I learned some fascinating tidbits about the Nandi traditional culture and I wish I knew more
In Nandi culture (an ethnic group in Kenya — sub-tribe of the Kalenjin ethnic group), being a mother was a big deal for married women. Especially for the first birth. From the time of birth, the mother took the title “mother of [first child’s name]”, which she used for the rest of her life and it became an integral part of her identity. It happened that my younger brother and his wife had a baby before my wife and I did. My mother remarked that if we had been living strictly according to our Nandi traditional culture, because my brother and his wife had “jumped the line”, my sister-in-law’s first child was considered the older couple’s (my wife’s) child, and my wife would have taken the title of their baby’s mother. My sister in law would then have to wait until either she had another child or my wife and I had our first, for which she would assume the title of its mother.
I was both confused and intrigued by the Nandi culture’s elaborate naming system. Why go into so much trouble? Did it matter? My mother went on to explain that being a mother was very important for married women in Nandi traditional culture, and was deeply tied to their identity. This was the way society ”covered” women who could not bear children of their own. This system worked well because children were considered to belong to the entire community, and a child’s affiliation was not just to their parents but to the community in general. Any adult in the community took it upon themselves to watch out for the younger generation and could discipline others’ children in case of errant behavior. This made so much sense. I realized that there is so much fascinating information that I do not have about my people’s culture and suddenly wished I knew more.
I sat back and listened more attentively to my mother. She went on to explain that in the Nandi community, identity was deeply associated with social ties. Traditionally, you almost never used someone’s real name when referring to them directly, but rather deferred to a title (a practice that is changing now as people adopt more of Western culture). A title was always tied to some form of social status. The elderly were always agui (grandfather) or gogo (grandmother). The area chief was referred to as kirwogindet (judge/leader). Parents were baba/mama, and adults with kids were always pot (mother of) [child’s name] for ladies and arap (son of) [father’s name or name given at initiation] for men. Understanding this framework was key for me to appreciate the great wisdom behind the elaborate “mother of so and so” naming convention for married women. As a side note, in Nandi culture, traditionally couples always referred to each other as “father of so and so” and “mother of so and so” or some sort of pet name when directly speaking to each other. They never ever called each other by their middle name. That was only uttered during divorce proceedings, in the presence of elders and was tied to the formalization of that process. A husband or wife calling their spouse by their middle name would have immediately signaled that things were at divorce level. Clearly names were very important to the proper functioning of society.
As I sat there musing, I realized that I had never really had a place where I could go and look up information about our traditional culture, save the few examples my mother knew. There are some detailed descriptive books that I have come across describing Nandi culture but those were written by white missionaries who came to live among the people to try to convert them to Christianity. Most African history books I’ve encountered about African cultures discuss economic activities and other surface-level observations made by external observers peering in from the outside. I have yet to find in-depth sociological studies from experts that understand African cultural phenomena and their sophistication with all the contextual details that can only be understood by people on the inside. I stayed up until around 3am asking a lot of questions, and was fascinated to learn about the intricate organization of Nandi traditional culture. The Nandi people had implemented a complex societal arrangement, with established ways of navigating what I considered modern cultural phenomena, for example, surrogacy and divorce. This is in complete contrast to the general perception that pre-colonial African culture was primitive and lacked nuance.
Another interesting topic that came up that day was how the Nandi society structured polygamy. It is easy to assume that the man went out and found anyone he fancied as a second wife. This was not the case. Nandi traditional culture included a strict hierarchy in the household and a well-defined locus of control. The woman was in charge of the homestead, including food and logistical aspects of maintaining the home, while the man dealt with more societal duties such as protection from intruders and herding cattle. In polygamous settings, it was the “main” wife (typically the first and eldest wife) who decided a “helper wife” was needed, and was responsible for finding one. It was the main wife who decided where the man slept every night and which of the junior wives made him dinner. The man had no say in such household matters; the senior wife was king, or more correctly, queen in this domain. Fascinating!
Every time I learn something about Nandi traditional culture, I wonder how much more we already lost. Like many other African traditional cultures, the Nandi culture was primarily passed on from generation to generation by oral traditions: adults would weave moral lessons into fables; elders would teach values to younger members by word of mouth; history was woven into legends; heroes were praised and remembered via song and dance etc. However, the communal life that sustained these oral traditions has been gradually replaced by the modern, more individualistic way of life. As a result, Nandi culture is slowly being erased. Nowadays, most people don’t use their traditional names, and instead go by their official names or nicknames.
When we fail to preserve and study our traditional cultures, we not only lose historical information, but also decades of wisdom, our legacy and our heritage. There are definitely some aspects that work better in contemporary culture. But there is an incredible amount of wisdom to be gleaned from digging deeply and earnestly into our cultural histories. I think we Africans should do more in this department.
My mother learned about the Nandi culture, by spending a lot of time with one of her elderly aunts as a child, and listening to all her stories. However, not everyone is as fortunate to have someone pass this wisdom to them. So for the general population, who will fill in this gap? What if we had more African scholars, anthropologists and sociologists to study these cultures and histories? What if there existed respected and well-funded African research centers to coordinate this work, and create archives for prosperity? I for one would spend a lot of time just reading and learning more about my people. Who knows, we might even find interesting solutions to perennial societal problems that might have been solved long ago before we lost our past. The top ten google search results for scholarship on African cultures point to American educational institutions. I think the discourse would be much richer if we had African institutions producing scholarly work on African cultures at a level that would put them in that list. There is a lot of work to do.
