WRITING IN KITIANIA IS A TALL ORDER

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, that gallant son of Kenya and foremost African novelist, has often challenged us to write in our mother tongues. But is it easy for Africans to write effectively in their local dialects and create the necessary impact in society? To answer this, allow me to give a simple personal account. Whenever I try to chat on facebook with people from Tiania  in Kitiania, in nearly all the cases their reply comes in Ki-imenti or in English. Similarly, when I meet the younger people from Tiania and I start a conversation in Kitiania, they either switch to English or Kiswahili. Phew! However, before we start drawing any inferences, I must confess that I have been a culprit also in countless occasions, where I interpose my Kitiania with generous amounts of English words particularly when they the audience is the educated lot. Perhaps, this is a subconscious reaction to affirm that I have also achieved education through a  choice European language! Therefore, if we were to write in our mother tongues, who will be our consumers looking at the current situation? Put differently, where does the problem lie? I think when you realize that the two most important tools of colonialism were introduction of their languages and Christianity to the conquered, we shouldn't be surprised by the above cited examples. The first time the Europeans came to colonize us, they brought their religion using Bibles written in their languages which were culturally alien to Africans. Eventually after the Africans had assimilated the new religion and learned to read and write, they where weaned into new Bibles written in selected "standard" African dialects that the Europeans were comfortable with. So for the Meru people, the Kimeru Bible was done in Ki-imenti despite there being other dialects spoken by large groups of people such as Ki-iembe and Kitiania. Therefore, because the first book that was at the center of colonialism and cultural transformation in Meru was written in "standard" Kimeru, it means that all new books for the learners were to follow suit. However, despite large numbers of people getting education and converting to Christianity in Tiania over the years, including some of them being involved in Bible research, little effort has been made to produce a Kitiania Bible. Perhaps, this could be associated to subconscious fear that any attempt to follow this route would lead to one being vilified and ostracized by the other Christians for using the language of the heathen. To led credence to this point, you will find that those people from Tiania who call themselves "saved" Christians will invariably attempt to speak in Ki-imenti even when they are in the Tiania heartland. Nothing the matter here except that they may eventually kill their dialect but never graduate fully into "standard" Kimeru. Interestingly, the Tharaka people, also a sub-tribe of the Meru, who may be regarded as more resilient and in some quarters as resolute, have gone ahead to publish books and the Bible in Kitharaka despite their population being only half that of Tiania! Therefore, it would be simplistic to blame the young people in Tiania for not learning to speak in Kitiania because the problem is more complex and deep. Finally, to paraphrase Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, we may need to decolonize our minds first, before we can effectively write in our mother tongues.