The lies that bind
It is common to hear all manners of talk claiming that this one thing or the other is un-Tanzanian and thus, does not go well with our tradition.
Most recently, we have heard this voiced volubly by proponents that are rabidly anti-lesbian and gay rights. To be honest, I am against lesbianism and gayism being handed the sort of free reign to even campaign for it to gain more followers as if it has certain inalienable values from which human kind can gain.
But then again I, like others who believe in human rights, believe that we ought to leave certain individual rights for those individuals to do as they please with a caveat -- as long as those rights do not infringe on ours in the public space.
What worries me, however, is how we continuously use “not our tradition” loosely to “give the dog a bad name and stone it.” All around us, there is no denying that gays and lesbians have existed amongst us, long before the West had a chance to make it legal for this group in our midst to not only do as they please, but also to go ahead and marry and have the rights that those who are heterosexual have.
Sadly, as we rave and rant against this minority in our community, we have, like the proverbial ostrich, buried our heads in the sand with these soliloquies –these habits are alien to us.
It reminds me that these days we have very little we can genuinely refer to as our tradition, that we ought to retain given the habits we see all around us.
Take the problems we have with teenage pregnancy and child marriage. We know for a fact that back in the day, girls became ready for marriage soon after becoming teenagers. That this was taken with pride in our society is not news and in tackling the problem we must now admit, with education that there ought to be first and foremost an acknowledgement that all these acts, which extol the virtues of mwari (unmarried young lady who’s come of age) in this century without accompanying with realities and facts of today’s challenges are our way of deluding ourselves while our generations to come continue to become mothers while completely unprepared for motherhood in today’s challenging times.
It leads one to think that for some reason we are a society obsessed with lying ourselves to sleep. What are the things that we can honestly say are the age-old traditions we have retained and which are followed to the letter and are useful to good order in the community to date?
It is difficult to think of them seeing as order, respect for the aged, children, the infirm and disabled has been replaced with daily reminder we have no place for these lot in the society.
We have no place for the disabled or the aged both of whom we routinely either hide at home away from the prying eyes of the community or we take to homes of the aged, that is, if we do not outright murder them under the guise of having rheumy and red “witch” eyes.
Yet it is common place top hear all and sundry claim that our Tanzania is an example of love for immediate & extended family and our neighbours at large.
There is little doubt in my mind that this endless stream of lies continues as we have taken up the so-called Christian names yet continue to do very many un-Christian things like visiting the Sangoma (witchdoctors) for tambiko (exorcising of spirits).
Are we surprised these was a huge delegation of witchdoctors doing their thing along Iringa-Morogoro road allegedly to exorcise the highway from “killing people” in road traffic accidents? We continue to lie to ourselves that we are holy as we routinely attend prayers at either church or mosque. Yet look around us at how much we are in love with lies, murder, sorcery, theft and generally do everything that is evil to the very best of our capability.
Kasera Nick Oyoo is a research and communications consultant with Midas Touché East Africa.
