By Enock Shirandula
I may not be necessarily be one of the best speakers of my mother tongue – Olukabarasi- but I have a soft spot for the same. Every time I listen to one of us effortlessly speak it, I end up admiring to speak like them. Unfortunately, there are not enough of us who can speak our mother tongue fluently and those who can, don’t speak it enough.
Fora like local funeral services, local church services, local birthday celebrations and local marriage ceremonies are occasions where my dear Olukabarasi should be used. But what do we witness instead? Abakabarasi congregants speaking in broken English or Kiswahili. The funniest of them all is in some home settings. You will find father, mother and children, all Abakabarasi. But in what language do they communicate? Broken English and broken Kiswahili.
For Pete’s sake, why don’t we speak our vernacular languages under such circumstances? Why do we insist on speaking in Foreign and Kiswahili languages (and keep breaking them) which already are established? Why don’t we love our native languages as much as possible in order to keep them alive and develop them even more?
My appeal to Kabarasi and other native language users is that we should love and enjoy speaking, listening, reading and writing in our vernacular languages.
This is the way to go if ever we are going to be respected as a people. Let’s love our language (and everything else that comes with it) and only then shall we extend the love to other languages.
This way has been followed by other notable literary persons: Ngugi Wa Thiong’o with his Gikuyu Language. Austin Bukenya with his Luganda, Egara Kabaji with his Olulogoli and Jane Obuchi with her Ekegusii.
Maybe I should mention here that because of the love we have for our dear native language, Messrs. Lwangu Ngaira Mulika, Askance Makuti Talai, David Kalukhana and I are currently writing books in Olukabarasi. The books are intended for teaching grades 1 to 3.
Due to the expensive affair that is publishing books, we shall host a funds-raiser to assist with the same. We hope you shall be kind enough to lend us a hand.
The writer is a retired Educationist, Kabarasi language reviewer of Kabarasi BTL Project and author of ‘So Different She Was’ emshirandula@yahoo.com
