Where's East Africa?

Where was East Africa in the 14^th Century? I need to find that out.  In the South you had Shaka Zulu’s conquest. In the West you had Timbuktu. In the North you had the Egyptian civilization. I so want to go to Egypt to just experience and be in the presence of such rich history. The jury is still out on whether it was the dark Nubians who ruled or the lighter skinned Arabs who ruled. But I won’t get into that right now.

I know if I spent more time reading African history, I would have an answer. 

The reason I ask that is there is something about my beautiful ‘neck of the African woods’; East Africa, that just seems to not have grand Kingdoms that I know about. Yes, you have the Buganda kingdom, but I am wondering is that it?

I am in search of the great stories of East African Kingdoms and conquests as vast as Songhai and Timbuktu  of the West and Shaka in the South. Why am I so bothered? Well because at times I feel like East Africa’s history is so watered down.

by  sahistory.org.za

I have a beautiful Ghanaian friend who told me they were taught of greats of the Ashanti Kingdom, the great Yaa Asantewaa and the likes, in school. We are barely taught of Mekatili wa Menza in Kenya. Kenyan History starts about a decade before independence. The rest relies on how great your family was in their oral history. If they weren’t, tough luck!

 I look at how traditionally rich West Africans are, they just ooze of it. Nigerians rock their accents wherever they go. Some of us Africans acquire really horrible imitated American accents after seeing one, leave alone living there.  The West African, Central and Southern African states rock cultural clothing. East Africans….I love us, but we just seem to miss the African oomph other brothers and sisters exude in the continent.

I just hate that. And it bothers me, I feel like in East Africa we lost something. And being a writer, I feel the need to find it and share it in the work that I do. And share the rich African oomph other regions in this continent ooze. I may write a grand historical encounter to be preserved by generations or simply keep blogging about it.

The beauty and the shortfall of African history, in parts of Africa, in my view was the reliance on oral history. I have said this several times in this blog. But the beauty is I am in a generation that understands and appreciates the power and need to preserve that. That is my task, finding out what my East African history holds for me. That is other than the slavery that was rampant due to our proximity to the Indian Ocean.

But I do remember, in my World Civilization class the lecturer did state that there was evidence of astronomy around the Lake Turkana area. I am yet to get more information on that.

Why am I fussing so much about this? Well we live in a world where we still have to prove to ourselves that Africa is more than what it is depicted as today. That one sided story that we spoke of in the previous post.

But the only way Africans can believe it and stand tall, is if they know how great their predecessors were. How else do we know that? We need to dig it up, internalize it and begin to believe and live as great as or even greater than our ancestors. There is more than a name in the African lineage; it’s called greatness.