Respectful Conversations - What My Grannies Told Me
- Category: Talks
- Date 01-06-2022
- 1639 views
On 1st June 2022, the African Society for Social and Behaviour Change (AS-SBC) conducted a webinar attended by participants from various African countries such as Nigeria Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda. The topic was, “Respectful Conversations: What my grandparents told me - Perspectives from implementers.” During the two-hour live session moderated by Ms. Precious Kanayo Omonoju from Nigeria, Uganda’s Venansio Ahabwe discussed a wide range of social development issues. Ms. Michelle Muhumuza transcribed the session. Below is a slightly edited version of the transcript.
Precious (moderator introduces the panelist): Venansio Ahabwe is the Technical Advisor for National Coordination at USAID’s Social and Behaviour Change Activity (SBCA) implemented by the Johns Hopkins Centre for Communication Programs in Uganda. He started his career as a Teacher of English Language and Literature and thereafter entered the NGO sector which saw him work in Uganda, Tanzania, and Malawi as a volunteer in the African Network for Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN). He has also worked with other development agencies including Save the Children International, FHI360, and HealthPartners Inc.
Mr. Ahabwe is an accomplished author whose works include four international titles namely, “Globalisation and the Mother Tongue in Uganda” (2011); “To Hell with Male Prostitutes and other stories” (2014); “Where There Is A Will: God Does Not Have Favourites” (2016); and “There Is A Way: How To Manage A Manager” (2021). He typically writes satire and has authored hundreds of articles published in newspapers and magazines in East Africa. He believes in and advocates for social justice and inherently sides with the marginalised. He loves discussing politics, religion, culture as well as economics and is thus highly involved in society initiatives including financial associations, church groups, school committees and charity organisations. That is our panellist for today.
Today's topic is, “Respectful conversations; what my grandparents told me.” This topic is something that really is going to help us gain deep insights into what our grandparents have told us, and that we can apply to the current landscape. This topic doesn't just take us back to the past. We are looking at current relevant ideas and insights that contribute to and that can be applied to the future of social and behavioral change in our continent.
If you cast your mind back to your interactions with your grandparents, you then agree with me that our grandparents influenced and impacted us positively. That's why we are going to dive right into the discussions for this afternoon.
To take us forward in this discussion, I would now want to invite Venansio to share his insights on today's topic. Venansio, you have quite a lot of time. You can go start and we'll take questions, and also get feedback from our participants. So over to you now Venansio. Thank you.
Venansio: Thank you so much Precious. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity for me to share my perspective about the past, what I learnt from grandparents and, indeed, from my parents and how actually relevant it is to the work that we do today.
My name is Venansio Ahabwe. That name, Ahabwe, is my local name. Venansio is my Christian name. But when I look at the two names, I should actually have been baptized ‘Ahabwe’ because ‘Ahabwe’ means ‘we survive by god's grace’. That’s what it means in my mother tongue.
As a person, I had no interaction with my grandparents except through my parents. By the time I was born, all the four grandparents - two parents of my father and two parents of my mother were already dead. I didn't see them, yet I know so much about them. Everything I know about them is through my parents because they tended to boast about the values, virtues and heroic actions that they inherited from them. To the extent that, whenever they talked to us as their children, they would say, “We are like our parents.” Their parents therefore inspired them to do certain things which they wanted to pass on to us, their own children.
I want to give an example. My father was called Petero Kabunakuki, but it is the local name that certainly makes sense. Kabunakuki is a question, “What kind of child is this born at this time?” He was born in a season when they were expecting a girl to be born. A boy was born, and it was a surprise to the family because they knew how to tell that this is a season for girls, this is a season for boys. Instead, a boy is born to their surprise.
My grandfather therefore decided to use that as the name to remind himself and others that his son’s birth was an irregular occurrence. He had a question that he wanted to keep asking “What kind of boy is this born in a girls’ season?” When you reflect about the thinking behind that name, it helps us to look at naming. It portrays a sense of innovation whereby our ancestors could apply local knowledge to seek answers to many questions. They had their pre-conceived answers about how and when a certain sex could be born. That a boy was born instead of a girl, challenged the status quo and generated the questions.
