Dinner With Mwavuwalaba and Nabukeera

Greetings. Last Valentine's day I shared stories; non-economic (Kiwanuka's journey courting Zalwango) and economic (the borrowing patterns of rural women). To continue with the custom I intend to share an excerpt from Peregrine Kibuuka's novel, Habakkuk the Catechist. 

The novel is a coming of age story of Timothy Mwavuwalaba, son of the titular Habakkuk, beginning with his childhood in Loko village. Dr. Kibuuka started his schooling at Namilyango Junior Boys' School. Like the protagonist of his novel, he continued on to Nyenga and Gaba Seminaries. Both Kibuuka and Mwavuwalaba abandoned their priestly vocation, with Kibuuka proceeding to Namilyango College whereas Mwavuwalaba continued his further studies at St. Pius Secondary Schools (whose head, Fr. Ben, is no less inspired by Kibuuka's former head teacher Fr. Bernard Kuipers). Upon completing their university education both men pursued teaching careers at their respective former schools.

The excerpt I have elected to share covers a honest conversation about domestic finances and work ethic between Mwavuwalaba and his wife, Goretti Nabukeera.

I was in no mood to listen to preaching when I had no money in my pocket. I did not think buying a fashionable constituted any obligation in the midst of a financial squeeze. So I remained mum. We ate our lunch in silence. And now she has called me for supper. Because of the retreat, she simply declares to the whole house: "Dinner!"

I uncover the supper. Angels above! Clean white pieces of cassava neatly laid out on the plate. I ask why the cassava. Nabukeera says the matooke got finished.

"Why did you not tell me?" I shoot back.

"I forgot."

"You seem to be forgetting everything. You better jot down your name. It looks like I must employ a quarter-master general in this house."

"Go ahead and employ one, provided you pay. But I suspect that he might need more than the cost of the shoe I am asking you to buy." Then Nabukeera breaks into a loud, dry sarcastic laugh.

"If I had a car, I would walk on you, Nabukeera. You are perfect nuisance," I declare.

"I may be a perfect nuisance, but pray, why do you indulge in wishful thinking? At this rate, do you ever hope to steer a car in you life. You are going to end up as an elegant pedestrian, a John Walker! Walking the streets with your oversized hand bag full of useless files and marking schemes! Only a miracle can save you. But miracles do not happen so often nowadays. Mwavuwalaba, it is high time you pursued wealth while you are still young. I do not like to spend my energetic life poor and only get rich in my older years when I am too old to enjoy it."

"What do you expect me to do, steal?" I ask. 

"Do something to improve your lot. Your teacher's salary will never take you anywhere. You are so dull. You lack initiative. I must accuse Dr. Fr. Gawanye of telling lies about you right on the altar. He described you in such glowing terms and tried to convince the congregation that I was walking down with some sort of stormy petrel, with a romantic touch and perfection. You do not know how to organise yourself. I could run this home for you with your money." I give Nabukeera the look that reminds her who wears the trousers in the home. 

"Women have never managed to run anything in their lives," I shoot back.

"Do not be so chauvinistic, Timothy. Have you ever delivered a baby?" Nabukeera asks challengingly, looking me straight in the eyes.

"The ladies are recognising you cannot run your affairs, that is why they must dismantle your systems, if need be through a war."

"Do you realise any common denominator in your heroines?" I ask.

"No."

I must get Nabukeera off my back, so I hit below the belt.

"Either they cannot stay with their husbands or they cannot keep them alive. I have pictures of Mrs. Golda Meir. I still have to see Mr. Meir. She fought two wars in less than ten years which are responsible for the world inflation we are in. You see the Arabs were not amused and clamped an oil embargo. Look at Indira Gandhi; she dismembered Pakistan. Maria Peron, a widow, excelled herself in mismanaging Argentina."

"Why did you marry me if you are such a cynical misogynist?"

