South Sudan: Legends and the Construction of our New Identity
Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia
To South Sudanese Artists, Educationists and the Public
By Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday, July 28, 2020 (PW) — Legends, great legends, should be considered as national body of treasures and not just possessions of members or members of sections of tribes they belong to. There are so many South Sudanese who are literate, university graduates and writers. The challenge for them is that they write these legends down in books.
Oral tradition has played its role to its fullest. Story-tellers and singers were at the forefront in the efforts of transmitting legends and stories from one generation to the next generation. Through those legends our people have been absorbing philosophical and cultural ideas of the past. In that way, these legends have contributed in the formation of our collective and diverse character, as South Sudanese.
It must be noted, though, that these legends have never been widely shared; that is, they have scarcely been passed on from members of one tribe to the members of other tribes. The reason why this has been so is because these legends are told and sung in the local and tribal languages. This have resulted in limiting the scope of their influence.
This is the time that this must change, or they will fade away in our memory. Oral tradition must give way to written tradition. The memory of people who write is not as good as the memory of those who had never been in schools, who have never learned to read and write. There is no reason for us to continue depending solely on storytellers and countryside singers as we have people who can write, and write very well. Just as we have writers, we also have readers, who are able to write and read in our own languages as well as in foreign languages; Arabic, English, et cetera, et cetera. We have no excuse for not taking up our pens and writing these legends down.
Not only that, these legends can be written and after they are written down, can be translated into other South Sudanese languages. When books become available and are within the reach of all South Sudanese at home and in the Diaspora, they will then be taught and studied in schools. They can also be studied in South Sudanese universities.
Or, are we of the mind that we cannot take such an undertaking because the legends and stories of our people are only for un-educated and for the so-called village people? If this is how we think, then we are doing ourselves disservice. The Western world would not have the Hollywood production of Shrek and the Arabs and Islamic world would not have Ali Baba, had the stories have not been inherited by people of particular cultures. The legends and stories we write today will be the materials that our film producers will need tomorrow. Who knows, the legends we write today could become our contribution to the global culture tomorrow.
If you are a writer or a singer and you know one or two great legends from a tribe you descended from, please make it known by any means possible. Your contribution will make our efforts to Construct Our New Identity (CONI) a reality. The real and lasting freedom of all of us is yet to come through efforts such as these.
2nd Posting on Thursday, 30 July 2020
Thiik Mou Giir, Bachelor Degree in Education from the University of Alexandria, Egypt; Post Graduate Diploma, from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He can be reached via his email contact: thiik_giir@hotmail.com
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