It seems, therefore, that our grandparents were interested in finding answers to different questions. This name, given to my father by my grandfather, is a tale of local knowledge about seasons and cycles of life. Life is not just human (but also) plant life and animal life. They would observe the surroundings, … the weather and know what was likely to follow. That would help them, therefore, to tell when to plant (their crops). They didn't have a fixed calendar that we got from the people that came to colonize and teach religion. They would observe and, therefore, it was rare for them to plant out of season unlike today. They understood their environment and could harness it. My father’s name is also an expression of the uncertainty of life. They were aware that in life, some things can be uncertain. They knew that a man's wishes and dreams cannot dictate the divine outcomes.
While we sometimes look at our grandparents as pagans - my grandparents were not Christian! In fact, my mother was baptized as an adult because her parents were not Christians. They were not Muslims either. They were traditional people. My father too was baptized as an adult. The two got married soon after they had been baptized. Whereas our ancestors could be referred to as pagans by those that could say so, they had good knowledge of God. They could be able to attribute certain things to the divine nature of God. That is the story about how my father came into existence and was named and lived. He was an adventurous man. He was a man who was always looking for answers until he died at the age of 86.
I have another story that I heard from my mother. Part of the teaching of our grandparents was through storytelling. They would have folktales but also actual stories of realities. My mother told us about her father. In our culture, I cannot mention the name of my grandfather because I may lose my teeth. My mother told us a story of when her father returned home from a drinking expedition. For an African man, drinking is very important. So, he returned home late in the evening. It was already in the dark. As he was about to enter the house, a lion roared in the neighbourhood. The population was still low, and wild animals were roaming freely.
A lion roared! But it was not near the home. It was on another hill. Because of the nature of the roaring, you could feel that it was nearby. My grandfather, nevertheless, understood that it was roaring from a distance away but everyone in the house thought otherwise. Incidentally, he had girls only and his only son was still a baby. My grandfather was a resilient character and, instead of diving into the house to close the door and be safe, he went back outside, shouting back at the lion and challenging it to dare attack him.
He said, “You lion! There is nothing you can do to me. If you know you are anything, come and we fight.”
The family was terrified. They knew he was going to be consumed by a lion. They went out and tried to take him into the house to save his life but the man resisted. Moreover, he was being held by a woman and her daughters. He resisted and struggled with them until they got concerned that the lion might eat one of them instead of the man they were trying to save. Scared, they all ran back into the house and left him alone outside. After they had given up, the man followed them, walking majestically and asked them to close the door.
He was teaching them the value of courage and resilience; never to run away from challenging situations. Why does that story make sense to me? My mother always remembered and told us this story again and again. It inspired her to weather the storms of her marriage. A marriage at that time, and the women at that time were facing a number of issues which I cannot bring here.
She would say, “When there was a lion, my father did not ran away. Now that I am in my family, there is nothing that can push me out of it.” Until she died at about the age of eighty, she had never (given up).
I think today, we talk about influencers, people who do things that we admire, and we copy and emulate them. Our grandparents were influencers in their own ways. When I reflect about those stories and others more that I cannot say now, I see that learning was an integral part of life from childhood. It did not wait until a certain age. Current school systems indicate that a child must attain a certain age to go into pre-primary school, then into primary and different levels. For our grandparents, learning started at birth, and they knew that every event in the life of the family was a learning experience. Elders were respected for their age. Old people were considered as reservoirs of knowledge. They also used to impart values and normal standards of behavior. In their system, they could disagree on anything else but not on their culture. When it comes to culture, they would all be at par.
In the Ugandan culture, one of the prominent teaching methods is use of proverbs. A proverb is the reflective statement. It helps you to reflect or meditate on something you can interpret in different ways. Among the Acholi community of northern Uganda, I know a proverb, which was written in one of the books by Okot P’Bitek, ‘Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol’. He said, “A pumpkin in the old homestead must not be uprooted.” That is culture. He was talking about culture, and despising those of us who have gone to school and think, therefore, that culture is nothing and … we should abandon it.