"I am not a misogynist, but a simple observer of threats. I am amazed that you think you can run a home better than a man. Report me to the women's court the next time male chauvinism gives you another Women's year. By that time I will be just history and of course gone to heaven, rubbing shoulders with St. Peter."

"It seems the Landlord in heaven can accommodate all sorts of impossible characters there. I shall not debate your ability to go to heaven on your steam. But that is what you are, talking and talking and doing nothing to improve your lot here on earth. Why do you discuss heaven you know nothing about, when you cannot plan anything on the earth you know? Mwavuwalaba, you are no longer in the seminary to discuss heavenly things. You chose the world. Discuss how to successfully live in this world; when you do that, God may think of taking you to heaven after death. But as of now, better do something. Get a side business to supplement your income."

"Nabukeera, you seem to have bright ideas tonight. What do you, for example, suggest I do?" I ask pensively.

"You see, now, everybody is swindling neighbour by the thousands. Buy something, hoard it and sell it at black-market prices," Nabukeera advises.

"Nabukeera are you suggesting that I become a magendo agent? Remember I am a son of a catechist, and I come from a good Christian family," I warn her.

"If your morals are still carved in stone, you will die a pauper. If you are a man of great scruples and high principles, you will not be able to do anything without feeling that you have offended a principle, a code of ethics, a gentlemans code and what have you. What you need, Mwavuwalaba, is to be broadminded. I am not prepared to be a pauper's wife."

"Nabukeera, are you threatening? Remember you marriage vows: 'Rich or poor, till death do us part'," I remind her.

"I do not remember promising to stay with a man with no initiative. Mwavuwalaba, did I promise that?" she adds rhetorically.

"Nabukeera," I warn her again, "there are remarks which one never forgets or forgives; watch your tongue!"

"Stop verbal threats and try out something. Try soap. Hoard it. It sells like hot cakes. Get a carton and see," Nabukeera advises.

"That needs capital and patience both of which we do not have. You have to buy and hoard. You wait until people are badly off then you produce the commodity. We are already in the category of the badly off, Nabukeera."

"Then let us try something that does not need hoarding but sells like hot cakes. Something that does not need much capital."

We have declared a unilateral war on poverty in the home. I have to beat the inflation by declaring an economic war on it. 

Ceteris. Paribus.

Source

Kibuuka, P. (2010) Habakkuk the Catechist. Marianum Publishing Company Limited, Kampala. Chapter 15: Side Business

The Great Books Program of Africa

Greetings. In recognition of Black History month, I'll put forward a program of intellectual study based solely on African texts. 

Harvard Universal Classics originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature compiled and edited by former Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909. Eliot proposed that 15-minutes a day spent reading part of the texts in his five-foot shelf would enable one gain a liberal education.

A well known rival is the Great Books program proposed by Adler J. Motimer.

Could we create a great books program that is centred on African learning and renaissance?

This idea has plagued my mind since the wave of revisiting the global culture vis a vis education in the wake of black lives matter. Certain schools in the western world have been pushed to revise their curriculum and adopt a more diverse range of topics and reading material. My thoughts immediately jumped to the Harvard Classics as a basis. The 51 volumes include texts from Homer, Darwin, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin. Coincidentally there's no writing from Africa.

What volumes should be constituted? 

As the first volume is solely dedicated to Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, I thought of no less a character than Nelson Mandela. Where Franklin proved himself industrious as an innovator, politician and orator, Mandela is the father of the peaceful demonstration in Africa; and a skilled orator as well. The first Volume is dedicated solely to him.

Volume II should cover the ancient texts from Egypt (Ptah Hotep, Kagmeni) what is commonly known as the Wisdom texts. The Epic of Sundiata would also fall in this category, along with Book II of Herodotus' Histories, which covers ancient Egypt.

Volume III-V and VII will mainly entertain fictional literature in the shapes of poetry, plays, and novels - both classics and modern. In here one should be well versed with the works of wa Thiong'o, Achebe, Soyinka, Rotimi, Ruganda, and Abrahams. There are works from female writers including Adichie, Ogot, Nansubuga Makumbi and Mengiste.

