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<#/><I> <h> The Oral Artist and the Gender Dimension </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>This chapter revisits the discussion of the oral artist for it is a discussion that we have generally tended to ignore or brush aside. <#/>It is my view that this attitude is a reflection of the scholar's attitude towards Oral Literature as a subject and its creators who are not members of the elite. <#/>It is, in my view, also a demonstration of the influence of the traditional approaches to the study of the subject and our acceptance of those theories despite our verbal dismissal of them.
<#/>The traditional theories have suggested that narratives are less complex, need less specialization in terms of composition and even the community's assessment of them is less specialised (Finnegan 1970:316). <#/>This has led scholars to believe that since anybody can tell stories, we can safely ignore the art or originality of the individual composers and creative artists.
<#/>The other major reason that has led to the disregard of the oral artists is the evolutionist notion of collective creation of narratives. <#/>The idea that you cannot trace any narrative to the influence of any individual great men or women has also led to this neglect. <#/>We note with Finneganthat these approaches have implications in the study of this subject. <#/>It means that: <quote_>)<quote/>.
<#/>The scholars that refer to oral narratives as survivals also indicate that there is therefore no need to apply the normal procedures of critical evaluation or even to relate these survivals to a social literary background.
<#/>This attitude is clearly reflected in our collections of the narratives as is shown in Chesaina (1991), Kabira & Mutahi (1988), Kieti & Coughlin (1990), and Kipury (1983), among others. <#/>It is not uncommon to find synopses, incomplete stories, undeveloped stories, contradictory conflicts and resolutions, unresolved conflicts, loose ends, and motifs without conflicts among others.
<#/><h> The source of the aesthetic product </h>
<#/>We seem to be totally unaware of the fact that the aesthetic product only comes from the contemporary teller and not from the remote past. <#/>We are in a hurry to reward these survivals because we believe that story telling is dying and at the end of it we end up with materials that cannot be subjected to literary criticism, since the material is of questionable quality and there is little artistry. <#/>Yet we keep writing about the great quality of oral narratives and oral literature in general as that of flexibility and unfixed quality and the artist's ability to use the freedom she has to bind together episodes, motifs, characters, and so forth. <#/>We have by and large ignored the living and creative art of the individual narrators. <#/>We are unclear about what to expect of a storyteller.
<#/>We have emphasized collections, the traditional role of oral literature, and the need to preserve materials rather than the promotion and nurturing of the artists themselves. <#/>This reminds me of a question I asked Warukenya in 1990 and the answer she gave me. <#/>It went as follows:
<#/>Wanjiku: Would you agree that stories are dying?	
<#/>Warukenya: Whose stories?
<#/>The discussion in this chapter is intended to further develop the ideas discussed in The Oral Artist (Kabira 1984) where I argued for greater recognition of the artist. <#/>The general argument at the time was that an artist takes the liberty to deal with the motif at hand and it is important to look at the kind of details the individual adds: the words he/she chooses, the authorial voice, the narrator's comments, and how she/he brings conflicts to resolutions, among others. <#/>These ideas still hold but in this chapter a new dimension is added to the analysis.
<#/><h> The Gender dimension and the story teller </h>
<#/>When we talk about gender, we are referring to those differences between men and women that are socially constructed. <#/>These differences include such stereotypical beliefs as:
<#/>men are strong ‑ women are weak
<#/>men are politicians - women are artists
<#/>men assist each other ‑ women fight each other
<#/>men are outgoing ‑ women are inward‑looking.
<#/>Very often nature is invoked in the attempt to explain these differences. <#/>The differences are seen as inborn and hence beyond the scope of social change.
<#/>It may be added here that beneath the gender differences is an ideological battle that perpetuates these very differences. <#/>For the purposes of this discussion, we may define ideology as a: <quote_>
<#/><quote/><#/>Ideology therefore demands of individuals or groups to recognise the unavoidability of their place in life. <#/>We note also that ideology is closely related to myth and, as we know: <quote_><quote/>
<#/>However we know that with every dominant ideology there is always the ideology of resistance, the ideology of the oppressed. <#/>Our discussion will therefore discuss selected stories from two artists, Wanjira wa Rukenya and Kabebe wa Wanyorocho so as to determine whether they perpetuate the same ideology and, if not, how different they are in their presentations.
<#/>We hasten to add here that the findings are not by any chance supposed to be conclusive but they should present a case for more detailed studies on specific storytellers and their world view.
<#/>The methodology used here is the narratological method where the basic questions we ask are:
<#/>who focalises?
<#/>who acts?
<#/>who talks?
<#/>who sees?
<#/>who has power?
<#/><h> Warukenya </h>
<#/>In this section we shall look at a number of stories from Alice Wanjira Warukenya, a 60 year old woman from Kirinyaga district. <#/>The choice of Warukenya is based on our experience with her and a study of her narration. <#/>She is an accomplished artist whose style has the unique characteristic of making her story‑telling events one complex whole. <#/>There are times when the characters of one story become members of the audience in another and continue their lives in those other stories. <#/>Warukenya is a very sensitive artist and an analyst of her own stories as well.
<#/>However, the reason for discussing her here is different, in the sense that we want to evaluate certain aspects of her narration? <#/>We are looking at the gender‑based ideology that permeates through her stories and comparing it with Kabebe's. <#/>We have taken three of her stories, namely:
<#/>
Kathanyi and Mucumi,	
Wacuka, Kamwanguwa and their	
father's guard, and	
The girl and the hawk.
<#/>Kathanyi and Mucumi is the traditional cruel step‑mother motif. <#/>Kathanyi is the young man who has no mother and Mucumi is the step brother. <#/>The two are in conflict with each other because Mucumi feels that his father favours Kathanyi. <#/>He therefore plots to have Kathanyi killed so that he can inherit all the property. <#/>Karindongo, however, releases Kathanyi from the trap and therefore the young man escapes. <#/>When the father learns of the plot, he gives his property to Kathanyi and he also pays dowry for him so that he can get married. <#/>Mucumi's mother is very happy to have a daughter‑in‑law who becomes a companion and who can also shave her head.
<#/>This story reflects a major shift of the plot from the traditional motif. <#/>The blame from the step‑mother is shifted to the brother. <#/>The competition over property is between the two brothers and this reflects much more of the current situation in the society. <#/>The traditional motif, emphasizes the cruelty of the step‑mother and her jealousy over the husband's love for the co‑wife's child but now there are more fundamental issues to address, the issues related to property ownership and inheritance, and this gives a stronger basis for the quarrel between the two young men.
<#/>The step‑mother is reasonably innocent except for not giving the young man well cooked food but unlike in the traditional motif, she does not spend time plotting for the death of her step‑son.
<#/>What is also significant is that the step‑mother and her daughter‑in‑law strike a good relationship with each other. <#/>The mother is glad for the daughter's companionship and for the fact that she will shave her. <#/>There is women solidarity which is built irrespective of who will have the property in the home. <#/>This could also be seen as a reflection of the self-help women's group movement in the country where solidarity among women is a key issue.
<#/>In this story, the artist focalises 72 out of 87 times the story is focalised and therefore we easily see the perspective of the artist. <#/>Although the story is the cruel step‑mother motif, she focalises only once. <#/>The story creates a major shift in the plot.
<#/><h> The girl and the hawk </h>
<#/>This story is about a girl who is approached by various suitors who include the Beetle, the Hyena and the Hawk. <#/>The girl asks each of the suitors to bring beer and the community, knowing very well that the girl has no intention of marrying any of the suitors, enters into a drinking spree and commends the girl for it. <#/>But, eventually, the girl decides to get married to the Hawk and is taken up the tree where she is left by the Hawk. <#/>The girl cannot cope with life up the tree where she is poor, miserable and helpless. <#/>She calls for help and her brother answers the call and comes to her rescue. <#/>She is saved and marries a human being.
<#/>The girl in this story, unlike in many other stories, organises her own marriage. <#/>She is assertive and wants to find out what is in store for her before entering into marriage. <#/>She is not overwhelmed by the beauty of the suitors like the girls in other stories. <#/>She is not superficial in her thinking. <#/>She exploits those who propose to her knowing very well that she has no intention of marrying them. <#/>Her position is supported by the narrator and also by the community. <#/>The community enjoys itself in taking part in the drinking spree as they say that the beer belongs to that girl, called Wacanga: <quote_>
<#/><quote/><#/>The community therefore is not any better than Wacanga. <#/>They approve of her actions and celebrate them.
<#/>The image of the girl here deviates sharply from the traditional image of the passive, quiet girl in the society.
<#/>Traditionally too, the vain girl ends up getting married to handicapped men or to uncircumcised boys.
<#/>When the marriage of the girl and the Hawk fails, the community that had participated in the beer drinking spree has no moral grounds to condemn Wacanga. <#/>It is also significant to notice that the girl's marriage does not work even though she has gone through all the necessary customs, thereby implying that going through those rituals is no guarantee for a happy and prosperous marriage. <#/>The rituals are empty.
<#/><h> Wacuka Kamwangirwa and his father's guard </h>
<#/>This is the common motif of the obedient girl vis a vis the disobedient and jealous step‑sister. <#/>Kamwangirwa drops her father's gourd when they go to fetch water. <#/>She follows this gourd and in route she faces <-/may> temptations but she does not give in. <#/>She finds food cooking itself, and serving itself. <#/>The food asks her to come cook, serve and eat but "she does not eat that which eats itself"; she refuses to give in to these temptations and is therefore rewarded with all kinds of jewellery. <#/>When she goes home, Wacuka is jealous and she takes the gourd and drops it in the river deliberately. <#/>She gives in to the temptations and for her reward; she gets a dress made of <unknown/>wattlebacks so that as she walks, she will be making a lot of noise. <#/>She however eventually manages to get rid of these <unknown/>wattlebacks. <#/>As in the "girl and the Hawk", their story demonstrates a significant direction in this story. <#/>After she is given the punishment, she goes to the river and; <quote_>
<#/><quote/><#/>Her <unknown/>wattlebacks come out ; people keep asking her what happened to them and she keeps it a secret.
<#/>The girl refuses to be punished for ever. <#/>She acts to remove the punishment. <#/>She does everything. <#/>The girl is therefore not the traditional helpless character. <#/>She initiates action for her own good. <#/>She takes control of her own life.
<#/>
</I>
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<#/><I> <h> Women and environment in history </h>
<#/><quote_><quote/>
<#/><quote_><quote/><#/>In her ground-breaking work Boserup demonstrated the central role that women play in the agricultural sector of African economies. <#/>In a continent where over 70 per cent of the population remains rural, this factor cannot be over-emphasized. <#/>Women provide the bulk of the labour required for day to day management of farms. <#/>This includes planting, weeding, harvesting and the processing of agricultural produce. <#/>In more ways than one, women's prime responsibility, that of perpetuating their societies by providing food, is an intricate process that straddles various environmental factors. <#/>Whether as pastoralists, cultivators or both, women have to deal with land, fuelwood and water on a daily basis in their efforts to feed their families. <#/>However, the process of feeding their families is mediated through a whole set of precolonial and colonial property (primarily land) and power positions. <#/>Hence, to understand the role of women in production, consumption and distribution, all of which revolve around the proper utilization of the available natural resources, it is necessary to address some basic questions.
<#/>For example, what is the locus of women within the wider questions of access to land, its ownership and management? <#/>These questions are only beginning to receive attention among researchers, government agencies and various categories of extension workers. <#/>To a large extent, this has been sparked off by a series of related phenomena that have plagued Africa. <#/>In a debt-ridden continent struggling to implement crippling structural adjustment programmes, the spread of desertification is only rivalled by the prevailing food crisis. <#/>Out of the horrendous accounts of famines and deaths, the intricate network of factors that have produced the vicious cycle of poor economic systems and fragile environments is slowly beginning to unfold. <#/>The current fear, that in 1990 the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s will repeat itself, is apparent amidst a flurry of academic, governmental and international concern to piece together vital data that will avert crisis.
<#/>Despite the shifting fortunes of nations and the rapid deterioration of the ecological balance, women have remained a visible constant, maintaining an intimate interaction with the primary natural resources. <#/>In Africa, women continue to be the principal drawers of water, hewers of wood and cultivators. <#/>In most African societies women also participate in the hunting of small game and the gathering of wild berries and edible root crops. <#/>In this respect then, women related and continue to relate closely to all the major natural resources.
<#/>Women in precolonial Kenya possessed an intricate and scientifically sound knowledge to manage their environment competently. <#/>Within the limits of their defined rights of access and utilization, women managed to maintain a workable balance between drawing sustenance from the land and allowing for the regeneration of it. <#/>Neither cultivation nor grazing was haphazard. <#/>Soil types, crop suitability and climatic regimes were all carefully balanced toward possible maximization of production and maintenance of the ecological system. <#/>Quite obviously the level of technological advancement was a major hindrance. <#/>The colonial period precipitated drastic changes.
<#/>The alienation of land, the creation of reserves, male labour migrancy and population growth all served to restructure generations of agricultural practices. <#/>In many ways, colonialism was about the restructuring of boundaries and access to resources. <#/>It was also about the redefinition of production, power and wealth.
