately, my mind ran to those good olden days when we had just joined school, every Tuesday, there was a story telling time in class. We would tell the stories in vernacular, and my late mother would tell me a story every Monday night, which I would reproduce on Tuesday. As we went to higher classes, we would start being bitten for speaking vernacular and the story telling also seized slowly. But what was wrong with the local wisdom tales?
Simply put, Kabwondera, just like very many other local folk tales, is such a rich piece of art that every person of Kigezi origin should be familiar with, at least people of my age and above. But for the sake of this note and those who may not be familiar with the Kiga folk wisdom, I will share a few lines from the tale in question here.
Kabwondera is a type of rat, small in size, but very cunning, it beats all the other types of rats you know. On the fateful day, Kabwondera, a family man, was wandering in his compound preparing to go for prayers; he would be picked up by an eagle (one of the notorious predators we knew in our children to feed on our hens and other small domestic birds.
No sooner had the eagle started “soaring to the heights” (reminds me of our business tagline at Brookings Institute), apparently looking for a tree where to sit and feast on Kabwondera, than another hungry eagle came and wished to share on the prey. The two eagles would start fighting for Kabwondera and in the course of the scuffle; Kabwondera would fall of the jaws of the eagle and onto the ground. His woes were not about to end, but had just began. His tail was injured.
He, however, went home and his wife Seforooza was happy to see him back. The description of Seforooza by Kabwondera will tell you that she was a very beautiful woman (of course today the meaning of beauty has changed). After a week indoors, like any other responsible family man, Kabwondera would go out to search for a living for his family, he met a heron, which chased after him, he entered a hole and found a snake, the snake welcomed him, Kabwondera told the snake that he was running away from the heron, the snake offered Kabwondera to enter its (snake) mouth.
Kabwondera risked going back to face the heron rather than the snake.
The heron saw the snake and decided to let Kabwondera to go. Kabwondera survived like that. As he was going back, he met school children who opened war on him. They started kicking him like a ball. He got up and ran away, entered another hole, found a sleeping snake, he came back, and the children who had been chasing him had left. He later got attacked by mother pussy cat, who took him for her kittens, which she found were asleep, she put Kabwondera down, to wake up the sleeping young ones, Kabwondera escaped.
Remember Kabwondera had gone to look for what to eat, he ended up at an old woman’s house, he found source at the cooking place, he climbed into the sauce pan, he fell in the sauce pan, and the old woman came with a mingling stick to beat him. He wanted to kill him in the sauce pan, she put fire, Kabwondera was threatened, ended up urinating in the source after attempting to hit the cover, but unsuccessfully biting the pot, he started saying farewell to his colleague rats, especially his wife with whom they had not had kids. The old woman picked the sauce pan to warm it so that Kabwondera is burnt as well. The woman poured the sauce “emboga” and Kabwondera ran away. He ran home.
To cut the long story short, that was Kabwondera’s story. Whenever I reflect on this tale, I feel the truest depiction of the inequalities in society. I think about the common people (have nots), who are “hunted” by the well to do people (haves). I later ask myself, why we use Karl Max’s theory to describe society and not use Kabwondera to describe the same.
Whereas I am disappointed with myself that I am writing this story in English, I am also aware that I would be risking it (this note) not being read if I wrote it in vernacular, but this will be business for some other day.
Do we still ask ourselves why the colonial education system may not be necessarily enabling us to be better African citizens, it is because we are still subjected to a foreign system of learning and we abandoned ours. We went to school to learn how to read, write, and speak English, and we ended up unlearning our locally generated learning system, our source of pride and sovereignty, our originality.
I am happy I have shared about Kabwondera, and I hope this triggers your mind to think about the wisdom we need to re-awaken for the better part of our society, to understand ourselves better for the better of future generations.
Until my next note, stay well my friend. Greetings from Kigarama.

Mr Kyokwijuka is the executive director at Youth Aid Africa, and CEO at Brookings Institute.
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