Volume VI covers the epic poems of Okot p'Bitek, Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol. In homeric style, he compares the cultures of Africa and Europe, advocating for Africans not to abandon the ways of their forebearers.

Volumes VIII-X will cover famous biographies, speeches and essays. There's a mix of the revolutionary fervour of Cabral, Soyinka, the left-wing rhetoric of Lumumba and the thoughts of the aristocrat Selassie. Biographies include the lives of Kenyatta, Nkrumah and Lumumba.

Volume XI is dedicated to selected lectures made by some famous African intellectuals. The Reith Lectures of Mazrui and Soyinka are instant classics available on the BBC website. All Nobel Prize speeches by African laureates are included in this collection.

It wouldn't be a text on African thought without a section dedicated to anti-colonial thought. Volume XII is dedicated to that purpose, incorporating the works of wa Thiong'o, Nkrumah and p'Bitek.

Volume XIII is dedicated to history. The texts chosen are those of Mazrui, Ogot, Kiwanuka and Karugire. Kaggwa's Empisa chronicles the customs of the Baganda from the earliest times. Studies of ancient Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Asante are also included here.

Afrocentrism forms the basis of Volume XIV. These texts include the writings of Molefi K Asante, Ivan Van Sertima, Cheik Anta Diop, and the one of the few Caucasian authors in these volumes, Martin Bernal. Given the controversy surrounding Afrocentrism, I've seen it fit to include two texts provide a counterargument; the books are by Berlinablau and Mary Lefkowitz.

In the modern world Africans have spread across several continents. On the American continent Africans have been inhabitants, and mostly treated as second class citizens, for the better part of four centuries. Therefore, Volume XV is dedicated to works of some African Americans of note. The texts here are from Frederick Douglass, WEB Du Bois, Booker T Washington, Thurgood Marshall, Barack & Michelle Obama, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

The final Volume is purely in recognition of this blog's origins in the realm of Economics. As such Volume XVI covers some texts of Black Economists, including William A Lewis (the only black recipient of a Nobel Prize in Economics), Thomas Sowell, Loury, Harris and Wallace.

Below I propose Isabirye's 16-volumes of the Great Books of Africa, and in Eliot's tradition I believe spending 15 minutes a day immersed in one of these texts can drive one towards an Afrocentric awakening.

Volume I - Nelson Mandela; Long Walk to Freedom, 1993 Nobel Prize Lecture, Prison Letters, Ten Years of Democracy (2004 Steve Biko Memorial Lecture)

Volume II - Ancient Texts: The Instructions of Ptah Hotep, The Instructions of Kagemni, The Instruction of Amenemope, The Book of Coming Forth By Day, Kebra Nagast, Fetha Nagast, The Epic of Sundiata, Herodotus Histories Book II: Egypt  

Volume III - Poetry: Kunene's Emperor Shaka the Great, Senghor's Ethiopiques, Okigbo's Labyrinths, Bakare Gbadamosi. Yoruba Poetry, Romanus N. Egudu's Igbo Traditional Verse, Mazisi Kunene's Zulu Poems

Volume IV - Plays: Soyinka's Trials of Brother Jero, The Lion and the Jewel, Kongi's Harvest; Ruganda's The Burdens, Austin Bukenya's The Bride, Rotimi's The Gods Are Not To Blame

Volume V -  Novels: Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God; wa Thiongo's Weep Not Child; Abraham's Mine Boy, Emecheta's Bride Price; Grace Ogot's The Other Woman, Land Without Thunder, Amadi's The Concubine, Kwei Armah's The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Tamia Moore's Murder in the Cassava Patch, RRR Dhlomo's An African Tragedy: A Novel in English by a Zulu Writer, Thomas Mofolo's Chaka: An Historical Romance.