<#/><h> The precolonial situation </h>
<#/>In precolonial Kenya, a system of rational fallow shifting cultivation was used. <#/>This allowed farmers to open up new fields every four or five seasons, leaving the old one to lie fallow. <#/>This way, two birds were killed with one stone. <#/>The farmer was able to get a good crop while land left fallow regenerated itself. <#/>The utilization of land was neither haphazard nor unscientific. <#/>There existed an intimate knowledge of soil types and their sustainability for different crops. <#/>Women were entitled to demand that a husband provide fields that included the different soil types. <#/>This way women would be in a position to grow a variety of crops, some of which required specific soil types. <#/>This intimate knowledge of the relationship between soil types and crop yields is corroborated by Kenyatta in his treatise on Kikuyu agricultural practices. <#/>Writing on the cultivation of yams, sugarcane and bananas, Kenyatta observed that <quote/> . <#/>This applied to a host of other crops.
<#/>To a large extent, the regional diversity inagricultural production incolonial Kenya was a reflection of the farmers' acknowledgement of the capabilities and limitations of their lands. <#/>These general principles operative amongst Kikuyu were also evident amongst other precolonial agricultural communities in Kenya.
<#/>As cultivators, women did not push their soils to produce crops that were ecologically unsuitable. <#/>Rather, to even out regional diversities and limitations, societies resorted to barter trade. <#/>What one area could not produce was acquired by trading one's surplus for the required produce from neighbour-ing communities.
<#/>Intercropping and crop rotation ranked high among the carefully thought out agricultural practices. <#/>While both rotation and intercropping ensured that different crops drew different nutrients from the soils, these practices were only meaningful if they were synchronized with the prevailing climatic regimes. <#/>This ensured favourable yields. <#/>Improper agricultural practices could result in food deficit. <#/>As Kenyatta observed, in Central Province, if <ea/>njahe (black-eyed beans) and <ea/>njugu (pigeon-peas) were planted during the short rains, the result would be failure because they are very slow-growing crops and need plenty of water. <#/>On the other hand, if millet, a dry season crop, was planted during the long rains, it would grow taller and taller but bear very little or no grain at all. <#/>Thus, women appreciated and understood the general scientific principles in operation and observed them seriously. <#/>To fail to do so would not only jeopardize the ecological balance, it would also result in reduced crop yields. <#/>Both of these possibilities could be disastrous to the welfare of the people. <#/>As the key providers of sustenance to their families, women were bound to master all of this knowledge. <#/>They needed it if they were to meet their primary social obligation. <#/>Hence, <quote_><quote/><#/>Precolonial systems of land tenure relating to the ownership and utilization of land had achieved some degree of public recognition among most societies by the end of the last century. <#/>In general, the collective responsibility for the security of land was juxtaposed with individual family usage of land. <#/>As well as land cultivated in rotation, there was land set aside for various other uses including firewood, ceremonial rituals, grazing, salt licks, public meeting places in addition to land for future expansion and buffer land between different ethnic groups.
<#/>The presence of these vast 'waste' lands had detrimental effects on local communities. <#/>In the wake of colonial rule, land tenure was redefined, and huge tracts of land dubbed 'waste' or unoccupied were seized by the state and leased or outrightly sold to white settlers. <#/>Land was not the only productive factor that the colonial state redefined. <#/>Although women tended to do the more repetitive and boring chores in the agricultural cycle, the sexual division of labour ensured that men, too, participated in production. <#/>The introduction of waged labour drew upon societal labour resources. <#/>Thus, the commercialization of labour coupled with the commoditization of agricultural production and the alienation of land placed new tensions on women and land. <#/>The overutilization of land in an attempt to meet domestic and market needs, coupled with inadequate 'repair work and rest period' for the land was very critical. <#/>An ecological imbalance of a magnitude heretofore unknown became evident from the early 1920s. <#/>The government's attempt to remedy the crisis placed women in a delicate situation.
<#/><h> The colonial period </h>
<#/>Amidst a lot of limitations, precolonial African communities did all they could to create a sustainable co-existence with the ecosystem. <#/>Their selective utilization of natural resources ensured that a workable environmental balance was maintained. <#/>The colonial period, however, did not always enhance this mutual interdependence. <#/>Literature on colonial exploitation of the African environment remains thin. <#/>Reckless hunting, lumbering and 'hoarding' of massive pieces of land all added up to the creation of a fragile environment. <#/>In Kenya, the colonial government viewed shifting cultivation as wasteful and embarked on a process of re-organizing both the system of agriculture and land tenure systems. <#/>The resultant changes including the individualization (maleization) of tenure, the alienation of land and the commoditization of agriculture did not augur well for women and the land. <#/>As for pastoralists, especially the Maasai, their undertaking was deemed uneconomic, justifying the widespread alienation of Maasai land. <#/>What was the relationship between this assault and the increasing incidents of Maasai cultivation at a later stage? <#/>Amongst the pure pastoralists, how was cultivation, especially the production of a surplus, negotiated in a previously non-cultivating set-up? <#/>How did this alter or fit into the group's system of utilization of land?
<#/>In Kenya, the alienation of 7.5 million acres of high potential land for European settlers had drastic effects on Africans. <#/>For a start, it resulted in a growing shortage of land in African reserves, especially in Central Province. <#/>Amongst the Maasai who lost the largest portions of land, access to vital salt licks, dry season grazing and watering places all played havoc with pastoralism. <#/>The same was true of the Nandi and Tugen, among other cattle keepers. <#/>In the ensuing commoditization of land and commercialization of agriculture, women found themselves increasingly marginalized in their agricultural and domestic activities. <#/>In many ways they found it difficult to maintain any meaningful control of their access to and utilization of available natural resources. <#/>Expansion in commodity production necessarily resulted in an expansion of women's labour hours as they sought to combine subsistence and commodity production with myriads of domestic chores.
<#/>This expansion in commodity production did not always result in increased access to the proceeds of their labour. <#/>Cash crops were men's crops. <#/>Agricultural labour, however, remained largely female in composition. <#/>In Kenya, the expansion of peasant production had an additional negative impact on women. <#/>The constant use of rapidly decreasing landholdings resulted in the depletion of the fertility of the soil. <#/>This problem was compounded by overgrazing. <#/>Thus the re-organization of peasant production to meet metropolitan demands during the colonial period played havoc with the environment. <#/>The precolonial fallow and shifting cultivation could no longer be implemented. <#/>Land was in short supply. <#/>Even where it was possible to practise shifting cultivation, the fallow period became shorter and shorter as landholdings decreased over time due to constant subdivision. <#/>Under such circumstances, women were forced to re-organize their patterns of agricultural farming. <#/>Crop rotation and intercropping were no longer options that were easily workable. <#/>The balancing effect that intercropping had on soil nutrients was obliterated with the abandonment of the practice. <#/>Women had to make difficult choices between fast-growing but less nutritious crops that were newly introduced and older more nutritious and more labour-consuming crops. <#/>That was the choice that many Kenyans had to make with regard to millet and sorghum, which gave way to maize, a more extractive and destructive crop. <#/>Although maize could be intercropped with a variety of crops, women were also faced with the cultivation of cash crops which were neither edible or intercroppable with any of their common staples. <#/>Cotton, tobacco, wattle and groundnuts represent such categories of crops. <#/>Wattle trees were particularly notorious for their aggravation of soil erosion largely because they choke the undergrowth and fail to prevent the washing away of top soil during the rains. <#/>By and large, wattle trees were men's crops. <#/>They were the kind of crops which men could plant, leave them under women's care and return after a couple of years to collect the proceeds of their sale. <#/>Their bark was vital for the making of tannin, while their wood could be sold as fuelwood or burned into charcoal, both of which fetched good prices. <#/>In this as in other cases involving men's crops, women might witness the deterioration of family land without being in a position to do much to ameliorate the situation. <#/><ea/><ea/></I>
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<#/><I> <h> The role of language in rural development </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>Development in a situation like the Kenyan one is a multi-faceted process. <#/>In the last 25 years virtually everyone in the country has been involved in a churning sea of social, cultural and economic changes. <#/>The institutions and individuals with the responsibility to govern and direct the planned aspects of development are faced with situations and particular problems which are as practically and pragmatically urgent as they are amorphously transitional with elusive human and cultural dimensions. <#/>These problems include what may be called high level issues such as the actual forging of the nation and the concomitant development of nationalism, the designing of appropriate machinery and institutions for government and the mobilization of national resources and evolution of appropriate policies for development. <#/>The low level practical issues include what should be taught in the formal educational system, by whom, where and how; the provision of health services; improvement of child nutrition in specific socio-cultural cases; or more generally the management or improvement of specific issues with respect to specific sectors of the society. <#/>For ease of reference, the high level issues can be deemed policy and the low level pragmatics.
<#/>This division between policy and pragmatic levels is artificial in many ways. <#/>There is a natural relationship between the two levels. <#/>The two have an obvious convergence in the ultimate goal of the policy. <#/>For instance, it might be a high level policy matter to create an awareness and commitment to a united Kenya. <#/>Whether the goal is realized or not depends directly on low level practical matters designed to help achieve the goal. <#/>This for example would include the issue of who teaches what, when and how. <#/>It might be a high level policy issue to enhance the foreign currency reserves and generally improve the economy of Kenya. <#/>The actual success or failure of that, goal will depend on lower level commitment to helping the <ea/>Jua <ea/>Kali industrialist identify and manufacture appropriate items for export or assisting the horticultural farmer to enhance and improve his crop yield for export. <#/>It might be a high level policy to eradicate disease, but the success or failure (though partially dependent on more technical matters such as availability of drugs, hospitals and even doctors) depends on the pragmatic levels of efficiency in the actual treatment of patients; the administration of drugs, the observation of <-_doctors><+_doctors'> instructions on various treatment regimes, the understanding of causes of various conditions and therefore how to avoid them and public awareness and commitment to matters of hygiene and nutrition. <#/>This relationship between policy and pragmatics can be represented as in Figure 7. 1.
<#/>The identification of a problem demands a policy, the desired goals dictate the policy and the pragmatics determine the success or failure in the achievement of the goal. <#/>This might be called the chain of development. <#/>Whereas all the points in the chain of development are significant, the pragmatic level particularly stands out as the level at which understanding and effective management of the status quo takes place.
<#/>In other words, to identify a problem or an issue one must have some reference to the lower if not lowest end of the issue - the grassroots as it were.
<#/>There are, of course, intermediate levels between the so-called policy level and the pragmatic level. <#/>But, as envisaged here, the end of the pragmatic level is the grassroots where the relevant problem affects the individual, the community or a specific area with the totality of its ecology, including humanity. <#/>After the issue is identified, the policy formulation, no matter how broad, would aim at affecting the individual. <#/>The execution of a programme really involves the management and manipulation of the prevailing factors of the situation. <#/>Again the most concrete end is the lowest end of the pragmatics.
<#/>What is required at the end of a development programme will naturally depend on the details of the specific issue. <#/>But human societies are as a species wise and egocentric. <#/>So eventually, the ultimate beneficiary of a development programme is society. <#/>More specifically the success of any development programme is a measure of how it helps improve the quality and quantity of the individual life. <#/>Ultimately, every development (programme) has an initiator (planner), target (beneficiary) and goal (objectives). <#/>The achievement of the goal calls for the participation of a beneficiary, recipient and catalyst.
<#/>Of course, just as the initiator and the target can overlap in many ways, so can the beneficiary, the recipient and the catalyst. <#/>The distinction between the beneficiary and the recipient need further comment. <#/>One must distinguish between <-/benefitting> from and receiving the benefits of a programme. <#/>For instance, an infant population may be targeted as the beneficiary of a programme but it cannot be a recipient in the sense used here because infants do not have the capacity to actively receive what is offered by way of advice, new techniques or tools. <#/>A recipient is thus a target for development and has a capacity to choose to benefit from what is offered.
<#/>In this chapter the rural women farmers are studied as a target group (or part thereof) for development of agriculture and food production. <#/>The group is deeply involved as the beneficiary, recipient and major catalyst. <#/>Women form the majority of the rural population in Kenya. <#/>By virtue of their role in the home and household, they are responsible for the day to day running of the domestic unit which includes the provision and management of food. <#/>They are therefore the most immediate sufferers when there is food shortage and happy beneficiaries when they have plenty to manage. <#/>By virtue of division of labour and the concomitant socio-cultural responsibilities, they (at least in Siaya) are most immediately involved in agriculture and farm production. <#/>They are directly responsible for the cultivation, harvesting and storage of the food grown.
<#/>The study specifically concerns itself with the role of language in communicating agricultural development strategies to women who are the best placed to do whatever needs to be done to improve farming. <#/>As far as is known the innovations and desired improvements in the area under study are basically the concern of the government. <#/>The government has attempted to facilitate development in this area through Ministry of Agriculture rural veterinary and agricultural services. <#/>The most notable link between the government as the initiator and the rural women farmers are Agricultural Extension Officers who are expected to serve the rural farmers at their homes in a grassroots approach. <#/>Even if there were non-governmental organizations involved, the roles would still be played by very similar people: outsiders brought in to improve the lot of the local people. <#/>There is a language gap between the people involved in rural farming and the people with the message and ideas necessary to effect development. <#/>That is, the initiator of the proposed development is not in a position to communicate effectively with the people charged with the responsibility of doing what needs to be done to effect the necessary changes.
