Attempto! 02/2023: The Other Side of the Story

Jacky Kosgei discovered her love for the Indian Ocean in Mombasa. She arrived in the coastal town of Mombasa, Kenya, in 2017 to do field research for her Master’s degree. “We held interviews with people in the villages near Mombasa and listened to their storytelling,” she remembers. “I grew up in Kenya’s inland. I only then started to realize how strongly the ocean and the stories of the nation are connected. I began to see water as a form of storytelling.”

Jacky Kosgei has been fascinated with the ocean ever since, with the power of storytelling and how closely both are woven into Kenyan history and culture. Her current research is located at the borders of literature, cultural studies, history and anthropology and she is Junior Professor of Anglophone Literary Cultures and Global South Studies at the University of Tübingen.

As a literary scholar, Jacky Kosgei works with texts. However, when her work is concerned with Kenya’s culture and history, she turns to oral history, as the stories that she is interested in often cannot be found in official texts.

Munitions stored in a holy cave

Kenya’s coast has been an important region where tradespeople have met and exchanged goods for centuries, a “place of encounter”, as Kosgei says. Arab merchants were among the first to arrive and the region has been claimed by the Portuguese, the Omani Arabs, and the British crown among other foreign powers. In 1963, Kenya was declared independent.

Yet, sixty years later exploitation and repression are still visible. “Schoolchildren are still being taught the version of history that was written by the foreign powers. In these accounts, the history and culture of the local people is largely repressed in favor of Arab- and European-oriented narratives,” says Kosgei.

In a prominent example, Jacky Kosgei investigated the history of Fort Jesus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Mombasa island. The Fort was built by the Portuguese 430 years ago to secure the port and establish a point of administering power over the Kenyan coast. Visiting the national monument, one can learn much about its use and architecture from Kenyan guides, who have memorized the official history.

But Mzee Nyembwe has another version of history to tell about this place. The 82-year-old man from the Digo community is an indigenous knowledge expert and a storyteller. He has memorized indigenous knowledge as told to him by his grandfather and father. Jacky Kosgei visited him many times and recorded his accounts spoken in Swahili.

For the Digo people, the site of the fort was a spiritual place with a cave that was “God’s own creation” and honored with a shrine. Nyembwe explained that the Portuguese drove the Digo people away from the site and dishonored the cave. Since then historical accounts of Fort Jesus have erased the role of the Digo people and their history – they are not even included in the guided tour of this World Heritage site.

Kosgei emphasizes that Fort Jesus is a typical example of how incomplete and biased histories continue to be told. “By seizing sites like this, the aim was to destroy the spirituality and culture of indigenous people and destabilize their societies. This was a way of establishing power and their own (foreign) religion,” says Kosgei. It’s hardly surprising that Fort Jesus was built in the shape of a crucified man and that the holy cave was used to store munitions.

Cultural activities collect oral histories

Attempts to reappraise Kenya’s colonial history are faring better in other places. Kosgei also investigated the “Shimoni Slave Caves” where slaves captured from Kenyan inland were kept before they were shipped to the slave market in Zanzibar. The caves measure five kilometres long, dark and slaves were packed there in the thousands. They were forced to crawl along the passage.

Kosgei explains that the local community has established a successful remembrance project at this site in Shimoni. Local guides take tourists through the caves and donations benefit the community. One of the caves serves as a prayer room for traditional gods. “The local people and their perspective are at the heart of the project,” says Kosgei. This cannot yet be assumed for all historical contexts in Kenya. Jacky Kosgei wants to broaden perspectives to other aspects of history with oral histories in Swahili. Oral history is an important source of remembrance work in cultural studies and important for giving people a voice that have been previously silenced. Indigenous groups in Kenya are also reclaiming their official narratives and their cultural identity.

“It’s about who we are,” says Kosgei. She works with cultural activists in Kenya who are collecting indigenous knowledge and creating digital archives, like Pwani Tribune and Hekaya Arts Initiative. Many of the people she interviews diligently share their knowledge and are excited to hear about her progress. “I have the feeling that I have taken on a responsibility.”

Towards a multiverse

In her seminar at the University of Tübingen, she teaches students how to approach African literary texts. But often she also asks them to put their books aside. “I want them to think about the traditions and stories they have encountered. I want to sharpen their awareness of diverse perspectives.”

She will continue her research, for example by collecting oral stories about the Indian Ocean. Among other questions, she asks fishermen, sailors, divers and shell collectors what the ocean means to them. “The spirituality of the Digo people is closely connected to the ocean, they believe it is a place of spirits, a gift from god, a protected space and a source of food,” she explains.

For these reasons, marine conservation is of utmost priority among coastal populations. Jacky Kosgei also talked to Bahati Ngazi. The young woman is a radio presenter who is committed to conservation activism by writing songs and poetry: forms of oral history associated with a modern medium and an issue that concerns us all today.

When Kosgei speaks about her vision of integrating all perspectives into a “pluriverse”, she smiles. “Pluriverse represents a world of endless possibilities. That’s quite an ambitious goal.” But at the least, she could contribute to establishing a “multiverse”, she is sure of that. “If we include more voices and different forms of knowledge, including written and oral accounts, we will have achieved something.”

Text: Antje Karbe
Photos: Jacky Kosgei