Unlike Any Other

This past week, I had the absolute honor of sitting in on a lecture by Dr. Ochieng ‘K’Olewe. The Education Professor at McDaniel College is a native of Kenya, Africa, and took the time out of his schedule to tell us stories of his home continent. At some points, I had absolute chills from his high level of story-telling.  

The why behind the stories (the setting, interaction, etc.) is all because the community and society is much like a piece of woven fabric- one strand is the folktales and folklore, which overlaps with things such as music, religion, history, and geography.

What made this story-telling experience unlike any other? For one, the level of interaction between Dr. Ochieng was unlike anything else I had ever experienced or even heard of. Every story began with a call and response- such as ‘Come Story Come’. Not only did we have that, but many of the stories required participation on our end, as the listeners, to chime in on the chants that were relevant to the story- such as the tale of the woman that was leaving her husband, returning to her lake, chanting and warning anyone nearby that a storm was coming and to bring the cows home:

Lake Simbi Nyaima (pic from Google)

Uuun ma-uwinja

Koth biro

Kel-uru dhok e dala

 

As we were told by our guest of honor, one of the main reasons that many of the stories had chants or songs is, not only for dramatic effect, but because the story is then not just my (as the storyteller) story, but our story/ the “us” is more important than the “me”, an idea that I find to be extremely powerful and not considered enough in our current culture.