<#/><h> Theoretical positions </h>
<#/>This study falls in the area of sociolinguistics, which deals with issues of language as they relate to society. <#/>Notably, it is more the linguist than the sociologist who subscribes to sociolinguistics though sociology has <-/benefitted> from and contributed to the discipline. <#/>This study deals with language and development. <#/>One might narrow this down further to the area of language problems in developing nations, although none of the language problems can be exclusively identified with the so-called developing world. <#/>These nations share a great deal in their language situations and problems.
<#/>Joshua Fishman observed more than two decades ago that the new nations of the world were beset by many language-related problems which were not being given attention by the developing nations themselves or scholar linguists. <#/>These problems concern the role of language in nationalism and the transmutation and elaboration of ethnicity into identification with a broader nation. <#/>More specifically, they relate to changing behaviours, traditions and value hierarchies.
<#/>Fishman observes these problems and recommends a scholarly prescription which is ambitious and interdisciplinary in terms of a total problem-orientation. <#/>Sociolinguists have come up with general and specific studies on problems of multilingual societies and the development of nationalism; language planning, policy and modernization; language in education and the related psychological and psycholinguistic issues, including issues of language choices and code switching in specific speech communities.
<#/>The Sapir-Wolf hypothesis of linguistic determinism and the subsequent less rigid theory of linguistics that closely relates language to culture and the way speakers divide and perceive their world is of particular relevance in considerations of effective communication for development in a multilingual set up. <#/>The point of this chapter hinges on the claim that a people's language is a wider perception than their way of doing things in a special and idiosyncratic manner. <#/>Linguistic communication can be taken for granted. <#/>It is further held that when communication is intended to change or influence a people's traditions, it needs to be particularly designed for effectiveness, both to be understood and to be acceptable.
<#/><h> The language situation in Siaya </h>
<#/>Siaya is a large district, and the language situation varies according to specific areas. <#/>Notably, areas which share borders with other linguistic communities have an overlap of languages spoken by the people. <#/>Near the borders with Baluhya, for instance, there will naturally be those who speak Luhya either solely or as a second or first language. <#/>For simplicity, this study deals with the Dholuo-speaking people who are the majority in Siaya District.
<#/>It is envisaged that the problems observed for the Dholuo-speakers of Siaya District are not too different from those that are experienced by native speakers of other Kenyan languages in the same situation anywhere else in the republic. <#/>The problem deals with two types of evidence: One relates to the language situation as it affects or defines rural women farmers in Siaya, and the other is a comparison between the language which rural women know and the language the extension workers are likely to use in communicating with them. <#/>
<#/> It can be observed that the rural woman involved in subsistence farming in Siaya has a native speaker competence of Dholuo only. <#/>This observation can be deduced from many factors. <#/>First, the most obvious alternative languages the woman might speak are English and/or Kiswahili. <#/>English is learned at school, and the majority of women now engaged in subsistence farming in the rural areas did not go to school. <#/>Kiswahili, a <foreign/>lingua <foreign/>franca, is learned either at school or from interaction in urban areas. <#/>These women have not been to school and do not frequent towns enough to acquire the language. <#/>A survey by Heine and Möhlig showed that only 20 per cent of Luo people spoke English and 57.2 per cent spoke Kiswahili. <#/>With more widespread education which includes English and Kiswahili in the primary education, the percentages have risen in the last ten years. <#/>But that rise is unlikely to have affected rural women farmers. <#/>Heine and Möhlig revealed that a number of school-leavers with seven years of English instruction lost their speaking competence because they did not practise it. <#/>By extension, the same can happen with Kiswahili. <#/>Also, it is unlikely that the young women who were in school (to Form 4 or so) in the last ten years are busy farming in rural Siaya; they are away in towns, leaving the older women folk in the villages. <#/>The percentage of Luo Kiswahili speakers was quite large in 1980; however, Heine and Möhlig were quick to point out that Swahili is considerably widespread among the male rather than among the female population. <#/>More younger than older people were found to speak Kiswahili. <#/>All this corroborates the observation that the majority of Siaya rural women farmers are fluent only in their mother tongue.
<#/>The typical development agent in the extension work is a graduate of a system where the language of education is English. <#/>The knowledge, ideas and expertise have been acquired in English. <#/><ea/></I>
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<#/><I> <h> The Relevance of Metaphysics to the topic </h>
<#/>This disquisition is a metaphysical reflection on two intractable and elusive issues in Philosophy and, shall I say, physical science - the issue of the origin of the universe and the issue of its eventual disintegration. <#/>The universe or cosmos intrinsically comprising everything that there is in actuality; everything that there can be in potency - in a word everything that our mind can perceive or intuit in all temporal and spatial context - is an expansive mass of objects or bodies contiguously arranged in a closed system of corporeal substances characterised by the extension of parts outside parts and which, in their physical totality, posit as a reality to human cognition. <#/>This reality that is the object of human cognition presupposes the existence of a mind or intellect equipped with what the Philosopher Immanuel Kant called <foreign/>a <foreign/>priori forms or conditions of judgement or understanding to <-/cognize> it and indeed the mind must perceive it because it is real, it is a being and a compelling datum. <#/>In posing the question of the origin and disintegration of the universe, we are also indirectly addressing the problem of whence and wither of the substantial reality that envelops and saturates it.
<#/>Before we delve into the exegesis, a word or so must be said about the relevance of Metaphysics in this complex discourse. <#/>Metaphysics is a coinage of two Greek words <foreign/>meta and <foreign/>phusika or when qualified <foreign/>ta <foreign/>meta <foreign/>ta <foreign/> phusika which literally means the things after or beyond the physics which, in Aristotle's conception, sequentially became the subject of philosophical inquiry. <#/>Methodologically, Aristotle shifted the philosophical focus from the physical phenomena to theoretical abstract phenomena with a view to discerning their ultimate natures and abstracting their most general properties or characteristics at their transcendental order.
<#/>Thereupon, Metaphysics at once became a science of things (of being) in their abstract order or in their substantial reality rather than in their accidental reality. <#/>Metaphysics at once assumed a peculiar role in the philosophical speculations whereby it distinguished itself as the final authority in proffering philosophical solutions always on the assumption that reason cannot go wrong if it is well-directed and well-tempered towards its object of cognition. <#/>As the most potent tool of human reason, metaphysical reflections had no boundaries. <#/>They encompassed the terrestrial as well as ex-terrestrial reality and even the reality of immaterial beings. <#/>This pretentious claim of cognitive ascendancy by Metaphysics caused a revulsion in the Philosopher Kant when he called for the dethronement of Metaphysics as the queen of the sciences because it was in the habit of pretending to go beyond what actually it is capable of in its epistemological concerns. <#/>Kant's criticism of Metaphysics (and by the way it was traditional Metaphysics of the Fathers and Medievalists generally ) has been unfairly interpreted by anti-metaphysicians and philosophers of positivistic schools to portray Metaphysics as an irrelevant and semantic discipline whose death should have come earlier than the Kantian intervention to debunk it. <#/>However, on a <-/sobre> and objective interpretation of Kant's critique, it is fairly evident that what he actually introduced in his exposition is a new brand of Metaphysics born out of a legitimate <-/skepticism> <foreign/>vis-'a-vis traditional dogmatic Metaphysics. <#/>Thus, in order to salvage Metaphysics, Kant had to turn into a <AmE/>skeptic in order to construct a sustainable groundwork upon which all future Metaphysics would rest. <#/>This he did admirably well by designating the province and object of all future metaphysical cognitive claims. <#/>Specifically, he discovered and propounded that Metaphysics is inapplicable to the <-/noumenal> nature of things and only valid when its analyses relate to things as they appear to us or as they manifest themselves to us as phenomenal essences. <#/>If metaphysical cognitive claims are about knowledge of things-in-themselves (<foreign/>Das <foreign/>Ding <foreign/>an <foreign/>Sich) then Metaphysics is not only doomed but also futile as a science. <#/>And this happens to be the closest Kant came to implying a denial of the possibility of the science of Metaphysics.
<#/>Metaphysics as a science attempts to offer the most exhaustive and ultimate explanations to reality not so much as individualized but as a coherent whole. <#/>And where it is a science of being, the implication is that its major concern is about being in its most general characteristics or properties as can be abstracted by the mind. <#/>It tends to ignore the materiality of beings and instead to concentrate on the being's immaterial aspect. <#/>It is for this latter reason that many people have been prompted to regard Metaphysics as an occult science of the divinity, of the immortality of the soul, of the angels and other supernatural beings that there can be. <#/>This wrong impression may be enhanced and justified if the metaphysical enterprise were solely that of the medievalists and the schoolmen of the scholastic academies. <#/>And yet this is precisely what Kant and others reacted against to make Metaphysics more open-ended and open-minded.
<#/>Metaphysics is the science of the essences of things and in so far it constitutes itself into an ultimate Philosophy or first Philosophy as Aristotle chose to call it. <#/>And in so far as it is an ultimate philosophy, it undertakes a thorough investigation into those ultimate principles and causes of things in order to reach out for some form of objective truth or objective account of the phenomena of nature. <#/>Furthermore, Metaphysics being the science of the essences of things, must employ reason at the highest level in the task of educing substances (ultimate natures) of things from objects of cognition. <#/>Reason employed at the highest level must consciously engage in the contemplation of the object of cognition in order to abstract from it the universal property of that object which it then stores within itself as a representative concept of future reference.
<#/>Metaphysics being a science of being <foreign/>qua being or the science of the natures of things or the science of the ultimate principles of things, cannot be indifferent to the study of reality considered as one, as whole and as constituting a coherent system. <#/>The coherent system that the universe is, the super-substance that it evinces, the causality of forces that are at play in the cosmic reality, the search for the primordial elements or stuff of the cosmos, the harmony or apparent disharmony in the universe call not only for a scientific explanation but also for a metaphysical intervention to shed light where empirical science cannot proffer any apodeictic explanation.
<#/>Where science, for example, cannot formulate a reliable scientific answer to problems such as the immortality of the soul or the nature of the divinity, Metaphysics cannot be altogether irrelevant in formulating rational explanations based on the working of causal forces and relying on the apodeictic principles governing the workings of the human mind, notably the principle of contradiction, the principle of excluded middle, and the principle of sufficient reason. <#/>These principles upon which alone human reasoning is founded being philosophical in nature, must be rigorously applied in the quest for knowledge and nature of all-there-is in the universe. <#/>Where empirical science can provide us with reasons for how things are the way they are, Metaphysics (Philosophy by implication) should provide us with explanations on why things happen the way they do. <#/>This role that Philosophy plays greatly complements the scientific endeavour and more so because the philosophical data encountered in causal relationships of physical objects may go to waste or get ignored in a scientific laboratory. <#/>The role, therefore, played by Metaphysics in human cognitive endeavour is complementary to that played by the scientist.
<#/>There are, moreover, transcendental notions which are only applicable to trans-physical or <-/metempirical> substances and which postulate philosophical reasoning to appraise them and to commit them to the universe of human discourse. <#/>The mere detection of the transcendentality of these notions is not an exercise of empirical nature but of a mind engrossed in and captivated by the novelty of ideas always accepted and embraced for their own sake.
<#/>Science can tell us that organic an inorganic substances came about through the process of evolution but it may not be in a position to tell us what primary matter preceded that evolutionary process or what reality could be presupposed in order for the evolutionary process to take place. <#/>Now, by the adoption of the principle of causality, Metaphysics has succeeded to formulate explanations such as the ones we shall encounter in this exposition at a later stage. <#/>By and large then, we can say that Metaphysics is not totally irrelevant to the scientific inquiries of nature but very much a complement and a vital ancillary.
<#/><h> The Nature of Bodies in the Universe </h>
<#/>Talking about the nature of bodies in the Universe, we proceed from the assumption that these bodies are a reality very much manifest to us by medium of our senses and by scientific observations. <#/>There is no gainsaying that our consciousness in the state of sanity is capable of testifying to the fact that our senses, especially sight and touch, do indeed perceive external extended bodies in two and three dimensions. <#/>These bodies possess a continuous extension and enjoy what in Philosophy is known as external extension and internal extension by virtue of the formal effect of being quantified. <#/>Bodies external to our senses are a reality unless we want to profess the crude philosophy of solipsism, the negative philosophy of subjectivism and the idle philosophy of <AmE/>skepticism.
<#/>The bodies in the physical universe enjoy a continuous extension and, by virtue of this, they are individually known as continuum in the scholastic jargon. <#/>A continuum having continuous quantity as opposed to a quantum with its discrete quantity, is a substantial unity with a potential infinity of parts that can be rendered actual only after division. <#/>The severed part in turn constitutes yet another substantial unity with the attendant potential infinity of parts and which in themselves exist in that unity in the state of potency.
