Let me briefly venture outside Korea for a second, because this post about Kwanzaa by Christopher of Californian Sojourn reminds me of something from way back. It was the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and ninety-five, and I was as a one-year exchange student at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, doing as most white middle-class Republicans from Long Island do - taking classes in African Studies and learning Swahili. Anyway, the Holiday Season rolled around, and my mother, a very nice lady, sent me a Kwanzaa card because, well, she wasn’t quite sure if they celebrated Kwanzaa or not in Tanzania. Now, as you probably already know, the Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles) of Kwanzaa are all Swahili words, and there they were all listed on the card. Being a rather dumb schmuck, a thought it was kind of cute, so I posted it on my dormitory door. It wasn’t long before some of my Tanzanian floor mates were milling around outside my dorm room, asking “What the fuck’s up with that card?” Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of them felt it was one of the most bizarre holidays they had ever heard of; not one had even heard of it before. The use of Swahili terms for something rather far-removed from anything connected to the cultures of East Africa threw them for a complete loop, and I have to wonder whether or not the creators of Kwanzaa were sufficiently familiar with the political overtones of the term used for the fouth principle, Ujamaa - it’s translated on the Kwanzaa homepage as “cooperative economics,” but in the Tanzanian context, it meant roughly twenty years of late President Julius Nyerere’s own special blend of African Socialism. Now, Mwalimu Nyerere was a nice enough guy and all, and most Tanzanians still respect him despite his running a de-facto one-party state for most of his time in office. That being said, very few people had anything positive to say about Ujamaa, which left Tanzania, by the time I got there, the fourth poorest country on the planet with an annual GDP per capita of US$150 (and the three countries below it - Mozambique, Afghanistan, and if memory serves me right, Ethiopia - were war-torn hellholes that at least had proper excuses for being dirt poor).
Anyway, I don’t mean to say Kwanzaa’s a bad idea - one holiday’s as good as another, I suppose, and if it teaches people a little about Africa, all the better. It’s just that the use of Swahili might strike some as a bit strange, even if it is the most widely spoken of African languages, and I’d imagine that other Africans outside of Tanzania view the celebration with a fair amount of curiosity, as well.
3 Comments
That’s alright…I’ll call it a load of crock as it is presently sold unto others. If it were to change to be a celebration of another kind rather than some ancient African tradition than I would be perfectly fine with it. Here in Calfornia we get some Kwanzaa overload and yet most people don’t know it’s origins. And the blog I quote makes a good point in how Kwanzaa suddenly changed to a celebration with Christmas rather than against once it wasn’t flying to well with blacks who, at least in word, are Christians.
Your story seems to back up my comments about Africans who scratch their head when it comes to this holiday.
Kwanzaa was made up by a 1960’s black radical (can’t remember his name) that was a member of the black panther movement. He was a staunch marxist and pro-communist wacko. He’s also a convicted felon. His choice of Swahili words then make sense, according to your comments of the reactions from the Tanzanian classmates. There’s no basis for this holiday.
There ya go. Perhaps there is reason to be concerned when you have TV stations wishing you a “Happy Kwanzaa” and people buy into it. Society seems WAY too accomadating at times.