However, the current programming always struggles. Sometimes we talk about results; we want results, and we complain and blame people for not changing. We forget that we are dealing with culture, which is like a pumpkin in the old homestead. That it should not be uprooted because it is going to generate food. It is a source of life for the family and the community. When you look at the people who were doing iron melting, and there are so many in Africa, there is an equivalent saying in my language. They say, “Akati kainukwa kakiri kabitsi” which is the equivalent of “You hit the iron when it is still hot.” Therefore, if you impart knowledge and certain values in a child, that child will grow up and keep them permanently. There are several proverbs which are entertaining but also educative and therefore very helpful in imparting knowledge. The other things were riddles, stories songs dances.
When you look at dances, you see that every community has a certain dancing style. I don't know what happens in Nigeria, Precious. However, I know that among the different communities I have been to, when they start to dance, they don't dance like the other communities. Some jump, others wiggle, and others do different things. Yet you find that there is no school that trains people about these traditional dances. People grow up and start dancing in a certain fashion. And that this is something that we should learn from.
How can people learn? There is no curriculum for these traditional dances. But when you visit any community and there is an opportunity to dance, the dancing style will be unique. It will be uniform. They would be laughing at someone who cannot act like others in a traditional dance. Some people may make mistakes especially those who have grown up in other countries or in towns. Dances were also another way of teaching people.
I would like to discuss the implications of these things to our current programming now. There are many cultural norms, values, and traditions; all the things that we call backward, and we are always struggling to change them. These are what people learn from childhood. They learn from the time they are born. And when they reach the age of 20, we come in with our programs. Sometimes, we need to look at what we are trying to change and how we want to do it!
In the Karamoja community of Uganda, young people are taught warfare. They learn how to use a gun, from childhood. The warriors can fight at any cost. The national army may go to a local village and try to disarm civilians, but it's a big struggle. It's a big fight and lives get lost on both sides. Why? Because these warriors are trained from childhood while the government soldier is recruited when he has completed school and begins to learn warfare at that point. Later, he goes to battle with a warrior who was trained from the age of three. Such a person clearly has superior skills in warfare.
There are other traditions which teach young people. Circumcision, which is a rite of passage makes the entire community anxious and involved more than our programs that are funded and are promoted in the mass media as well as by different powerful stakeholders. We also talk of female genital mutilation in different communities, yet there is perhaps no single community in Africa that has eliminated a female circumcision. This is because what we call FGM has the cultural touch. Its value is taught to the girls from childhood and therefore it is easily sustained.
On the other hand, our programs are usually short-term; a maximum of five years, sometimes three years. In three years, you are expected to change the character of a person who has gone through a long life. Someone is already satisfied with the status quo, and we are trying to change the character of that person. We tend to target people who have already adopted near permanent or even permanent traits. Such a person cannot easily change, at least not in the short term. This can possibly show us that we should expect moderate change from individuals and communities. We should not expect an about-turn in the character, behavior and practices of a certain individual or community.
In relation to our topic of today - Respectful Conversations - we tend to despise and brand traditional elements negatively. We sometimes to call them the myths. These aren’t myths. These are the ideas that are held and respected by the people that hold them. Why do we want to negate these ideas and continue to refer to them derogatively? Will people listen to us and abandon them? It is not possible. I think we should start from the respectful perspective.
We tend to assume supremacy when dealing with communities, then we theorize so many things. If we look at the training that came from our grandparents that I’ve been talking about today, it was organic. There was no written curriculum, but everyone knew exactly what to do. I have been coordinating a marriage but surprisingly, someone is a professor whose son is going to marry a daughter of another lecturer. The interesting part is that they are all talking about their clans.
Again, I remember an incident in Uganda where a girl was going to marry a man of the same clan and the case went to court. One of the parents opposed the marriage and sued his daughter to prevent her from violating culture. Moreover, it is a Western kind of court that handled the case, but it ruled in favour of culture. Meaning, the person who was sitting in court also understood the value of culture. I don't think they just relied on law books. They also relied on their own on their own convictions about culture.