<#/>This state of affairs, renders the substantial unity (the continuum) a peculiar substance composed of two states: act and potency. <#/>The continuum as a substantial unity exists in act unto itself and also exists in potency in as far as its potential parts can be divided in infinitum. <#/>The continuum then is a composition of what the Scholastics might have referred to as a substance of <foreign/>divisibilia <foreign/>in <foreign/>divisibilia.
<#/>Since a continuum is a quantity, one of its principal determinations or properties must appropriately be divisibility, others being impenetrability, measurability, external extension, and internal extension.
<#/>Indeed an infinite divisibility of a continuum must be self-evident since we cannot purport to uphold the possibility of division and at the same time insist that the object of division is unextended and indivisible. <#/>This would be a case of contradiction in terms. <#/>Moreover, if the object of division is pared down to a mere point, logical, mathematical or otherwise which has absolutely no extension the very concept of continuum would vanish because no amount of unextended points can be components of a continuous extension and neither would they produce an extension. <#/>Following on this, it can be comfortably argued that all continuous quantity must ultimately consist of extended parts whose divisibility can take place without limit and more so because it can never reach unextended point which can negate the very essence of a continuum or extended quantum. <#/>
<#/>Talking of infinite divisibility of parts of a continuum in itself already raises enigmatic puzzles for both philosophical physics as well as empiriological physics. <#/>The puzzle relates directly to the issue of the origin and final end of the universe of physical objects that are the topic of this thesis. <#/>Moreover, if we accept the principle of empiriological physics that matter is never created and can never be destroyed, the complexity of the problem is even all the more compounded if this is related to the cosmogony and annihilation of the material universe. <#/>I shall, therefore, attempt to tiptoe between this mesh of intractable problems to formulate a philosophical answer.
<#/></I>
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<#/><I> <h> 1. INTRODUCTION </h>
<#/>For a competent and first speaker of Dholuo (Luo language), Okoth Okombo's Masira ki Ndaki has many possible translations. <#/>"One Doesn't Click One's Tongue at Misfortune" is perhaps the most literal though inadequate because it does not cater for the figurative meanings of the title. <#/>A chain of other probable translations are not difficult to come by through oral inquiry: "Wonders Never <-_>Ceases><+_Cease>;" "Annoyance or Disgust Can't Deter Misfortune;" "Misfortune Strikes at the Wrong Time;" "Misfortune is Inevitable;" "Humanity is Helpless before Disaster;" "Nobody Is Known to Solicit Suffering;" "Misfortune Is Stupidly Stubborn" "Misfortune Is Notorious for Stampeding". <#/>The results of this oral exchange contradict my conventional understanding that a translation should be precise and neatly restricted to a few meaningful words. <#/>Almost every other reading of the title yields a different answer. <#/>There is an array of possible questions and answers with every attempt to make sense of this title; the reader is engaged in an endless oral exercise.
<#/>So many translations for a three-word title cannot but be explications, descriptions or creative processes in a search for meanings. <#/>I am almost naturally reminded of a riddling game in which, conventionally, each riddle has only one fixed answer and meaning. <#/>The book-title elicits a variety of responses and answers and should really be called an unconventional riddle; it encourages endless conversation with the reader.
<#/>In other words, the expression Masira ki Ndaki, by virtue of its puzzling nature, creates texts in the form of reader-responses. <#/>As Walter Ong would have it, Okombo's book talks to its "fictionalized" readers.
<#/>If we are agreed that Masira ki Ndaki is an extraordinary riddle, then we could as well state that it is the kind of item that Dholuo calls <ea/>ngero or <ea/>sigana. <#/>In English, the book may pass as a novel or novella. <#/>Not that the novel and  <ea/>ngero (<ea/>sigana) genres mean the same thing; it is safe to state that they are close. <#/>This is not the place to compare Luo and English literary traditions. <#/>Each tradition must be studied in its own right before comparisons may be highlighted. <#/>Nor am I intent on delving into Luo literary tradition per se. <#/>My primary objective in this essay is to attempt a reading of Masira ki Ndaki in the context of Luo oral literature in particular and oral tradition in general. <#/>And thus far, my opening argument is that the written text of the story is a representation of other texts, some visible and others not. <#/>The obvious inference from this is that the written text represents itself, the visible, just as the sign-any sign-represents itself the same way it may signify something else. <#/>Once the represented is connected with its sign however, it becomes part of that sign. <#/>It, in fact, becomes that sign. <#/>For this death of the gap of referentiality between the signifier and signified, Roland Barthes' Mythologies is our major weapon. <#/>If we return to the translations yielded by the oral interviews earlier, then the story's inscribed meaning is merely a meaning of many other meanings.
<#/>To echo Barthes in application, the differences between the meanings are annulled by the one or any other text that represents them. <#/>Where or when one begins to amplify and describe these differences, one is indulging in rhetoric, a sure way to <-/destablise> and, in fact, destroy the harmony in the world of meaning. <#/>I am positing that meanings create and re-create one another and that this attribute is inherent in art. <#/>Rhetoric is then a mechanism for displaying the social movement of art-forms for human communication. <#/>In words closely related to Stephen Tyler's The Said and the Unsaid, the said speaks very loudly about the unsaid as if each word or statement has an invisible shadow. <#/>Logically then, even the visible - the words on paper - are shadows of the invisible (this representative attribute of language is obviously traceable to Saussure, Barthes, Ong and many others). <#/>For our purposes, the crux of the matter is that Masira ki Ndaki is a visible shadow-sign-of the invisible. <#/>The story "talks" about the invisible (and either renders it visible in that very written form or sets it en route to visibility through the act of writing). <#/>With the knowledge that sound is invisible, we need not over-stress the fact that writing is an attempt to shape, colour and announce it (sound). <#/>Writing can surely never be more oral.
<#/><h> 2. <#/>THE AUTHOR'S VOICE </h>
<#/>It is a truism that a story is always assumed to be a writer's own creation. <#/>He is in it; his voice runs through it - is it - because he is the teller. <#/>I have already remarked that Masira ki Ndaki is a kind of riddle. <#/>It should also be added that it is a proverb, a puzzling saying.
<#/>Which is the more the reason why the book-title alone inspires so many interpretations and, understandably, the numerous meanings and translations. <#/>Not surprisingly, the narrator declares from the very beginning that the story will undertake to treat the reader to <foreign_ <foreign/>.
<#/>= "Events nobody has experienced or witnessed; events so foggy and unclear nobody knows how good or bad they are".
<#/>Okombo is re-visiting the age-old claim that the African story-teller is a teacher, a social educator on moral values and standards. <#/>He is "talking" by locking vice and virtue in combat in order to help us see and follow a moral path. <#/>He is telling us how and where to leap after looking right, left, backwards and forwards. <#/>The teaching precludes preaching and proselytizing because the story-teller does not pretend to be a know-all. <#/>He seeks and finds refuge in the rhetoric of the story-line and the characters therein. <#/>About to be delivered is a story that is too heavy for the tongue to carry and communicate (<foreign_><foreign/>, ). <#/>The tongue represents the teller and his community (audience). <#/>Despite his being the sole story-teller, the expression is meant to imply that his tongue carries a communal tongue (He does not say "my tongue"). <#/>The community is, in a way, talking to itself. <#/>From the front cover to this expression, the story lets the community speak to itself by merging its voice with the narrator's. <#/>Going by the same argument, the community actually teaches itself. <#/>The expression, <foreign_><foreign/> is indeed, an open invitation to the audience to immerse themselves in the discourse.
<#/>A retreat to the proverbial utterance, Masira ki Ndaki, helps us confirm that the narrator is steeped in oral culture through a persistent provocation of audential interpretation, judgement and participation. <#/>As Ong observes:
<#/><quote_><quote/>
<#/>The stress on "participatory" is mine if only to reinforce the stance that Okoth's narrative mission is pegged on the involvement of his audience. <#/>Where Ong argues that the written story obliterates the real world of orality, the response is that Okombo's story and its style of delivery (including the artistic voice of the omniscient teller) recreate that world.
<#/><h> 3. RUMOUR-MONGERING AS STORY-TELLING: </h>
<#/>Having subtly abdicated the responsibility of single-voiced story-telling, the narrator ingeniously harnesses the technique of rumour-mongering.
<#/>In the world of rumour, it is <-/upto> each individual to choose what type of information to take or leave. <#/>(I need not explain the intrinsic orality of rumour). <#/>In the final analysis, language <-/neans> what one wants it to mean for a specific purpose; only for a purpose do we take a rumour to mean one thing or another.
<#/>An utterance (most utterances) normally gets a meaning constructed for it by the respondent. <#/>Whatever is done, the attitude adopted and the directions taken are all acts accruing from the generative power of any particular one or number of rumours. <#/>By the time one acts in response to a rumour, the understanding is that the very rumour has exerted its powers and <-/yeilded> results or answers. <#/>That rumours are echoed and multiply through a community testify to their power of motion and ability to survive.
<#/>Perhaps the character who generates most rumour in MN is Abayo alias Kathorina Adongo. <#/>Rumoured to be wallowing in secret love-affairs with a Seventh-day Adventist Pastor, Abayo commits the crime of crimes by eloping with her husband's former herdsboy and fisherman but now turned into a rich coffee-smuggler in Uganda. <#/>Nobody knows anything for sure except for the fact that she finally dies after Jen Denja stabs her because of a rivalry over Akuko the coffee-smuggler. <#/>Ultimately, Abayo's profligacy is not mere rumour; she dies tragically at the hands of a professional prostitute. <#/>Rumour persists in social circulation in the sheer search for the truth. <#/>Abayo's eventual death now confirms rumour as the truth: she is adulterous, irresponsible and cheap. <#/>She has been acting-doing her part of the story we are being told - in bars and Akuko's bedroom. <#/>And her society acts by propagating her story. <#/>The re-telling of her narrative becomes a social act.
<#/>Abayo, the protagonist in the social act is represented by the <-/words-stories-invented> and woven around her life and character.
<#/>Because of her disappearance into a romantic and sexual link with Akuko, away from her husband's community, words in the shape of rumour fill her absence. <#/>Her identity is limited to the rumours about her social being. <#/>Her social circulation becomes a verbal exercise from mouth to mouth, ear to ear and, of course, eye to eye as she is relentlessly visualised through the language of rumours. <#/>This language converts her into a social object (and subject for that matter) to be bandied about; through the art of rumour her existence is verbally performed and incorporated into social speech acts. <#/>She earns her new name, Abayo, in recognition of her ability to act the irresponsible and immoral rambler. <#/>In keeping with oral tradition, nobody dare address Abayo by the same name in her hearing. <#/>Such names may only be used behind people's backs and not in their hearing and presence.
<#/>For non-believers in rumour, suspense is created and Abayo's story goes on until the truth reveals itself. <#/>In the author's own words, <foreign_><foreign/> MN, P.22 (It was so long and complicated a story nobody knew it all). <#/>The narrator acknowledges the enormous length of Abayo's story and confesses that, like everybody else, he can only re-tell one of its fragments. <#/>When she finally dies, her story-rumours and all - remains unfinished. <#/>No sole owner of the whole Masira ki Ndaki story really exists. <#/>Every member of the community has his/her fragment of an unattainable whole piece. <#/>The creative potential of the oral literary piece is as limitless as Okombo confesses in his narrative.
<#/>Like Abayo's, Jen Denja’s tale does not seem to have a beginning or an end. <#/>Her last name is a Luonisation of the English word "Danger". <#/>Nobody is sure of her origins. <#/>Rumour has it that she may be the daughter of a prostitute who probably lived and died in Asego (MN), P.39). <#/>For some people, she may be Congolese. <#/>Forever young-looking, it is also rumoured that she periodically sloughs off her skin to renew her sweet and magical appearance. <#/>The surest thing about her is that she is able to defend her lovers like a tigress; it is on a mission to recover one of them that she murders Abayo. <#/>Many more rumours exist about her. <#/>She is the Daughter of Satan and knows the police so well that she will escape with the murder. <#/>Whatever the plausible rumour about her, Jen's last name, Denja, tells her character and story. <#/>In fact, like Abayo, her name is her character, life-story and all. <#/>Even without reading Okombo's story, a speaker of Dholuo would guess very accurately what sort of people the two ladies are. <#/>The audience is quite capable of telling itself the ladies' stories on the basis of the possible meanings of their names.
<#/><h> 4. THE SPEAKING HUMAN BODY: </h>
<#/>One of the easily most significant subjects in the narrative is the human body.
<#/>The word "<ea/>masira" means the misfortune that befalls Abayo, and ipso facto, Okune, the husband who cherishes her beauty so much. <#/>The human body enjoys a very special place as a literary object in Luo oral art. </I>
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<#/><I> <h> Language Choice and the Young Kenyan Playwright </h>
<#/>The relationship between language and literature has analogously been referred to as the relationship between stone and the sculptor, clay and the potter, etc. <#/>This analogy underscores the primacy of language to the artist. <#/>The communication between the artist and the audience must be through a shared linguistic medium.
