Sise Mwirabi and Mwalimu’s resolute dance into the New Year

“Even a child you begat only the other day,” goes an African adage, “plays the drum for you and you dance.” It suggests that competence or achievement should be recognised and respected, regardless of the status of those who exhibit it. The “ngoma” (both drum and dance), as you know, is a rich source of symbolism in our orature. It mostly suggests a matter of significance.

The significant matter here is the prospect of the New Year, 2024.

I thought it prudent to let my child, Sise Mwirabi, lead the drumming of reflections for us as we dance towards a focused and purposeful future. But Mr Mwirabi, from the Mara Region of Tanzania, is not a literal “child begotten yesterday”. He is a senior citizen, honourably retired from his country’s public service at the rank of Principal Secretary in the information and communication sector.

I call him my child because he was one of my first students on my return to Makerere in the late 1990s. He majored in English and Mass Communication, rather than my Literature and Kiswahili docket, but he readily adopted me as his informal adviser, and what with our Tanzanian connections, we ended up becoming friends and proper “ndugu”.

Old readers of this column will remember me mentioning him as one of the Tanzanian students “anonymously” sponsored for university education by the late media tycoon and philanthropist, Reginald Mengi. The most remarkable fact about Mr Mwirabi is that he is heavily and seriously physically challenged, and has been nearly all his life. A victim of crippling poliomyelitis in infancy, he once fell into a domestic fire which completely burnt off one of his palms.

Inspiring quality

The most amazing and inspiring quality about Sise Mwirabi is that none of these lifelong challenges, and others, like coming from one of the remotest corners of the United Republic, seems to have dampened his stupendous energy, his bubbling sense of humour and, above all, his intellectual brilliance. On the contrary, his apparent “disabilities” have only sharpened and strengthened his resolve to excel on every front.

Anyway, for our new year planning and resolutions, Mwirabi suggests, in a social media post, that we should adopt a hardnosed realistic project planner and developer’s analysis and implementation approach. Couched in the lucid, rather formalistic Kiswahili characteristic of Tanzanian public communication, our friend’s advice proposes that we should regard ourselves as projects. You or I are the project, and you might start by subjecting yourself to a thorough “SWOT” self-analysis. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats around “Project Mwalimu Bukenya 2024”?

We are given several guiding questions to help us in the self-search and self-orientation, and, truth to tell, I found quite a number of them rather — challenging, not to say embarrassing. You look at your age, for example, and how it relates to your economic, social, intellectual and spiritual growth. I am very nearly 80, and I must confess I did not feel I had performed adequately, let alone admirably, on any of those fronts.

Another query that left me looking furtively around for excuses or “explanations” was about my “aims and objectives of 2023” and how far I had come towards meeting them. Do I even remember any of them? I am not pleading dementia, yet, but maybe you can remind me, if you read what I wrote just about a time like this between 2022 and 2023.

Objective

One thing I am particularly happy and glad about, however, is that I have kept sharing with you through these pages. That might have been one of my objectives. But then, it is you, not I, that have achieved it, by your ever so faithfully and lovingly reading my ruminations and frequently giving me the feedback on which I thrive. I was particularly touched by the reader who told me he cycles five kilometres every Saturday to the news stand to get the paper and see what I am up to for the weekend.

Social sense

In any case, not all of Mwirabi’s analysis questions end up embarrassing me and exposing my weaknesses. Several of his guiding queries are quite useful in focusing our minds on a creative and productive future. The simple “nini dira yako” (what is your guiding vision), for example, is a powerful device for purpose-directed living. “Dira” literally means “compass”.

Figuratively it suggests the main ideal that drives your life. Mine is “social sense” (self-respect, respect for others and respect for the environment). Would that not be a big enough resolution for me in 2024?

Then we are offered several tips for facilitating and enhancing our “project me2024”. The one that I liked best is, “Calm down your brains, and then move forward” (tuliza akili zako, kisha songa mbele).

This chimes very well with my general laissez-faire (be and let be) approach to life. It is important to be serious about life, but it is not necessary to agonise about everything. Lots of great minds destroy and ruin themselves by failing to grasp this simple approach.

Indeed, now that I am becoming an octogenarian, that will be my answer to those who ask me for the secret to longevity. The truth is that I do not know, but that “live and let live” attitude probably has something to do with it. The Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot put it beautifully and succinctly in these lines from “Ash Wednesday”: “Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.”

To these I would add, as another ingredient in our project2024, the “dum spiro, spero” (while I breathe, I hope) essence from my classical training. This is the strong, unshakeable optimism that we should bring to life and to all our endeavours in it. Optimism is always a productive approach to life, and the power and providence that has brought us into 2024 will guide and sustain us in and through it.

Love and best wishes to you, and especially “ProjectYou2024”, in the New Year.

Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]