As program implementers, the procedures we apply to cause change are not organic and do not fare well for the change that we would like to promote. At the same time, we are split personalities. You and I are split between the interests of donors and the local priorities. We come from these communities. We share most of the local values and we hold them dear.
May be there is none of us who is now participating in this conversation who can marry a person from their own clan. But we want to change the local traditions. How? We have many local influences that guide the way we act while we also have to implement some perspectives from the donors. This greatly affects how much we can achieve. In a nutshell, our grandparents or our ancestors still have greater influence on our lives than perhaps the influence that we have from our employers or from our peers.
Precious: Thank you very much Venansio. I must say, you have given quite a lot of insights. The stories that you told also drive one's mind to really think about how much influence grandparents have had in the lives of individuals, in the lives of children, and in the lives of grandchildren. The stories just highlight how much of storytelling also came out of the grandparents and were thus impactful in moulding the lives of individuals.
What we are looking at today is ‘respectful conversations: what my grandparents told me.’ We are looking at it from the perspective of implementers and Venansio you have really given us quite a lot of things to think about. When you spoke about dancing, you were very correct about how powerful dancing and music could actually be. Even here in Nigeria and the whole of West Africa, dance is one of the most powerful forms of human expression. Through dance you can actually send a message to other people. And from all you have you have elaborated and highlighted this afternoon, these are things that even as implementers of social and behavior change can look at closely and see how we can apply them. I now want to check with our participants if they have questions and you can respond to them.
One question is from Emmanuel Kayongo who says, “I feel we have lost certain aspects especially around respectful and honest conversations where everyone's voice has a chance to speak at the fireplace. What is your take on this?”
Venansio: I think, Emma, you cannot be more right. Our culture and traditions taught respect. Respect for each other. In traditional Africa, the fireplace was the highest level of democracy. Everyone had an opportunity to make a contribution, to tell a story. Irrespective of age or sex, someone would narrate how they felt, what they knew, and everyone would listen. Everyone would be given an opportunity to speak. Listening with respect was part of our culture. As one grew up, one understood how to respect and listen to others.
Today, we have lost, not just the opportunity to sit as a family, but also as a community, to listen to each other. I think it has now degenerated into some level of arrogance whereby we just challenge each other using concepts and jargon rather than acknowledging that each person has a story to tell, a contribution to make. We have lost that respectful and honest discourse. Even the media exercises self-censorship. Someone cannot just write the truth because someone somewhere may not like the truth. We have lost aspects of a dignified life. These conversations can tell us where we need to return. The past is the future. To talk about the future without talking about the past is to deceive ourselves.
In Ngugi Wa Thiong,o’s book, The River Between, the main character, Muthoni, is a daughter of a reverend who condemned female circumcision. However, Muthoni defied him and got circumcised whereas the reverend was teaching people to stop that ‘pagan practice’. Muthoni died after circumcision. She is the ‘river-between’ because she stood between the two cultures - Christianity and Traditionalism. There was a struggle between the two. She was rooted in the traditional culture yet she was required and personally also desired to be a Christian. Like a rootless plant, she lost her life.
Unless we have roots in the past, we are just a finished race. We cannot survive so. The past is our taproot. We need to have honest conversations about our past and in a respectful manner, for us to appreciate our present and as we look at our future. Thank you.
Precious: Thank you very much Venansio. Another question is from Francis Mutekanga. He says, that was a great presentation. Then he asks, “Do you believe that if you mention your grandfather's name you would lose your teeth?”
Venansio: I think I would not. Anyhow, some of these things are hard to understand; they are supernatural. First, I have no reason to mention my grandfather’s name. I think, however, that such teeth are different from the literal teeth. It was not just about the teeth in my mouth. Perhaps, there are some teeth that a person can lose by disrespecting their elders and culture. Some people want to despise their own background, abandon it and forget where they came from. There is a certain type of teeth we can lose in that case.
When we say that so-and-so is a toothless, we don’t mean that such a person does not have physical teeth. We can talk of a toothless character or a toothless dog. I think that to become toothless is to become unattractive, inefficient, unproductive, and altogether unsuccessful. Such is the danger of disrespecting elders. This can have a certain effect on your life. In these conversations, therefore, we need to interrogate what is the teeth that the person can lose.