<#/>Evidently, literature as an art is not dependent on language alone. <#/>The prime aim of the artist is to make known a worldview, implicitly supposed to be the worldview of the society according to the artist. <#/>This view is rooted in the very existence of the society. <#/>The society's life in time and space is the concern of the artist. <#/>He/she has a set goal of ultimately educating society on issues that face it in life. <#/>Whether the artist decides to point out weaknesses, or give guidelines, or paints the picture as it appears on the ground, the end goal lies in the attempt to give direction to the society. <#/>Art has obviously been used to achieve other undesirable ends. <#/>This underscores the significance of art in influencing worldviews.
<#/>In the artist' s endeavour to communicate with the audience, the issue of language comes in. <#/>Language must be seen as it affects the artist as well as the audience. <#/>The two must share a linguistic medium among others. <#/>In this sharing, the level of language competence in the Chomskyan sense becomes significant. <#/>The artist must be competent enough in the language of communication, in what we may call literary language competence. <#/>This is what will make a work of art understandable and thus useful in society.
<#/>Literary language competence in the sense we are using it here prompted the early Greeks to use it as the best exemplification of language use and in extreme cases, artists were thought to have been the originators of language. <#/>We are not interested, in this paper, in the merits of literary language as source material for linguistic analysis. <#/>Nevertheless, the artist must have a good command of the language of communication which should be as near as possible to native speaker competence.
<#/>The central position that language occupies in literature throws light into the importance of language choice in situations where a society has more than one language, or where there is one language but many dialects. <#/>The multiplicity of languages spoken in Africa makes language choice a sensitive matter.
<#/>Language choice means an understanding of the language situation in our societies. <#/>The young artist needs to know the options that there are in order to be able to make the best choice that will enable him/her to communicate effectively to the right audience. <#/>It is imperative that the young playwright understands the sociolinguistic situation in our society.
<#/>Unlike the novel, the play has a more direct impact on language choice. <#/>A novel is intended to be read. <#/>The audience in this case is expected to be literate. <#/>The consumption of the message is at the level of the individual readers who can be aided by dictionaries, <-/encyclopedias> etc. <#/>The reader has time to reflect on the language used. <#/>The play, though written, in most instances is to be watched and listened to spontaneously as the actions unfold. <#/>The audience need not to be literate. <#/>This situation makes the choice of the language of communication by the playwright more sensitive.
<#/>Kenya is reflective of the language situation in most African nations. <#/>It is multilingual. <#/>The functional differentiation of the various languages affects the artist as well as the audience. <#/>How then is the language situation in Kenya?
<#/>Multilingualism in Kenyans stems more from the foreign languages spoken here than from the multiplicity of the local languages. <#/>In terms of local languages, most Kenyans are bilingual speakers, speaking a local language proximity gives rise to bilingualism or even multilingualism. <#/>This is the case in border areas where daily interaction is responsible for this language situation.
<#/>Languages spoken in Kenya can broadly be put into two groups which are: languages of African origin, and languages of non-African origin. <#/>Languages of African origin are here referred to as local languages while those of non-African origin are referred to as foreign languages.
<#/>Languages of African origin fall under four groups. <#/>There are the bantu, the nilotic, the para-nilotic and the cushitic groups. <#/>The bantu group is further divided into seven sub-groups of Kikuyu, Gusii, Shambaa, Taita, Luyia, Swahili and Mijikenda. <#/>These subgroups represents various related languages and dialects. <#/>Regionally, these languages are spoken as local languages at the Coast, Central, Eastern, Western and Nyanza provinces, making the bantu group the most widespread language in Kenya.
<#/>The para-nilotic group is divided into three sub-groups. <#/>These are the Teso, the Maasai and Kalenjin. <#/>Among these sub-groups are different languages and dialects. <#/>They are spoken mainly in the Rift Valley province. <#/>A few are to be found in Western and Eastern provinces too.
<#/>The cushitic group of languages is mostly spoken in the North Eastern province and forms two major groups i.e. <#/>the Somali and Galla.
<#/>The nilotic group is by far the most homogeneous. <#/>It has only one language, which is Luo. <#/>Regionally, it is spoken in Nyanza province and around Lake Victoria.
<#/>The most important language of African origin in Kenya at the national level is Kiswahili. <#/>It is the perceived national language and is the only one which is learnt as a second language by the majority of Kenyans.
<#/>The factors responsible for the emergence of Kiswahili as the national language of Kenya are beyond the scope of this paper. <#/>(See Mbaabu 1985, 1978, 1991: Mutahi 1980: Chiraghdin and Mnyampala 1977: Whiteley 1969) <#/>The position that Kiswahili will take in the future as the language of communication of the young playwright will become evident in a later section of this paper.
<#/>The languages of non-African origin are testimony of the influence of the international community to our African nations. <#/>The most important language here is the colonial linguistic legacy which is English. <#/>The official status that English assumed in the colonial period was not affected much by the coming of independence and its influence in the world of written literature is enormous.
<#/>Languages of Indian origin are important to note. <#/>According to Neale (1974) Kenyans of Indian origin have their roots in North India. <#/>Their languages originate from Sanskrit and the majority either speak Gujerati, Punjabi or Konkani. <#/>These languages started being spoken in Kenya during the building of the Kenya - Uganda railway. <#/>They are spoken exclusively by Indians.
<#/>The struggle of France and Germany to make a cultural mark on the Kenyan scene is bearing fruit and the German and French languages are increasingly being used in Kenya. <#/>The department of foreign languages, training French and German teachers at Kenyatta University is a case in point.
<#/>There are other European languages spoken on a lesser scale and they do not have a notable influence on the Kenyan language scene.
<#/>The above situation affects the young playwright in a direct way. <#/>In the majority of cases, a child's first contact with language is in the local languages which in essence are the child's first language.
<#/>By the time a child starts formal education, the local language will have been acquired. <#/>Through these languages the child makes the first contact with literature in its oral form. <#/>Literary creativity is nurtured via narratives, riddles, songs etc. <#/>which form the child's literary diet at home.
<#/>The above may not be entirely true of the urban areas. <#/>The heterogeneous nature of the urban population calls for a language of wider communication which in this case is Kiswahili. <#/>It is widely spoken beyond its coastal homeground. <#/>The majority of children in urban areas acquire it as a first language, simultaneously with the first language of the parents. <#/>The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, in its radio and television transmissions continuously acts as source environment for the learners. <#/>Most government schools in the urban areas use Kiswahili as the medium of <-_instructions><+_instruction> in the first classes of primary school. <#/>In the rural areas, respective local languages are used.
<#/>English is learnt in the school system for the majority of children in Kenya. <#/>It is first taught as a subject while the local language serves as the language of instruction. <#/>In upper primary, English takes over as the language of instruction for the rest of school and college life. <#/>Social stratification has its resultant effects on language used the world over. <#/>In Kenya, children from more affluent families will acquire English as the first and sometimes only language they are competent in for most of their life. <#/>This is a case of cultural alienation invariably leading to linguistic alienation.
<#/>English introduces literature as an academic subject although the youth will have participated in it in other languages. <#/>This may create in the youth an illusion of formality in a way that makes them feel that it is the fairest medium to use in literature.
<#/>Language use in the Kenyan youth cannot be complete without mentioning <ea/>Sheng. <#/><ea/>Sheng is a youth affair which unfortunately is used in place of Swahili. <#/>It is mainly used in major areas. <#/>Today, <ea/>Sheng is in a fluid situation and only time will tell whether it will evolve into a pidgin of either English or Swahili. <#/>The important thing to note here is that it is used by the youth for communication between themselves.
<#/>From the foregoing, the Kenyan young playwright is a polyglot. <#/>He/she has been and may still be receiving formal education in school. <#/>In terms of language, this means that there is a command of at least three languages a local language, Kiswahili and English. <#/>Each of these brings with it a specific audience. <#/>The available audience competent in Kiswahili is more in number than that competent in English which in turn is more than the local languages.
<#/>Which is the precedent that the young playwright has in terms of language choice in <-/playwriting>? <#/>All the languages are used in varying degrees. <#/>For a long time, plays at the national scene have been written in English and Kiswahili. <#/>Ngugi's decision in 1977 ushered in plays written in local languages when he collaborated with Ngugi wa Mirii in the drafting of Ngahika Ndenda. <#/>It has since been translated into English and Kiswahili (I will marry when I want and Nitaolewa nikipenda respectively)
<#/>A later development has been witnessed with regard to plays written and/or acted in local languages. <#/>What can be referred to as hotel theatre in Kenya today targets patrons from particular ethnic communities. <#/>Leading in this respect are the Kikuyu. <#/>Daily papers today carry advertisement of plays being acted in Kikuyu in various hotels in the city and major urban <-/centers>. <#/>There is obviously a very large part of Kikuyu speaking Kenyans in the city and the neighbouring Kiambu district.
<#/>Due to sociolinguistic factors, most central Bantus understand and indeed endeavour to speak Kikuyu. <#/>Following this, the Luo language has also been used in the staging of plays but with a varying degree of success. <#/>Local languages are used more in song than drama.
<#/>Writing plays in the local languages has and will always be faced with a limited audience. <#/>One will always communicate with the minority of Kenyans. <#/>The use of these languages should be confined to community based plays especially at the village level reflecting the most immediate environment and experience. <#/>This should especially be in cases where the audience does not understand Kiswahili. <#/>No community should be so <-/self-centered> in Kenya today as to feel that her problems are so unique as to warrant a linguistic barrier.
<#/>English has been in Kenya for a long time. <#/>Christened anglophone, Kenya still has to choose between English and Kiswahili depending on the context of usage. <#/>By virtue of the position that English has enjoyed, many plays are written in it. <#/>Being the medium of instruction in schools, it enjoys a favourable position as evidenced by the number of works published in it. . 
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<#/><I> <h> INTRODUCTION </h>
<#/>Until the close of the colonial era, it was fashionable among European scholars to portray Africans as historically passive and generally grateful recipients of the <-/perquisites> of colonial rule. <#/>But liberation struggles and the achievement of independence have had the effect of decolonizing African historiography. <#/>In this respect, the subject of African resistance has at last assumed its rightful place. <#/>The view now is that, in the African response to colonial rule, the complexity and variety of African resistance were manifested. <#/>The response ranged from open hostility to supposed active collaboration with the Europeans. <#/>Essentially, the nature of the African societies and their attitude towards alien people determined the varied forms manifested.
<#/>The subject of this study are the Marakwet of the present Elgeyo-Marakwet District of the <-/Rify> Valley Province. <#/>Their response to colonial intrusion was manifested in the political, military, social and economic spheres. <#/>It is intriguing to ask questions such as; What was the state of the Marakwet society before the colonial intrusion? <#/>What was the reaction of the Marakwet to the early overseas travellers and coastal traders? <#/>What was their response like in the early phases of the establishment of colonial rule and later after their conquest by the British? <#/>And what factors determined their response to colonial intrusion and conquest?
<#/><h> THE SUBJECT AND AREA OF STUDY </h>
<#/>The proposed study of the history of the Marakwet will be conducted in the northern and Tot divisions of the Keiyo - Marakwet District of the Rift Valley Province. <#/>At the advent of British colonial rule, the area was occupied by five territorial sub-groups, namely: Endo, Markweta, Borokot, Almo and Cherangany. <#/>These sub-groups, though politically autonomous, had a common residence and settlement along the Kerio Valley and the Cherangany hills, (see appendix IV for the maps of the area of study).
<#/>The origin of the name Marakwet as it is used today is uncertain. <#/>However, according to Kipkorir (1973), the name only emerged in the colonial period. <#/>Kipkorir argues that there are no such people as "Marakwet"; the name is a corruption of Markweta. <#/>This latter refers to a sub-ethnic unit of the larger Kalenjin group. <#/>Along with the Almo, Cherangany, Borokot and Kiptani, the Markweta were forced into the Marakwet division, of the Keiyo - Marakwet district by the British <-/adminisration>. <#/>To Kipkorir then, the name is a colonial coinage used as an umbrella term to refer to these sub-groups for administrative purposes. <#/>In this study, the name will be used in Kipkorir's sense in reference to the above named sub-groups, or the `Chebleng' as the Pokot call them.
<#/>The 1948 census gave the total population of the Marakwet division as 29,542 persons. <#/>The population was divided as follows:
The 1969 and 1979 censuses gave the total population of the Marakwet division as 81,397 and 79,327 persons. <#/>The breakdown per location was as follows:
<#/>A projected breakdown of the population of the Marakwet by administrative division from 1979 through to 1988 assumes a constant population proportion among the divisions. <#/>The following are the estimated figures:
<#/><#/>The administrative area known as Marakwet is geographically bounded to the east by the Kerio River which runs through a small section of the eastern branch of the Great Rift Valley. <#/>To the west, it includes the Cherangany hills and the plains beyond. <#/>The Kerio Valley is generally dry, its floor rough and arid, as it extends towards the north becomes a desert. <#/>A part of the valley within Marakwet is fertile when irrigated but subject to considerable erosion during the rainy season. <#/>The valley is infested with tsetse fly and mosquitoes, and this factor has not only influenced patterns of settlement but also economic activities. <#/>The Marakwet environment favours a variety of economic activities ranging from hunting and gathering and bee-keeping in the Cherangany hills, cattle-keeping in the highlands beyond the escarpment, to rearing of goats and sheep and the growing of millet and sorghum in the Kerio Valley.
