sheng' debate, 9th International Nairobi Book Fair

now for something real ... i have been at the expo centre Sarit since wednesday, taking statistics of peeps who have come to attend the book fair ... a very boring job i should say but somehow i felt i had the resolve to push it through till saturday ... so there i was trying to look all smiley and friendly ( folks thought i was with the customer care or something when i was only supposed to keep statistics, so they kept asking me a repetitive list of tedious questions) ... after awhile, i got so bored that it showed on my face, wrote a note threatening to bite anyone who dared to as much mumble a hello ( of course i was too craven to display it), but i did everything with my gestures to show that i was a likely black mamba

so a lot of familiar faces ... marjorie, maillu, a pretty former Uonian known as Kingwa Kamencu(she had a lovely smile) ... oh, and i finally put the face to the name Potash ... he looked every part of his blog, a typical artist ... i liked him immediately ... through Potash i learnt a lot about blog-writing and activities at Kwani ... then there was the sheng' debate ... it took place today between 2-4 ... a lot of familiar peeps were there ... Oyunga Pala, Clay Muganda, Caroline The Poetess-can't recall her last name , guys from Ukoo Fulani and so many dudes and chicks from the world of writing and art.

nways, the debate began ... i perched myself on a seat and listened ... Oyunga Pala said that sheng' is a language of the future, his grandkids would have it as their only language and probably his great-grandkid would be a sheng' lecturer, he also added that it was a unifying language, one that had effectively cut across the famous battle-lines of the 42 tribes in Kenya and probably for anyone below the age of 25, the only language they loved ... Clay Muganda was of a different opinion ... he doubted whether sheng' had garnered enough aces to qualify as a fully-fledged language ... he was also refuting the idea that sheng' belongs to a particular generation ... President Kibaki himself says kujienjoy ... another dude further reiterated that too lock a language in culture is to arrest its development ... sheng' has to shift from the 'hood' paradigm if it is to survive, and he pointed out various examples of the indo-eurasian languages that could not be traced to a particular race or group of people ... i totally agreed ... i suck in sheng' and the only reason i suck in it is that i do not feel that i possess it ... it is a language of the 'street' and i did not grow up in the 'street' ... i grew up in a farm with wheat and maize and tractors and cows and sheep ... my parents emphasized on 'correct' languages so i never bothered to learn sheng' in school (i was a good lad-i listened)

the Ukoo Fulani dudes were obviously so much in defense of their precious language ... and it was beautiful to hear their mastery of the poetic flow of sheng' ... they even told us that what they were speaking was not even sheng' ... that if they were to switch to the real 'mtaa' one ... the one that evolves every 24 hours, all of us would simply float ... it appeared somewhat that the language was more or less meant to be a certain form of code ... mike from the ukoo group said that sheng' can be traced back to the colonial days when people had to find ways to communicate so that they could hoodwink the keen hard taskmasters that made the government of the day ... and from that it grew to what it is today

but it was carol who really moved me ... she spoke about her fluency in kikuyu and how english is still so foreign that she keeps discovering new things about it every day ... she teaches kids and was simply wondering how amazing would it be if they could be allowed to express themselves in sheng', their first language of expression

her sentiments made me remember my childhood ... those halcyon days when i puttered around like a lame tractor mumbling Keiyo to everyone ... there are words in Keiyo that have no English equivalent ... and there are activities that Keiyo people do that cannot be explained in the same-said English ... 'kesute sotet'is the act of taking a burnt piece of a dried twig of the 'nerkwo' tree(don't think the Queen can say that in her language) and smearing the charcoal on the insides of a guord within which milk would be stored to ferment and make 'mursik' ... see how long it took me to explain that, and when i speak Keiyo i simply say 'kesute sotet'

in school i read english books about 'fair-skinned lasses' with long 'locks of golden hair' who went about 'moors' picking 'daffodils' in the 'spring' ... i still cannot picture that adequately but i still had to read those books and force myself to believe that i actually understood what was going on ... but what about the world i grew in ... what about the trees and the insects, the relations and names of the different types of rock ... those could and still can only be explained in Kikale ... i know various species of ant but one can only know i do if i speak about them in 'keiyo' for those dudus were in 'keiyo' land and so my people had names for them while the British who grew up in the islands of the UK can only say one word - 'ant' if they arrive in my homeland

definitely, we cannot start undermining the importance of English, it is so much necessary as a global language and it would be impossible to conduct corporate affairs and meetings in sheng' or any other 'vernacular'(i hate the word but i have to use it) languages ... but still to inculcate a child with other languages when one could simply be instructed in the one he or she is really familiar with is too cripple him or her ... it is not healthy to force kids to speak a certain language at home or at school ... as is the scenario nowadays ... let them speak the language that is in the environ ... through that they would be able to appreciate the world much better ... otherwise they would just be floating somewhere in the clouds, completely unaware of what is going on around them ... children from the rural areas fail national exams not because they are stupid but because they do not have an adequate command of english-what a waste of brain?

at the end of it all i believe any effort made to curtail on the development or the speaking of a language will and should be resisted ... sheng' is a very beautiful child born out of our very beautiful african languages ... anyone who looks down on it is clearly missing out on the big picture i should say ... but that is just my thought!