Egbo Awon Egun Irandiran Wa.

Hear our dying ancestors.


Aiye nyi lo, a nti. The world slips us by.

The last time you called your village, did you hear the groans and moans of our dying ancestors?

What you heard is the dying of a generation of people who hold the oral history of the African tribe: the elders who are now aged in their 80s and 80s (Generation E/elder). The elders hold in their memory much of Africa's oral technology, history, culture, medicine, religion, etc. Only very few of these elders can speak, read or write English/French. Only very very few of them are literate to the point of writing down their knowledge in the ancestral languages. Gen E had the misfortune of birthing a generation in the 1920s to 1940s (Gen D/displaced) who endured the effects of reintensified struggle for Africa.

The business of empire became intensely exploitative in the era of the two European world wars. The need to retrieve mineral and labour resources from African soil as efficiently as possible caused the imposition of direct attacks on indigenous culture. When Europe's young men died enmasse in the wars, the colonisers had to train up locals to administer the colonies. Many of Gen D became the first ever in their villages to go through 'formal' education. They were taught to love the colonial culture and obey the imperial religion taught in the formal schools. Many studied 'overseas' where the colomentality was firmly rooted then returned home to 'develop' the newly independent colonial-era African states.

Gen D learned to internalise rejection, even hatred, of the culture they were born with. It was been difficult for many to reconcile love for the "developed" culture with "backward" traditions represented by their Gen E parents. Many turned their back on the villages and made their way into the city or overseas. Gen D are fully literate in English/French. Gen D is the lost generation who only speak the ancestral languages to their parents because they have to, but are mentally programmed to reject reading, writing or living their ancestry.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Gen D became parents to Gen C/colomental in the era of 'independence'. The people now aged in their 40s and 50s were taught that to be modern and to live in the "new world" means having an European world view. As adults, more than a few of this colomental generation live or would like to live "in the diaspora" where they can have 'normal' ie European lives in which to bring up their households. English/French is the lingua cultura of these households. But on the street, many Gen C still need to communicate with friends in ancestral language, even if only to avoid been labelled 'fake oyinbo'. Some colomentals manage to shed the negative self-image of their generation and return to the villages where they rediscover the knowledge locked in the heads of the elders through conversations. But Gen C tend to lack the intellectual tool-kits to record that knowledge. They were not taught to read or write ancestral languages although they are usually fluent in English/French.

The colomentals are now attaining power and influence across Africa. Yet at home or abroad, they are having children (Gen B/baby) in households that is almost completely ignorant of ancestral norms. Gen B will be too young to interact with Gen E. In a world where culture is the predominant currency, the infants and teenagers are in grave danger of becoming the cultural worthless.

What is dying every night is connection to what is truly African tradition. All tradition and history is oral until it is written down. The dying elders know our history but cannot read or write it. The displaced Gen D should be the bridge but is too intellectually traumatised to reconcile with tradition. The author Wole Soyinka was only half correct when he described this generation as the "lost generation". It is not only lost, it is also the loser, the wastrel, and the akotileta generation. Gen D is becoming old and infirm. The colomental Gen C has mostly inherited the world view of its parents. Rather than reconnect to the elders, this generation has increased its ignorance of African tradition and folklore. The baby Gen B is yet young but may never age in the wisdom of our tribe. It faces the danger of presenting a blank slate on which any historian who bothers to WRITE will write the new interpretation of African history for Gen A.

Our experience disagrees with those who say 'the beautiful ones are not yet born'. The oncoming Gen A in Africa is very likely to be as culturally rootless and emotionally vulnerable as any descendant of slavery into the 'New World'

Africa faces a danger so deep, so grave, so final that it eclipses all the troubles we have known so far. Our collective memory is unrecorded and its keepers are dying. Once the elders are gone, that is it for African tradition and history. The next time you visit your village, please take along a recorder and some paper, Talk to the elders and write down all you hear. You will be the historian that we seek

Remi-Niyi Alaran writes on enterprise and social capital.