<#/><h> REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE </h>
<#/>A fairly large number of scholars have analysed the theme of African response to the establishment of colonial rule. <#/>Two of the earliest of such scholars were Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher , exponents of the idea of the strategic importance of Africa to India for Britain. <#/>They blame the partition of Africa on the "Proto-nationalist" movements of the continent which supposedly threatened the global strategic interests of European nations. <#/>They view African resistance as "romantic reactionary" struggles which compelled reluctant European statesmen, <-/hirtheto> content to exercise informal paramountcy and moral suasion in Africa, to partition and conquer the continent . <#/>This view reflects a typical Eurocentric colonial school of thought which has now been challenged.
<#/>At the Dar es Salaam Congress of African Historians of 1965, the Moscow University historian A. <#/>B. <#/>Davidson called upon scholars to refute "the traditional European historiographical view" in which the African people "apprehended the coming of the colonialists as good fortune," as "deliverance from fratricidal internecine wars, from the tyranny of neighbouring tribes, from epidemics, and periodic <-/starvations>", in which people who did not resist were described as "peace-loving" and those who did resist were described as "blood-thirsty" . <#/>Since Davidson published his seminal interpretation, the job of discovering resistance has gone apace .
<#/>In his works, the British scholar T.O. <#/>Ranger asserts that, though the African people in East and Central <-_African><+_Africa> could not avoid the imposition of colonial rule, they were not simply objects of processes set in motion from outside Africa and sustained by white initiative. <#/>He argues that even in this early period, Africans helped make their own history . <#/>Terence Ranger's central argument is that African societies resisted Europeans in every area of European penetration with independence and sovereignty as the guiding principles of the resistance . <#/>Still within the general context of African scene, Mazrui (1970) classifies African resistance and protest into four major categories: the protest of conservation, of corrective censure, of restoration and of transformation.
<#/>H.A. Mwanzi has more recently published a generalized study for the East African region. <#/>He points out that African initiatives in the face of European conquest and occupation were determined by the structure of the society in question at the time of colonial intrusion and the ecological changes taking place in the 1890s in East Africa .
<#/>In a similar study, Marcia Wright points out that natural disasters are a constant theme in the history of East <-_African><+_Africa> from 1870 to 1905. <#/>She notes that the outbreak of smallpox, cholera, <foreign/>rinderpest, pleuro-pneumonia, drought and famine amongst others resulted in high human mortality. <#/>Herds were decimated, population dispersed; all these caused compensatory raids of one community against the other. <#/>According to her, these disasters greatly weakened African societies and determined the response of these societies to the European Colonial invasion (Wright, 1985).
<#/>As regards individual countries of East Africa, studies have been done on various communities. <#/>For Tanzania, Kimambo (1969) has examined the Pare society at the advent of the German intervention. <#/>He asserts that in this early period, the Pare were aware of their own interests and took the initiative to achieve them by co-operating with the new-comers.
<#/>Thus, collaboration was chosen by the Pare to meet the colonial challenge. <#/>On the other hand, Gwassa (1969 and 1972) views the Maji Maji uprising as a protest against German brutality and oppression, and as an expression of the desire to regain freedom. <#/>He reiterates the crucial role played by religion as the basis of unity for the matrilineal peoples of southern Tanzania in the face of colonial violence.
<#/>In their general works on the history of Tanzania, Kjekshus (1977) and Iliffe (1979) pay particular attention to the ecological breakdown of the 1890s which they consider to have greatly weakened the African societies. <#/>They point out that the coming of drought and the outbreak of diseases and famine and widespread locust invasion not only broke the backbone of many of the most prosperous Tanganyikan communities; established authority was undermined and political contacts between the peoples altered thus delaying the restructuring of Tanganyika's varied pre-colonial economies into a colonial mould.
<#/>As regards the people of Uganda, Steinhart has analysed the responses of western Kingdoms to British colonial invasion. <#/>His central argument is that the response was dictated by the needs and objectives of the different communities. <#/>So whereas some communities resisted, others collaborated. <#/>This variegated response resulted in the accommodation of alien political values and institutions. <#/>The political process of change that took place could be said to have benefited both the colonizer and the colonized (Steinhart, 1977).
<#/>Studies done on Kenya and its communities reveal that the response to the colonial intrusion was diversified. <#/>According to Ingham (1962), the establishment of a nominal form of administration in the East African protectorate - as Kenya was known to 1920 - met with opposition, but lack of unity greatly weakened this cause. <#/>This was true of Kenya as a whole.
<#/>G.S. <#/>Were has specifically studied the Abaluyia. <#/>He points out that apart from the Abawanga under Mumia and their traditional allies, the majority of the Abaluyia were either indifferent or in some cases hostile to British administration. <#/>He asserts that it was the behaviour of the coastal traders - particularly of kidnapping people for slaves in the Bukusu country - that provoked the latter into being hostile to all foreigners. <#/>This hostility was later extended to the British intrusion.
<#/>In respect to the coastal area, Gregory (1969) attributes the outbreak of the Mazrui rebellion to what he terms unfortunate interference and conflict of ideas over succession. <#/>To him, the rebellion provided the stimulus for the outbreak of other rebellions all over East Africa See also Salim, 1973). <#/>And, examination made of the Giriama uprising of 1914, (Brantley, 1973 & 1981) suggests that the Giriama resisted the British not only in the economic field but also in the socio-political spheres. <#/>This view is echoed by Merrit (1975) in the case of the Taita.
<#/>Muriuki (1974) has analysed the Kikuyu reaction to foreigners. <#/>First his studies show that initially the Kikuyu had cordial relations with coastal traders. <#/>However, because of misbehaviour on the part of the traders, they later became hostile and suspicious. <#/>It was this early impression formed about the foreigners that came to determine the way the Kikuyu reacted to the British intrusion. <#/>But the landless, whom he terms as opportunists, collaborated with the British for their own personal gain. <#/>At the same time, the natural disasters of the late nineteenth century had an adverse effect on the Kikuyu ability to resist.
<#/>Ochieng (1974) <-_inform><+_informs> us that the Gusii reaction to the presence of Europeans was one of mixed feelings. <#/>He states that the possibility of allying with the British seems to have been considered and recognized by the weaker Gusii groups while the stronger ones remained indifferent. <#/>To him, the repeated punitive expeditions against the Gusii - in 1904, 1908, and 1914 - reveal their determination to regain freedom. <#/>Examining the same theme, Wipper (1977) pays attention to the rise of the Mumbo cult - a millennial movement that arose among the Abagusil and Luo. <#/>The movement prophesied the early departure of the Europeans and the coming of a "golden age" during which the elect would be blessed with abundance and the wicked overthrown. <#/>According to Wipper, the movement rejected the colonial regime and European customs and advocated a return to the old prophets and African ways. <#/>Its message stressed the lost glory and dignity that would be re-established in the millennium.
<#/>Ayot (1979) writes that the indigenous Luo-Abasuba chiefs seem not to have resisted the British. <#/>In fact, this was because the brutal treatment that had been meted out to the Uyoma, Sakwa, Seme, and Ugenya people created enough fear as to force the Luo - Abasuba to collude with the British. <#/>Ayot adds that some chiefs actually collaborated with the British simply for their personal gain.
<#/>The administrative mechanisms and policies introduced by the European colonialists were sometimes resisted. 
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<#/><I> <h>INTRODUCTION </h>
<#/>The origin of the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik was Nandi country where they settled on arrival from Maasailand. <#/>Hollis (1909) argues that the Nandi <ea/>orkoiik are 'descended from the Segelai <-/Masai> and belong to the Talai clan whose totem is a lion'. <#/>Magut (1969) supports this theory on the origin of the Nandi <ea/>orkoiik. <#/>He holds that they came from that section of the Maasai known as the Iluasi <ea/>nkishu. <#/>Several writers like Huntingford, (l953), Snell (1954), Langat (1969), Manners (1967), Walter (1970), Ngeny (1970), Matson (1972), Mwanzi (1977) and Toweett (1979) have stated in their various works that the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik moved to Kipsigis from Nandi country. <#/>However, Toweett thinks the <ea/>orkoiik "ultimately came from Kikuyu country" (Mwanzi 1977:127). <#/>Whatever their origins, Mwanzi (ibid) posits that the <ea/>orkoiik themselves seem to have given a different story about their origins. <#/>The chief one, Arap Koilegei, is said to have told the Kipsigis that he came from 'Asis' (God) and that he was his son.
<#/>That the <ea/>orkoiik moved to Kipsigis territory is no doubt, and Langat (1969) maintains that in about 1894, Kipchomber arap Koilegei, the brother of the Nandi <ea/>orkoiyot Koitalel arap Samoei came to Kipsigis, and set himself up as <ea/>orkoiyot. <#/>This movement had been occasioned by an 'anti-<ea/>orkoiyot feeling' reigning then in Nandi. <#/>On the other hand, the prevailing conditions in Kipsigis seemed to have favoured the arrival of the <ea/>orkoiik. <#/>Peristiany (1939) states that since the Kipsigis great <ea/>orkoiyot, Arap Kabuos, had been put to death for giving bad advice to his people, the Kipsigis were left without <ea/>orkoiyot thus, they welcomed 'a maasai <ea/>oloibon'. <#/>Manners (1967) also says that it appears this was a most propitious time for their acceptance among the Kipsigis for there had been a series of military <-/reverseses> experienced by the latter. <#/>The elders and the leaders of the regiments had realised the necessity of a central power to coordinate successful raids, hence 'a kind of general power vacuum was created' and Manners adds that "Laibons who appeared on the scene at that moment stepped into the breach" (ibid 264).
<#/>As already indicated it should be noted that prior to the arrival of the <ea/>orkoiik (Laibons), the Kipsigis had diviners whom they referred to as <ea/>orkoiik (singular - <ea/>orkoiyot). <#/>Thus, Laibon probably coming from a Maasai word '<ea/>Oloibon' is a foreign word to the Kipsigis, while '<ea/>orkoiik' was the local word. <#/>Since the acceptance of the Nandi <ea/>orkoiik by the Kipsigis, they are locally called 'laibons', '<ea/>Talai' and '<ea/>orkoiik'. <#/>All the Kipsigis Laibons belonged to the Kapterugut and Kagipsegon sub-division of the Talai clan.
<#/>With their arrival, the Chief <ea/>orkoiyot grafted onto the existing Kipsigis social, economic and political institutions with some modifications to build his status. <#/>He quickly gained influence as a ritual expert and began to give permission and blessings for raids and ceremonies. <#/>They also functioned as advisers and prophets. <#/>The <ea/>orkoiik new roles made the local people to fear them and were referred to as 'the owners of the country' and <ea/>orkoiyot's messengers (<ea/>maotik) were an important instrumentality helping them in the administration of Kipsigis.
<#/>When the British came to Kipsigis, they invited the <ea/>orkoiyot to participate in '<ea/>barazas' along with the newly appointed chiefs and a number of the '<ea/>maotik' were appointed chiefs. <#/>However, it did not take long before the British realised that the <ea/>orkoiik were a potent force for disruption and were against the British rule. <#/>This sour relationship lead to the deportation of three leading <ea/>orkoiik leaders, Arap Koilegei, Arap Boisio and Arap Kibuigut in 1913 (Mwanzi, 1977:151.But the <ea/>orkoiik 'menace' continued with new leaders cropping up to challenge the British. <#/>This subsequently led to the deportation of a whole clan of the <ea/>orkoiik to Gwasi, in South Nyanza. <#/>This deportation <-/compaign>, which marked the peak of the conflict between the <ea/>orkoiik and the British rulers started with the passage of "The Laibons removal ordinance" of 25th September, 1934 and it was completed in 1938 (KNA/PC/NZA/3/15/115). <#/>Later the <ea/>orkoiik were allowed back in Kipsigis and by 1962, all but a tiny 'handful of hardcore' <ea/>orkoiik had been returned to the district where they were issued with special passes and stationed in Kericho Township.
<#/><h> AREA OF STUDY </h>
<#/>The researcher intends to carry his research among the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik, one of the Kipsigis clans that lived mainly in the north of the Kipsigis country. <#/>The majority of them lived in location 1 (one), of the then South Lumbwa District, later renamed Kericho District. <#/>However, others were to be found in other parts of the district.
<#/>The Kipsigis country which during colonial period consisted of three major divisions of Belgut (Lumbwa), Bureti and Sotik, is bounded to the north by Muhoroni valley, which separates it from Nandi. <#/>The east of Kipsigis is bounded by Mau escarpment and Molo forests. <#/>And in the west, Kano plains form the border, while in the south west, the land borders the Gusii highlands. <#/>The boundary in the south is marked by the Amala river. <#/>The Chief <ea/>orkoiyot, Arap Koilegei seems to have wielded great influence over Belgut division compared to the other two divisions of Bureti and Sotik (KNA/PC/NZA/1/1/1).The colonial administrators originally considered people living in the three divisions to be separate 'tribes'
<#/><h> REVIEW OF LITERATURE </h>
<#/>Several works have been written on the history of the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik, but their interaction with the colonialists has not been explored extensively compared to the historiography of the Nandi <ea/>orkoiik resistance [Magut (1969), Walter (1970) Huntingford (1950), Matson (1972), Ngeny (1970) and Mwanzi (1977)], the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik resistance is the least explored so far.