Volume VI - Okot p'Bitek's epic poetry: Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol

Volume VII - Modern Novels: Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, Obioma's An Orchestra of Minorities, Dangarembga's This Mournable Body, Mengiste's The Shadow King, Nansubuga Makumbi's Kintu

Volume VIII -  Biographies: Nkrumah's The Autobiography, Luthuli's Let My People Go, Maathai's Unbowed, Soyinka's Ake, Oginga Odinga's Not Yet Uhuru: The Autobiography of Oginga Odinga, Tom Mboya's Freedom and After

Volume IX - Speeches: Thomas Sankara Speaks, Lumumba's May Our People Triumph, Oliver Tambo Speaks, Selassie's Selected Speeches, Cabral's Unity and Struggle, Tutu's Hope and Suffering

Volume X - Essays and Letters: Nyerere's Ujaama, Biko's I Write What I Like, p'Bitek's Artist the Ruler, Archbishop Kiwanuka's Pastoral Letter (November 1961)

Volume XI - Lectures: Luthuli's Africa and Freedom (1960 Nobel Prize Lecture), Mazrui's The African Condition (1979 Reith Lectures), Tutu's 1984 Nobel Prize Lecture, Soyinka's This Past Must Address its Present (1986 Nobel Lecture), Semakula Kiwanuka's Central Banking in Africa and the Challenge of Development (1992 JM Mubiru Memorial Lecture), Annan's 2001 Nobel Prize Lecture, wa Thiongo's Consciousness and African Renaissance (2003 Steve Biko Memorial Lecture), Soyinka's Climate of Fear (2004 Reith Lectures), Maathai's 2004 Nobel Prize Lecture, Kaberuka's The African Economy: 50 Years After Independence (2007 JM Mubiru Memorial Lecture), Gbowee's 2011 Nobel Prize Lecture, Johnson Sirleaf's A Voice for Freedom (2011 Nobel Prize Lecture), Mukwege's 2018 Nobel Prize Lecture, Abiy Ahmed's Forging a Durable Peace in the Horn of Africa (2019 Nobel Prize Lecture)

Volume XII - Anti-colonial literature: wa Thiongo's Decolonising the Mind, Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism, p'Bitek's African Religions in Western Scholarship

Volume XIII - History: Mazrui's The Africans, BA Ogot's History of the Southern Luo, Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya, Kiwanuka's A History of Buganda, Karugire's Political History of Uganda, Kaggwa's Empisa, Sergew Selassie's Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, John Kofi Fynn's Asante and Its Neighbours, 1700-1807

Volume XIV - Afrocentrism: Molefi Asante's Afrocentric Ideas, Anta Diop's The African Origin of Civilisation, Van Sertima's They Came Before Columbus, Van Sertima's Egypt Revisited, Bernal's Black Athena, Berlinablau's Heresy in the University, Lefkowitz' Black Athena Revisited, Not Out of Africa

Volume XV - African Americans: Frederick Douglass' The Narrative, Washington's Up From Slavery, Washington's Building Character, Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois' The Negro, King's Strength To Love, King's Why We Can't Wait, Malcolm X' Autobiography, Obama's Dreams from My Father, Michelle Obama's Becoming, Toni Morrison Beloved, Condolezza Rice's A Memoir, Thurgood Marshall's Supreme Justice: Speeches and Writings, Gates Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey, Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain

Volume XVI - Black Economists: WA Lewis' The Theory of Economic Growth, WA Lewis' Development Planning, Sowell's Basic Economics, Sowell's Race and Economics, Glenn Loury's The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, Lincoln Harris' The Negro as a Capitalist, Wallace's Black Women in the Labour Force.

Ceteris. Paribus.

Sources

Kirsch, A., (2001). "The 'Five-foot Shelf' Reconsidered," Harvard Magazine, Volume 103, No.2. Nov-Dec 2001.

Dr. Eliot, C.W. An Ongoing Review and Discussion of the Harvard Classics.

Adler, M. J. (Ed.). (1952). The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World (Vol. 2). Encyclopaedia Britannica.