If there is one subject that James Ngugi or Ngugi wa Thiongó, if you like, can speak on until the cows come lowing back home, it is the power of our mother tongues.
Why, the good old professor has written acres of literature about the subject. Maybe time has come to preach this gospel louder in our newsrooms.
Take Saturday’s interview with Janet Rotich, Eliud Kipchoge’s mother. The clearly media shy woman was evidently uncomfortable with Kiswahili and would have preferred the over-enthusiastic reporter who thrust the mike on her face to ask in Kalenjin how she felt to see her son run 42km in under two hours. People generally express deep emotions better in vernacular.
But her interviewer either did not notice this or chose to ignore the woman’s desperate looks that screamed one thing: Ask me anything, but ask it in Kikalenjin!
So when the journalist, and he was not from Europe or US, asked the woman how she felt, she kept saying “abaibai , abaibai,” which Mediascape can authoritatively confirm meant: “I feel happy, I feel happy.”
But our white journalists in a dark skin kept prodding the woman to speak in Kiswahili. (“Ongea kwa Kiswahili.”)
Which brings us to the conclusion that we have a breed of journalists who when they are interviewing sources in rural set ups behave like city dwellers visiting the countryside during Christmas.
Telling Kipchoge’s mother to speak in Kiswahili, which clearly was not “mdomo chake” was patronising.
Sadly, this patronizing attitude happens live on TV. You see interviewers clearly trying to dominate the interviewees. “Kuja hapa mzee….” “…Toa kofia”, like they are doing them a favour!
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the man who narrowly missed the Nobel Prize for Literature last week, would have called ours a new breed of journalists that need “decolonizing”.
Why, Ngugi is at his best element on Gikuyu TVs and radio stations, where the good old professor outshines his interviewers and listeners with his masterly of the language.
But then, our young lads on national TV would probably tell him “Ongea kwa Kiswahili, mzee”.
Which brings us to another important point: the future of national TVs vis-à-vis the rapidly growing vernacular TVs.
Although with their excess makeup some of our vernacular TV presenters look whiter than the snows of Europe, they are doing what Ngugi would give up a Nobel prize for over and over again to do – talking directly to the hearts and souls of the ordinary Wanjiku out there.
Of late they have taken competition for TV audiences to the doorstep of traditional “national” TV. It would not be surprising therefore if vernacular TV stations beat the rest in viewership in the nearest future.
They are a refreshing break from non-stop music and Brazilian soaps that dominate traditional TV.
Oh, and the presenters do not ask their guests, “Tafadhali zungumza kwa Kiswahili”
Why, for the first time the vernacular mediascape is awash with doctors speaking fluent vernacular on subjects that have English words that begin from here to Timbuktu, subjects like cancer, diabetes and climate change.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o might not have bagged that Nobel prize, but his gospel on use of our mother tongue is not going to waste. We need more vernacular TV stations. We need Dorobo TV, Turkana TV, Ogiek TV….name it!
And as national newspapers slide towards extinction, the traditional national TV might have to prepare to follow the path of the dinosaur and the white rhino.