<#/>The arrival of the <ea/>orkoiik had far-reaching consequences on the social, economic and political institutions of the Kipsigis. <#/>Moreover, during the conquest and establishment of the British rule, the <ea/>orkoiik played a pivotal role in resisting the colonial conquest and hegemony. <#/>It is only imperative that an extensive study is undertaken to examine the response of the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik to colonial rule. <#/>This, in the main, is the objective of the study, hence it reviews the related literature.
<#/>Ranger (1990), a specialist in African resistance, says that resistance leaders were legitimized through ritual recognition, and when the aggrieved African community wanted to defend their sovereignty they naturally drew heavily on religious symbols and ideas. <#/>Some movements almost invariably had the advantage of spiritual leaders preaching the message of wider unity. <#/>This is also to be seen among the Kipsigis whose religious leader Arap Koilegei and others who cropped up after him, championed the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik resistance to the imposition <-_f><+_of> the British rule. <#/>Ranger asserts that the view that only 'large scale' African politics resisted, while 'small scale' societies could neither resist nor exploit colonial rule has been conclusively disproved.
<#/>Another writer Davidson (1968) writing on the same subject of African resistance to colonial conquest and rule, emphasizes that African resistance was a 'regular phenomenon' and that since virtually all states had some crucial interests or values which they were prepared to defend, they could resort, if necessary, to armed resistance.
<#/>Marks (1970) has shown in her study of Khoisan resistance in South Africa that 'non-centralised' people are just as capable of putting up a determined fight against white advance as centralised ones. <#/>It is the intention of this thesis to enrich the evidence showing that even the so called 'non-centralised' communities could put up a spirited fight against European conquest and occupation just like the centralized ones.
<#/>Mwanzi (1977) asserts that before 1940, there were two administrations and religions in the Kipsigis country; that of the <ea/>orkoiyot and his religion, and that of the British and their Christianity. <#/>He says that the <ea/>orkoiyot religion competed with christianity for allegiance among the Kipsigis, with the former outwitting the other, to an extent that the colonial government had to physically remove the <ea/>orkoiik, to make Christianity and colonial administration effective. <#/>He adds that the success of the <ea/>orkoiik in their conflict with the Europeans emanated from the strength of the system they had built among the Kipsigis, with the introduction of a 'new civilization'.
<#/>In his other work, Mwanzi (1980) says that the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik undoubtedly offered the most vigorous and protracted resistance to the British rule. <#/>This was possible because of the introduction of the office of the <ea/>orkoiyot which brought a new civilization based on religion and of the initiative of an individual religious leader, which united the Kipsigis. <#/>He also adds that the treatment that the <ea/>orkoiik underwent under the colonial rule, and the fact that this once influential people had minimal influence on the Kipsigis colonial society that followed, shows the fate that befell those African communities who resisted colonialism. <#/>Although Mwanzi argues that the deportation of the <ea/>orkoiik from Kipsigisland ended the <ea/>orkoiik hegemony over Kipsigis society, this thesis asserts that the deportation of the <ea/>orkoiik did not signify the end of their influence over the Kipsigis, instead it led to the <-/adoptation> of new strategies of anti-colonial protest. <#/></Infact> from their exile, the <ea/>orkoiik were able to influence a number of political happenings in Kipsigis to the amazement of the colonialists (DC/KER/1/9).
<#/>Hotchkiss (1937) in his work shows the important role played by the Chief <ea/>orkoiyot, Arap Koilegei, in the Kipsigis response to the introduction of Christianity. <#/>He said of him, "behind the urbane mind, amiable exterior there was a clever mind, which was bent on circumventing the </whiteman> in those things that touched the customs and habits of the Kipsigis people" . <#/>Despite the fact that he has explained the circumstances which led to the expulsion of the <ea/>orkoiik to Gwasi, his work has dealt mainly with the Chief <ea/>orkoiyot, thus ignoring the other important activities of the clan as a whole, especially after the deportation of their leaders in 1913. <#/>Indeed new leaders came up who continued to challenge the British rule in Kipsigis. <#/>It is the response of the new leaders and the clan as a whole that the thesis intends to examine in detail.
<#/>Peristiany (1939) has dealt with the religious history of the Kipsigis, but lacks any work on the interaction between the Europeans and the <ea/>orkoiik. <#/>He himself being an anthropologist, his work is a descriptive "account of the customs and social institutions (of the Kipsigis) he personally witnessed". <#/>Thus it is non-historical. <#/>But as it may be recalled, anthropological work is an important source of historical data, therefore it will help in the research.
<#/>Although Peristiany has discussed the existence of the <ea/>orkoiik, he has been shallow. <#/>Evans Pritchard who introduced his work concurred with this view when he said, "Dr. <#/>Peristiany says little of the Laibon, prophets, who are in origin exiled <-/Masai>" (in Peristiany, 1939:XXVI). <#/>The study intends to fill a gap as it aims at examining the role of <ea/>orkoiik on the religious history of the Kipsigis during this period when Christianity was being introduced, and whether the <ea/>orkoiik expulsion from the Kipsigisland was motivated by religious or political factors.
<#/>Orchardson (1961) looked at the Kipsigis from the anthropological point of view. <#/>He has described the Kipsigis customs and practices at all time. <#/>Historians look at an aspect of a society at a given time. <#/>His work does not include the interaction between the <ea/>orkoiik and the Europeans in Kipsigis. <#/>He takes the activities of the Talai clan of Arap Koilegei "as necessarily evil", though he says '<ea/>orgoinotet' (the act of divinity) is not "necessarily evil and that the word <ea/>orkoiik applied to a very few <-/practioners> who claim to divine from words uttered by a gourd . <#/>On the origin of the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik he says they belonged to the family of the "notorious maasai" who came to Kipsigis from Nandi shortly before the advent of the British rule in Kipsigis.
<#/>Manners (1967) in his work has also mentioned about the Kipsigis <ea/>orkoiik and as if to borrow a leaf from the other white authors, he calls them "witches or sorcerers". <#/>He takes them to be " a class of individuals, who had considerable status and who acquired great power over the Kipsigis in a variety of ways". </I>
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<#/><I> <h> Swahili <ea/>Taarab as a Medium of Political Expression in Kenya </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>The term "<ea/>taarab" is derived from the Arabic root, "<foreign/>taarab" which may refer to a musical feast or the playing of any musical instrument. <#/>In the contemporary East African scene, the term applies to "the saloon music form" (Boyd, 10) of the Swahili community which utilizes Swahili traditional lyrical forms such as <ea/>taarab or <ea/>shairi (quatrain) and <ea/>wimbo (three-line song verse).
<#/>Although traditionally performed in ritual settings such as weddings and other important social and domestic occasions, the scope of the use of <ea/>taarab among the Kenyan Swahili has widened to include the political, religious and other domains of social life. <#/>In fact, it is impossible to conceive of any important function in this community today, be it a political rally or a soccer match where the performance of <ea/>taarab does not feature. <#/>The local political leadership has realized the social influence of the form and has consistently tapped it in an effort to reach the widest possible audience in the multi-lingual and multi-cultural Kenya. <#/>The communicative force of the Swahili <ea/>taarab does not only issue from its Kiswahili medium (the national language of East and Central Africa), but especially from the powerful employment of appropriate and apt choice of local metaphor or idiom.
<#/>In this article, a limited range of dominant political ideas and themes carried in the contemporary Kenyan Swahili <ea/>taarab songs is explored. <#/>The term "theme" here is used to mean "the prominent, coherent element or characteristic ideas that seem to have some relevance to a social-or cultural problem" (Biersteker, 1). <#/>Therefore, the consistent and related ideas in the song are treated as a theme. <#/>The major themes dealt with include, proestablishment mass indoctrination, nationalism, defiance and struggle for one's political rights.
<#/>Generally speaking, the information communicated through the medium of songs can be put into two broad categories: the purposive information, which has direct and immediate impact upon the audience and the consequential information, which is of a wider and more generalized nature . <#/>The main goals of musical communication can further be classified into four broad types: provision of basic physical needs, socialization or imparting of a sense of conformity to societal norms or condemnation thereof and <-/fulfillment> of emotive goals such as feelings, philosophical thinking, status planning, spiritual and emotional expression and the achievement of individual aesthetic goals such entertainment, enjoyment, personal commitment, spiritual renewal or inspiration. <#/>(Ibid., 7)
<#/>It is the contention here that as a popular oral form, the Swahili <ea/>taarab song is concerned with everyday happening in the Swahili community and Kenya society and does not deal with any of the above goals in isolation but rather, combines all of them in an inclusive manner. <#/>Therefore, a song referring to a religious moral may have a strong political and social message as well. <#/>The form has an <-/improvisory> character and uses a rhymed metrical style that is deeply saturated with metaphorical symbolism often resembling a secret linguistic code (Ohly, 467. <#/>Clearly, therefore, the <ea/>taarab form has rendered itself more readily as a medium of sensitive socio-political issues in the contemporary society than other traditional oral poetic forms such as <ea/>wimbo, which tend to be more strictly ritual-bound. <#/>This is in line with the nature of Swahili poetry whose communicative power lies not so much in its formal aspects, but rather its historical determinants, the language medium and the cultural and social values that it expresses" (Mulokozi, 46).
<#/>Any attempt to highlight and critique the political ideas in genre like the Swahili <ea/>taarab song cannot, therefore, ignore the dynamic social and dialectic relationship that exists, between the artist, the society and the process of artistic creation. <#/>The Swahili <ea/>taarab songs in the sample analyzed here are not treated as a mere reflection of the Swahili and Kenyan society in the artist's mind neither are they seen as representing the author's isolated, individualized, spontaneous and or subjective understanding of the political issues in contemporary Kenya. <#/>Rather, they are seen as social constructs that result from a concerted, conscious and dialectical process. <#/>As such, their value resides not in their embodiment of the genius of the individual artist but a reasoned and imaginative reflection of that genius. <#/>The socio-political criticism of the themes in the Swahili <ea/>taarab songs in this article is based on the assessment of </O> as the basic unit of analysis and as a product created in a given point in time within the dictates of a unique socio-cultural realities.
<#/>The songs cited are analyzed for clues to the broadest possible social meaning and each one is treated as an interrogative text, with a multiplicity of voices or meanings, which,together constitute their total meaning. <#/>In this sense, one could say that the songs are a viable and intelligible form through which an understanding of the Swahili and Kenya political culture and society could be understood. <#/>Presumably, in Swahili <ea/>taarab songs, like other songs in the Swahili and African tradition in general, perform two basic functions: <-/skillful> use of language and communication of an apt social message.
<#/>Although Swahili songs are basically a form of local popular literature, they are not politically restricted to the immediate Swahili coastal social or cultural values but assume a national and even regional character in their content. <#/>They reflect "the culture of the new nations of East Africa." (Arnold, 69). <#/>It is noteworthy that although the Kenyan Swahili <ea/>taarab poet may exhibit a deeper sense of political awareness, he or she should never be expected to accomplish the impossible. <#/>Although the artist criticizes and exposes the social ills afflicting the society, he or she faces some limitation personal as well as socio-political (Umma, 18). <#/>However, an examination of the songs with political themes in this study indicates that the <ea/>taarab artists possess and cultivate a special talent: the ability to overcome conventional myths and to seek a broader and deeper view of life. <#/>They display the courage to purvey and parade common-place facts and to provide a new, fresh and challenging way of </intepreting> those facts and assumptions. <#/>For instance, in the verse below, the singer uses a metaphor of a group of drummers and dancers to allude to the handling of the affair of state by the political establishment of the day.
<#/><h> Kenyan <ea/>taarab Artist and the Political Environment </h>
<#/>In an attempt to assess how far the contemporary Swahili <ea/>taarab artist has continued to play the role of a socio-political observer and commentator in the society, one forms the impression that, the artist, in contrast with the popular view, has been reduced to more of a performer than a direct orator, still as critical, but no longer as central, to the life of the community, as the traditional <foreign/>griots once were. <#/>Arguably, the contemporary Swahili oral artist continues to use oracy as a medium for discussing topical issues of the day. <#/>The popular view of the oral artist in the Swahili community is well captured by Ibrahim Noor Shariff when he writes: <quote_><quote/>
<#/>However, the evidence from a critical examination of a sample of Swahili <ea/>taarab songs indicates that, the contemporary artist's <-/>is commitment to serve the masses has been affected by both social and personal factors. <#/>Cultural and technological changes as well as the artists' self-concept of their mission have all combined to dilute the degree of devotion and dedication to the common cause of their society.