Precious: In other words, it's not literal teeth we're looking at here but looking at translating that value of respect. When you listen to several implementers in the SBCC space, they definitely would agree with us. That the virtue of respect is something that is key.
Another question is from Paul Odeke. He is saying, “Do you think culture can evolve? Is the way young people behave and relate now a new culture? Is there such a thing like new culture that we have to keep in tandem with?”
Venansio: The answer is: Yes. Culture can evolve. If you remember, in school, we studied about Early Man and how they lived. They did a number of things. They stayed in caves. They discovered fire. They hunted animals. They did many things.
Society was evolving, and I’m not talking about the society that's written about in the Bible. But when you consider the stories that we hear about our ancestors, you understand that their culture kept evolving. The way they got their food kept changing and their food kept changing too. Why? Seasons changed. Calamities befell them. Migrations happened and they ended up in areas where they could not do what they were doing in their original locations. As they moved to other areas, they adopted new ways of life. They lived in different types of houses.
From time to time, therefore, culture evolves. It evolves but it cannot be eradicated. Like Covid-19, culture keeps mutating and remerges in form of new or different variants. The food that the people ate, the dances or songs they composed, the way they conducted marriages, all were evolving. Many things would be dictated by the prevailing environment.
As implementers, we should know that while culture evolves, it cannot be eliminated. Culture is taught from childhood; people learn it from home. It is not like other things that people learn when they are adults. No wonder that you hear societies discriminating or isolating individuals who develop certain deviant behaviors at a certain age. Even a person who attains a university degree is expected to abide by the culture they learnt at home. If you are an African man with eight children, only one or two may violate cultural norms but others will be compliant. Thus, culture can evolve depending on circumstances but it evolves slowly and gradually.
The problem is that our programs usually want dramatic and drastic changes to happen when we implement them. I think we need to adapt to the to the way culture evolves. If it is going to evolve in a generation, we should know that the evolution cannot occur in two years. This will help us to answer questions from our donors. It can help us to set realistic targets and timelines. Sometimes, we write lies in our reports just to please the donors, instead of helping them to understand how to deal with traditional norms. In many cases, we need a generation or a long period to make a dent on a certain cultural practice. A five-year program may not achieve much.
Precious: Thank you very much. When it comes to the issue of culture, we can't really finish addressing the issues around it. However, following on Paul’s question, there are other questions. Francis Mutekanga asks, “Is the diffusion of culture that is noticeable nowadays, a case of evolution or revolution? Should culture be a standard or static?”
Prisca Kalenzi also says, “We also have an immediate assumption that people’s culture is wrong and ‘modern knowledge’ is right! Are we honest? How can we promote honesty about our own biases so that it is reflected even in our programming?”
Venansio: In my heart of hearts, I think that education has spoiled us. We cannot speak the truth. We cannot be honest! We want jobs. We want money. We want positions. We want popularity.
Many times, I look back at our society. When I was growing up, for instance, I would see people coming to our home to drink local brew known as ‘tonto’. Let me call it ‘beer’. People would drink for free. But a man would stand up and tell another, “You cannot partake of this drink because we have never come to your home to do the same. You don't deserve this!” It was like that story in Chinua Achebe’s book ‘Things Fall Apart,’ where they called the man a woman because he had no titles.
Today, I think that education has taught us to be dishonest. Our education cannot allow us to be true to ourselves. The concept of diplomacy and public relations is all about dishonesty. Diplomacy means that you try to massage a lie to ensure that you don't annoy someone. If a partner or a funder of a program says something, you are abound to agree so as to get money, a job, a position or a project. You must show them that you agree with them.
That is contrary to the African culture which promotes and praises the honesty of calling a spoon a spoon. Sometimes we know that a program is going to fail, but if the donor has expectations and has spelled out the targets, we ensure to go and look for the results. We end up going into manipulation and blackmail of community members which is disrespectful.
