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Business Opinion
Monday, December 17, 2001
Trees of Peace: How Excisions
Will Destroy Our Cultural 'Memory'
By SULTAN SOMJEE
It is sad that 10 per cent our of
forests are to be destroyed. When we destroy our forests, we are
in the process also destroying our social and spiritual heritage.
This is the heritage of human values handed down to us by the
people who live or have lived close to the earth and the trees.
Neither modern school education nor the modern state has the
capacity to impart or replace this heritage.
As far back as 1932, Paramount
Chief Wambugu of Nyeri told the colonial government that the
forests of Mt Kenya were a gift that God had given the community.
In East Africa, we did not preserve
the thoughts of the forefathers in written manuscripts. Now, our
visual and oral traditions are passing away, courtesy of the
European legacy of literacy. Sacred, or peace trees are the last
remaining symbols of the tradition that maintained peace among
communities and harmony with the environment.
These trees fostered civil values
in a variety of contexts. The migration paths of the three great
traditions of East Africa – the Bantu conglomerate of cultures
originating from West Africa, the Nilotic from the Nile corridor
and the Cushitic groups from the Red Sea region – are landmarked
by sacred trees. Till today, groups from each of these three
streams evoke the olive tree, the fig tree and the acacia in their
prayers for peace.
Specifically, the destruction of
Narok and Kikuyu escarpment forests will cut the Dorobo/Ogiek off
from their heritage. I once heard an Abasuba elder say that when
you cut down a tree, you sever a relationship with someone in the
village.
Among many ethnic communities of
East Africa, peace among people is linked to peace with the earth.
People pray under the trees, use the foliage of peace trees during
rites of passage and inhale the smoke of the sacred wood in
blessing rituals. They bless the earth with branches dipped in
water, milk and honey. Today, clergy of the Catholic church in
Ukambani, Embu and Pokot regions dip leaves of the sacred tree
into the holy water and sprinkle it on the congregation and the
earth.
Last year, the church at Othaya
blessed four African peace trees planted to heal the earth at a
mass graveyard in a Mau Mau concentration camp. Four thousand
people came to witness the healing of the earth and the planting
of the peace trees.
Some East Africans have become
detached from the ancient traditions of the Bantu, Nilotic and
Cushitic migrations. Others still honour their links with the
ancestor-migrants. For the Okiek, Maasai, Pokot, Turkana, Rendille
and Borana, trees are a part of their social life. Maasai women
anoint the oseki tree (cordia monoica) with milk and
honey while chanting this prayer:
Oseki tree, we pray
Give us permission to cut you
Surely, it is not to wound you
Or to harm you
Give us permission
It is to take peace from you
That we ask of you
Peace for our homes
But these communities become
voiceless when their groves are destroyed. And the state is deaf
because it cannot hear the prayer songs such as the one to the oseki
tree. In some areas of Maasailand, in both Kenya and Tanzania, the
peace tree olerien (Africana olea) has become a rare
sight because of the destruction of its groves. The values
associated with the black tree are being eroded in Kajiado,
Kilimanjaro and Arusha regions, where the African Olive tree is
becoming scarce. Annexing more of the Kajiado forest will further
diminish the resources available to the Maasai for their
traditional spiritual practices.
New religions and education cannot
repair the damage done to these nature-given values by the
destruction of "cultural biodiversity." And the state is
blind, for it cannot see that the Meru peace lake called Iria ria
Thaai (God’s Waters) on Mt Kenya is drying up into a puddle
because the forests are being cut down by loggers. But the Meru
elders persist in offering prayers at the lake for the wellbeing
of the land and society. The state has ignored the pleas by the
Njuri Ncheke not to cut down the Imenti forest.
At Kapsoo in Baringo District, on
the edge of the Forest of the Black Waters, stands a magnificent
peace tree – the sacred podo, intertwined with a sacred
fig tree. Here, Tugen elders offer prayers for peace and for the
security of the environment and the government. All such trees are
endangered species for their hardwood is coveted by those out to
make a quick profit from the already fragile soil of the Kalenjin.
Recently, Pokomo women of the Tana
riverine forests at Mnazini and Baomo protested against the
presence of scientists on their land. One of their concerns was
the fear of loss of their communal trees. They have experienced
this threat before, as have other citizens of Kenya such as the Il
Loita of the Forest of the Lost Child in Narok and the Mijikenda
of the sacred Makaya at the coast.
The Pokomo, Munyoyaya and Wailwana
depend on beehives and other products of the forests for
subsistence as well as for the maintenance of their social,
ethical and spiritual order. Among these groups, bride price is
counted in beehives, not cattle, and there are trees in the
forests that "listen to their souls," mediate disputes
and bring peace and prosperity. When riverine trees are cut down,
the community’s economic and spiritual security is uprooted as
the waters that supply it with fish and plants for weaving boats
and baskets begin to recede.
The pacifist Munyoyaya and Waboni
also use the forests to shelter when enemies attack. Non-violence
is the fundamental ethic of these humble people and the tortoise
is the tribal totem, for the animal best expresses the community
ethic and lifestyle.
"Development" in our
modern society is planned in offices behind closed doors and
sometimes in workshops to give it a democratic semblance, but
there is not enough listening to how those citizens who live close
to the African soil express their sense of well being, their sense
of aesthetics and how they practise their values.
People say that where there is no
beauty, there is no peace, and when there is drought, there is no
peace. Therein lies the kernel of a new constitution for Africa,
and the direction in which the Kenyan constitutional review should
look.
Celluloid images on TV, computer
screens and mobile cinemas are erasing our native imagery and the
emotions and metaphors connected to the land. The Agikuyu have a
deep historical connection with mukuyu (ficus sycomorus)
– the tree after which the ancestor Gikuyu was named, for he was
the great Mukuyu himself – as well as other trees of the
mountain of God such as muiri (prunus Africana) and mutamaiyu
(olea Africana). The fact that few Agikuyu today know
that their community is named after the sacred mukuyu tree,
testifies how rapidly we are losing our identity and values.
Like the Mau Mau, freedom fighters
of Zimbabwe drew strength from sacred trees. In Zimbabwe, there is
an ongoing renewal of a traditional belief system that emphasises
protection of trees and afforestation. Shona environmentalists use
tree names for themselves in affirmation of the bond that they
proclaim between people and the trees.
Some East Africans too give tree
names to themselves. The Turkana, for example, often refer to each
other as trees – Ekitoe for a man and Akitoe for a woman. Like
the Rendille and Maasai, the Turkana perceive trees as males and
females. Sometimes, the Maasai herder calls the male tree his bull
and the female tree his cow, in praise of their presence on the
savanna.
Globalisation will not consider
African sensitivities, for we did not invent the tools of literacy
and the electronic media. Our intelligence cannot be stored
electronically and our spirituality cannot be sensed by artificial
intelligence. The media that can yet honour early memories
comprise the environment: the mountains, the plains, the skies,
the waters and the trees. These features are all protected by the
forests, the cloth of God. The 40-odd cultures of Kenya have a
historical right to the trees and the waters. We must save them.
- Sultan Somjee is an
ethnographer based in Nairobi
Link : http://www.nationaudio.com/News/EastAfrican/25122001/Business/Business_Opinion9.html
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