Languages Help Pull Kenya Apart
Language may be finishing what guns and pangas couldn’t in the aftermath of post-election violence in Kenya. The mayhem, pitting some of the country’s major ethnic groups, including Kikuyus, Luos, and Kalenjins, against each other, was the most serious since Kenya’s independence in 1963. Now reports indicate some schools in homeland ares with mixed student populations are missing faculty with the necessary language skills.
Primary schools in mixed zones of the Rift Valley such as Nakuru and Molo are using local tongues for instruction leaving Kikuyu children, newcomers to the area since independence, to fend for themselves. These schools are without their normal complement of Kikuyu instructors who are fearful of returning after the violence. Kikuyus, the tribe of Kenya’s powerful first president Jomo Kenyatta, have been accused of monopolizing trade, commerce, and land at the expense of Kenya’s other tribes, including the Luo and Kalenjin. Some Kikuyus, outside their traditional Central Province homeland, have abandoned whole farms and businesses in the wake of the 2008 violence after living intermixed and/or intermarried for decades in the Rift Valley.
In countries with numerous linguistic and tribal groups, using local tongues for schooling is not only administratively impractical, but serves to reinforce geographic and cultural separateness. Why not implement Kiswahili literacy at the earliest primary levels? In a Kenyan polity so weakened of legitimacy, language should be a positive force for fostering an integrated national identity so future generations of Kenyans can take their national motto “Harambee!” (Let’s pull together) seriously.
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