•The tendency to ignore the plight of the less fortunate of societies is historical
Image: STEPHEN ASTARIKO
The new month is here. It smells as fresh as the year still is. February has arrived most unexpectedly for many Kenyans. 2022 being an election year, focus has been on the power games, with political engineers enjoying the media limelight at the expense of more existential matters. A scorching drought and biting famine in the northern counties, wretchedly, remains largely ignored.
The tendency to ignore the plight of the less fortunate of societies is historical. Is this not the matter that led to the 20th Century rise in the United States of the Black History Month? In that “land of the free and home of the brave”, each February calls for celebrations and recognition of the achievements and experiences of African Americans.
The celebrated gay African American writer James Baldwin once said he was largely driven to become a writer by the absence of much focus on the stories of the Blacks in the history of the US taught in schools of his childhood. His reflections on this matter occurred in 1964.
That is the same year our own republic came into existence as our homeland of freedom. Our flag, famous for its beautiful and symbolic colours, bears the black colour on top of the rest as a badge of racial pride and in(ter)dependence.
This apex colour on our national banner reminds us that our land is connected to historical struggles of Black peoples of the world and their long, tortuous walk to freedom. Indeed, as the new month of February dawns upon us this week, it will not be the Americans alone who shall recognise it as the Black History Month.
Africans across the world have adopted and adapted this memorial moment to their own societies. They stand with their ilk across the world and in the United States in what one may call the abiding spirit of Pan Africanism.
Across the Atlantic, there will be a range of celebrations and ceremonies created as an annual homage to the achievements by people with roots in Africa. They will remember the patriotic contributions to their diasporic homeland an ocean away made by their bygone ancestors and themselves today.
Kenyans will not be left behind, either. The 44th American President, who became the first Black man to occupy the White House, has his roots here. The connection between his country of birth and his father’s country of birth underline the complex ways in which these two lands continue to share their walk towards the future in the name of freedom.
Individual Kenyans, drawn mainly from the educated class, will mark the month somehow with social media posts and tweets of relevance in this age of the Internet. Kenyans abroad will use local heritage, ranging from the culinary to the performing arts, to join their Black compatriots in the US, marking this month of love for history and identity.
Interestingly, organisations in Kenya have always marked the Black History Month through various activities. These organisations are of different nature, ranging from the corporate to the academic ones, such as USIU-Africa.
Two years ago, Amnesty International (Kenya Chapter) marked the Black History Month locally in a remarkable way. They identified and celebrated Kenyans whose contributions have been crucial in the nationalist areas of human rights, civil liberties and social justice.
Notable among them were the late freedom fighter and matriarch Wambui Otieno (1936-2011) and one of the patriarchs of the new Kenyan Constitution, Prof Yash Pal Ghai. It is our new constitution that governs our republic as it attempts to realise its highest forms of freedom for all.
This year, the financial giant Kenya Commercial Bank is pace-setting the celebrations of the Black History Month in Kenya. Taking to their well-visited website, they call upon Kenyans to seize the moment to reflect on the nexus between the arts and our history as a people of dignity and industry.
The recommendation they give touches on the cinematic arts. Film is a major vehicle of social awareness, entertainment and education among many Kenyans, especially the youth, who form the majority of the population. KCB recommends three films of great historical importance: Fences (2016) as well as Hidden Figures and Moonlight (2017).
Fences is a film adapted from a play published in 1985 by the distinguished African American writer August Wilson. He penned many artistic works bearing forth the spirit of the Black Arts Movement (BAM).
This 1960s movement in the Black arts of the United States influenced many writers of newly independent African countries, including Kenya, to bend their art talents towards the direction of Black Aesthetics, recognition of our roots, heritage and racial pride.
The filmic version of Wilson’s drama was directed and produced by Denzel Washington. The film reminds us of the philosophy of freedoms and fights against discrimination that is at the core of narratives of Blacks in the Diaspora and here on the mother continent.
As we mark this Black History Month in 2022, we should do more to narrow the discriminative divide between the haves and the have-nots here in Kenya.
A good starting point is knowing more about and doing more to alleviate the suffering of our truly Black communities in Marsabit and other northern Kenya counties hit hard by this raging sun of the new year and the famine it has brought.