As implementers, we need to sit back and know whether we cherish the dignity of honesty or whether we just want to get money and tell lies. If we must choose between the two, I think the choice is clear. We are choosing our jobs. We are choosing our promotions. We are choosing money. Yet we know that the community will benefit better if we choose honesty and dignity. We all know that some of the heavily funded programs have not benefited communities because we lack the courage to speak the truth to our funders. As a result, you find programs implemented for fifty years in the same community but there is no visible change.
Precious: Thank you, once again, Venansio. You are giving very deep responses and quite a lot of food for thought for everyone. Rebecca Birungi says ‘Thank you’ and comments that parents are busy with work, so it is the maids who now instill values in children. She asks, “How do we solve this?”
Venansio: Thank you Rebecca. I wrote an article about this more than ten years ago and I was talking about the chaos that has happened in families as people relegate their parental roles. When I was involved in child protection work, I could see that all of us were neglecting our own children. Personally, I was not in my own home to look after my children. Everyone else was spending all their time in conferences, meetings and other sessions talking about the rights of the children, whereas the rights of their own children at home were violated. This is pure irony.
This marks the difference between us and our ancestors. They gave their children time. They gave them informal education, with a personal touch. They always sat down with their children to impart values. They told them everything they believed was important for individual or societal welfare and development. On our part, we have hired people to look after our children. We have hired maids at home. At schools, we have teachers even during holidays. There is a serious gap here. No wonder that relations between parents and children are getting worse day by day.
Precious: Thank you very much Venansio. I must really confess that quite a lot of insights are coming out of this discussion. On this question you just responded to, I’m sure everyone on this call will definitely have something to say about it. Like you rightly said, there is a gap! Now, we have so many other questions and so I’ll just try and run through. You will give us quick insights as we wrap up this session. Madame Kate is asking, “How we can use storytelling around the fireplace to foster SBC.
Venansio: I think this question links to the question that Paul earlier asked; whether culture evolves. There is no fireplace anymore, except in a few communities. For example, in the community where I come from, even getting firewood for cooking food is now a problem. But I think the fire doesn't have to be the fire with firewood in the fireplace. The fireplace is now symbolic. It symbolises an opportunity in the family for people to sit and share ideas through a conversation. Around the fireplace, there was no quarreling or fighting or punishment. These would only occur away from the fireplace. A fireplace was a place of harmony, peace and listening to each other. They exercised the highest level of democracy at the fireplace since everyone, man or woman, child or adult, was listened to.
We need to borrow a leaf from that aspect. The conversation today may be about business or other modern concepts, but we should learn and use the same democratic approach to programming. The fireplace is just a concept which program implementers can learn and apply. This promotes a sense of democracy so that we are not imposing interventions on the community. We should not dictate to people what they should do. We should not be prescriptive about solutions to people’s issues. We should listen to community members as they in turn listen to us so that there is meaningful engagement. As our topic says, we need respectful conversations. A conversation must be two-way.
Precious: We have really had a great session. The last question is from Bukola who says, “How can we leverage on new technology to amplify and preserve our cultural values?”
Venansio: Technology is not today’s innovation. There was always technology in history, only that each period has its own technology. There was stone-age technology whereby stones were used to slaughter animals or cut trees. There was iron smithing. There was a printing press. Different technologies at different historical times. In fact, what we call technology today will be frowned upon in the next twenty years.
Therefore, how to use current technology depends on our needs and abilities. We can use current platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Tik Tok etc. to promote the values we cherish. We have gadgets including computers and mobile phones to ease processes of communication and interactions. As implementers, these are things we should deploy to engage community members in our programs.
Precious: Thank you so much Venansio. What an insightful session! Thank you very much everyone attending this session. As implementers we need to reignite those respectful conversations to get results from our programs. I must confess to you that I have learned so much. I will now hand it over back to the AS-SBC Secretariat. Mr. Paul Odeke, over to you.
Paul: Thank you Precious. For the questions which we didn’t tackle, we're going to post all on the WhatsApp group and Venansio can answer them from there. Please subscribe to and join the African Society for Social and Behaviour Change (AS-SBC), an association where we always have wonderful discussions. Thank you very much, stay blessed, and thank you to our wonderful moderator, Precious, and in a special way, our panelist Venansio.