<#/>The impact of monetary economy and its attendant pressure on the individual artist to fend for an ever growing number of dependants, has placed a big financial burden on the musicians. <#/>Since many of them are unemployed and have little or no formal education, they are poverty-stricken and often fall victim to the clever manipulation of the rich politicians who entice them and make them compromise their professional ideals. <#/>As a result, many singers compose and sing songs praising the politicians and the establishment, with only the aim of winning the favour of their patrons. <#/>Additionally, many artists <-/clamor> for, and crave media coverage and often are prepared to tailor their songs to fit the dictates of the media officials, thus again, compromising the ideals of their art for personal material gain. <#/>In addition to their creative genius, the artist's ability to adapt <ea/>taarab songs is enhanced by the linguistic resourcefulness and prominence of Kiswahili as a medium of political expressions. <#/>Apart from being the recipient of many external cultural and linguistic inputs, Kiswahili is the only language from the region, and indeed one of the few from the entire continent, whose poetry and literature have made an impact on the literature of other parts of the world (Shihabdin na Mnyampala, 67).
<#/>In the following song for example, composed around 1983, the singer's sole objective is to heap praise on Kenya's leader and give the message as a nationalistic outlook as possible.
<#/><h> Commitment, Patriotism and Partisanism </h>
<#/>Even though a number of these artists have tended to sacrifice or compromise their professional ideals for personal gain, there are still a few who have faithfully carried the mantle of the defiant and radical classical Swahili political poets of the 18th and 19th centuries such as Muyaka Bin Haji (1776-1840) and A. A. A. Nassir (1720-1820). <#/>It is amazing the <ea/>taarab artists, in the face of the alienating individualism and materialism of the present day capitalistic life-style, have continued to explore freely and recreate suggestions of a better future, seek to establish shared social codes of behaviour and explore ideologies that govern, influence, or dominate political thinking in their society. <#/>(Biersteker, 8) For instance, in the following song that <-_artists><+_artist> decries the social disease of official and personal corruption and amassing of individual wealth at the expense of the poor suffering majority. <#/>She warns of the danger this trend poses to the social fabric unless it is eradicated through the committed and resolute decision of each individual. <#/>
<#/>The question of basic human, political and natural rights has been at the <AmE/>center of political and legal debates, not just in contemporary Kenya but in the entire world. <#/>The range of views and opinions advanced on the subject is very wide indeed and this is reflected in these songs. <#/>For example, the poet in the song below advocates militancy in the individual's struggle for these rights. <#/>His sense of urgency and resoluteness echoes the maxim that "Justice delayed is justice denied" and implies that most of these rights are never delivered on a silver platter but they have to be fought for.
<#/>It is neither possible to evaluate in specific terms the impact of political patronage of the various <ea/>taarab groups and artists on the performance and content of the song in today's Kenya nor state the type of audience usually targeted by the Swahili <ea/>taarab artist and how the content of the songs affects the political behaviour of this audience, if at all. <#/>Obviously, this discussion can not provide adequate answers to these basic questions. <#/>Their just treatment calls for further work. <#/>However, it is clear that not all Swahili <ea/>taarab artists condone the idea of political patronage in the <ea/>taarab movement or on the arena of national politics. <#/>This fact is evident in the following song which,loudly denounces and scoffs at the leaders who cannot stand on their own without "Godfathers".
<#/>Likewise, leaders who are so blinded and mesmerized by their power and prestige as to forget their public duty or take it for granted may be compared to a lonely tiny boat trying to fight it out with the mighty sea. <#/>Such leaders can never hope to succeed because power resides with the people and only they can bestow or take it away. <#/>This seems to be the implicit message in the following song: <quote_><quote/>
<#/>In their art, the writing and the oral Swahili <ea/>taarab artists are expected by their community to play the role of <-/envisioners> of the collective Swahili cosmology. <#/>They do not only recreate this cosmology but also attempt to interpret it through the medium of oral poetic composition such as <ea/>taarab songs, as an outlet of the Swahili philosophical and linguistic creativity. <#/><#/><#/><
</I>
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<#/><I> <h> Gender and ideology: The role of language </h>
<#/><h> Introduction </h>
<#/>So what's all the fuss about?
<#/>THE PLAIN SPEAKER: And what are you working on at the moment?
<#/>THE LINGUIST: Well, I am writing a paper on language and gender.
<#/>THE PLAIN SPEAKER: You mean all that stuff about sexist words that feminists carry on about? <#/>Now that's something that really irritates me, all this nonsense about chairperson and he or she and Ms. <#/>If women want to chair meetings that's OK by me, but I don't see why they can't just be called chairmen and shut up about it. <#/>And quite frankly the next time someone adds or she when I've used he, I'll explode! It's a waste of time, those extra words, and what's more important, it distracts attention from what I am talking about. <#/>When I am talking, I want to be able to say what I want to say in the quickest and simplest and most straightforward way. <#/>I don't want people putting words into my mouth and telling me I shouldn't say this and can't say that—or injecting sex into everything, insisting on a she for every he!
<#/>THE LINGUIST: But if people aren't reminded that he could be she, it might not occur to them. <#/>I remember how taken aback you were when your daughter said she couldn't be a doctor because she was a girl. <#/>And how you said she must have picked up such an idea at school because she would never have heard any such nonsense at home.
<#/>THE PLAIN SPEAKER: But what's that got to do with he or she? <#/>That was just some nonsensical idea she picked up from somewhere, which we nipped in the bud before it went any further. <#/>We told her in no uncertain terms that it was nonsense. <#/>Being a girl wouldn't stop her being a doctor, but not working hard enough at school jolly well would!
<#/>THE LINGUIST: I am afraid I don't share your faith that simply saying something is nonsense means the end of it. <#/>And if there's any picking up done between people and ideas, then it's probably more true to say that ideas pick up people rather than the other way round.
<#/>THE PLAIN SPEAKER: What an extraordinary thing to say! That's tantamount to saying that I don't think my own thoughts—my thoughts think me!
<#/>THE LINGUIST: Well, I suppose you could put it like that. <#/>The trouble is that people think of thoughts or ideas as some kind of invisible things that simply wear words like we wear our clothes. <#/>I don't believe that your telling your daughter she can be a doctor if she wants to will make her believe it, because I don't believe that the 'idea' girls-can't-be-doctors means much more than that. <#/>We live in a society in which people talk about doctors as he. <#/>Just as nurses are she, but it goes further. <#/>We see doctoring as male and nursing as female. <#/>We've divided our whole world up into male and female and we then proceed to talk people into making the 'right' choices or feeling guilty about not having made them depending on the sex.
<#/>THE PLAIN SPEAKER: (Sceptical) and who's supposed to do the persuading, if we're talked into all this stuff? <#/>
<#/>THE LINGUIST: We do it ourselves—much of the time without even realising it. <#/>Just by learning to talk. <#/>It's all in the language.
<#/>Three years ago, in August 1989, while at an International Conference in Linguistics held in Bayreuth, West Germany, I declared that I was not feminist. <#/>I was presenting a paper on the topic 'Sexist Ideology in Dholuo: Some Linguistic Evidence'. <#/>I emphasized that my paper was 'concerned with language and not feminism . <#/>. <#/>.' that I was not attempting 'to change the status quo or come up with sexually-neutral words or 'flag words' for feminists in Dholuo'.
<#/>Although I am still not a feminist today, I am certainly much more sensitized and have a better awareness of gender issues. <#/>I am aware that 'most human societies are male dominated' . . . with the male perspective favoured, giving people preconceptions about sex roles. <#/>I am also aware that it is this state of affairs that led to the rise of feminism.
<#/>'Feminism is a conscious effort to view things differently from the male perspective. <#/>It is a conscious effort to change the angle of perception.
<#/>It is a conscious effort to change the biased perception where the biological sex distinction of 'male' versus 'female' is used as a basis for elevating the social gender distinction of masculine (what is considered or believed to be manly) from feminine (what is believed or considered to be womanly) even when the two are not inherently related.
<#/>I do not, however, see gender awareness as the need to bring equality or sameness between men and women—something which is at least biologically impossible. <#/>I see it as the need to be fair to both men and women in the society, to reconsider and abandon attitudes and beliefs that punish women merely on the basis of biological sex distinction.
<#/>The most important thing is not that all women be empowered and encouraged to do what men do by acquiring masculine roles in the society, but that both sexes, male and female be FREE to choose what social roles they want to play in the task of nation building.
<#/>It is clear that no matter how rigid the categorization of activities and duties according to social gender distinctions of what is masculine and feminine, there will always be those who deviate from the norm. <#/>For example, some Kuwaiti women are breaking away from the social confines of Muslim ideology. <#/><quote_><quote/> Another example is the emergence of women in domains that are socially considered to be masculine such as Law, Medicine, Engineering or Academics—positions of leadership and politics in Kenya today.
<#/>'There is no doubt that the biological difference between male and female is of considerable importance in human societies. <#/>It seems equally beyond doubt that what is regarded as appropriate behaviour for males and females, other than that directly consequent on those biological differences (such as ... pregnancy, lactation), differs widely from one society to another. <#/>It is also readily observable that even where social expectations are strong and explicit, some variability in the behaviour of males and females does occur: many will conform to expected patterns of behaviour, but some expectations ... deviates will not.'
<#/>This suggests that social gender distinction of roles and behaviour patterns into masculine and feminine is not an automatic consequence of the biological sex distinction into male and female.
<#/>True democracy would be one where both men and women are allowed freedom of choice with regard to the manner in which they render their social contribution to the nation. <#/>Women who want to take on any of the social roles that the society perceives as masculine should be free to do so. <#/>Such women would want no occupational restrictions on account of their gender. <#/>They would want to freely vary with the men in the spirit that they can do anything a man can do. <#/>Note here the case of women who do manual labour, those in the army and the police force. <#/>Other women might however not want complete free variation but only to be free to contribute in specific cases of the so called 'masculine roles' such as politics, leadership and decision-making.
<#/>The possibility that there might be women who are quite happy to stay in the roles that have been labelled 'feminine' and who would thus be completely lost in the masculine ones must also be considered.
<#/>When all the possible choices that can be made by women are considered, it is clear that their basis is ideological. <#/>If this were to happen, then women would be free to choose the world-view or sets of values, attitudes and beliefs through which to evaluate themselves in society.
<#/>The question of gender awareness and sensitivity is therefore one of FAIRNESS and not EQUALITY. <#/>It is a question of allowing the women to make the choice of whether to see the biological sex distinctions into male and female as controlling what sort of social gender roles they want to play, such as being mothers as well as career women or whether to choose social gender roles irrespective of the biological sex differences (for example, join the army and not be married or a mother). <#/>It is asking for the prohibitive fixation of gender roles perpetuated by 'certain styles of life, belief, behaviours and endeavours' which keep women from mainstream development activities, to be abandoned. <#/>This is how women should be mainstreamed in the democratization process.
<#/>It is in this context that Maria Nzomo, a political science lecturer at the University of Nairobi and AAWORD member, 'criticized Kenyan women appointed to key positions for failing to use their offices to the benefit of other women' in a paper titled 'Women in Politics and Public-Decision Making'. <#/>It is also the context in which the media not only challenged parliamentarians and other women leaders to come out strongly and speak their minds in the Sunday Nation of September 22, 1991, but also criticized the structure of women's organization in Kenya as 'elitist, not only in leadership, but also in structure.' Special mention was made of KMYWO as a grassroot organization that 'largely agrees with male-initiated policies that are not only anti-women but also those that largely act against the welfare of the majority, irrespective of gender.' The organization was seen 'to merely react to situations as if its policy is: others lead and we follow in matters of national interest.'
<#/>The tendency of some politicians and party leaders to use derogatory remarks in referring to women seems to confirm that women will always continue to be disadvantaged, because: <quote_><quote/><#/>Thus when the ideology 'the body of ideas characteristic of a particular society or sub-culture' has a gender bias the language(s) of that society will be equally biased.
<#/>The paper, however, noted that because language reflects culture, something which is quite dynamic and not static, those who speak different languages or different varieties of the same language 'have different ideologies which are reflected in their language.'
<#/>People should therefore pay particular attention to the kind of language they use in relation to women. <#/>They should be aware that the language will establish (identify) their ideological stance, that is, beliefs, values and attitudes. <#/>That the meaning of whatever they say will be derived from the actual choices that they make in using language (since it is not entirely random) in view of how the choice is related to the 'context in which they speak, the goal or purpose of the talk and what beliefs and values are implicated.'
<#/><h> Linguistic evidence in the evaluation of women </h>
<#/>There is evidence that variation in the 'set of rules which an individual has acquired for making judgement about things or behaviour he (she) experiences is reflected in language'. <#/>People's choice of what language to use in relation to women thus depends on what they regard as the appropriate forum or role of women in the society.
<#/>'Explicit evaluation is seen when males who act in ways that help to perpetuate the subordinate status of women are referred to as 'chauvinists' or when feminists 'name certain attitudes and behaviours as sexist...a word that did not exist until recently.'
<#/>Implicit evaluation on the other hand takes the 'form of denying or attempting to discredit meanings that threaten the status quo.'
<#/>An example of a common response given by both men and women (male chauvinists and anti-feminist women) is that 'feminists' claim about sexist language is trivial and fussy because 'it is only words.' Such a response does not take into account the fact that language is not neutral in the construction of social reality.
<#/>It is important to note in this regard that it was the recognition of gender as a basis of determining power relations in the society that led to the explicit evaluation of certain aspects of social reality as oppressive. <#/></I>