Africa at the Internet Archive: Ganda Proverbs / West African Proverbs

I am really excited about doing proverbs this week (see the week's first post from yesterday), and I used this occasion to rev up my old African proverbs project. Which means I started a new blog (I love blogs); this is also the blog I'll be using for NaNoWriMo next month, so it felt good to get that up and running: OER Stories and Proverbs. So, if you check out the little slideshow down at the bottom of the sidebar of this blog, you'll see it has a new set of proverb slides, and it will keep growing. This week is really helping me get organized with that and build some momentum. :-)

I've got three proverb items today from the Internet Archive that I wanted to feature, starting with this really fascinating book: African Proverbs and Proverbial Names by Jonathan Musere, which is a study of Ganda proverbs and names.

What the author has done is to take material from Luganda Proverbs by Ferdinand Walser and other books of Ganda proverbs (more about the Baganda people), and the organized that information around the tradition of proverbial personal names. 

Make sure to read the introduction where the author explains the presentation of the material which has the Luganda text, then a literal English translation, followed by a commentary on the meaning, and then personal names which echo the proverb in some way. Here's just one example (click for larger view):

The author notes that a similar project could be undertaken for the names in many different African traditions, so perhaps this model for Ganda proverbs and names will inspire similar projects for other African traditions! The introduction also contains a detailed review of all the proverb sources used in the book in addition to the monumental collection published by Walser, a book which is very hard to come by, making Musere's book even more useful: I am so glad there is a copy everyone can access at the Internet Archive.

This next book is very short, really an article rather than a book, but it provides a great model for how to approach the different dimensions of proverbs: An Analysis of the Proverbs the Yorubans Live By by Ezekiel Tunde Bolaji and Taye A. Kehinde and published by ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center):

Here is the model the authors use in their presentation and analysis of the 16 Yoruba proverbs included in the study, all of which are related to health education (click for larger view).

So, for each proverb they provide the Yoruba text and a literal English translation, plus three different dimensions to consider, what they call the temporal meaning, the semantic or implied meaning, and also the application that can result from sharing the proverb (click for larger view):

Very few proverb collections work through each proverb in that kind of detail, which makes an article like this very useful. Learning how to interpret proverbs is partly based on knowledge of the culture but it is also based on some interpretive moves that you can learn and practice, much like practicing your skills at poetry, music, or any other art form. Reading through the analyses of proverbs like this is a great way to build your proverb-understanding skills!

Finally, the third book I want to mention today is another classic public domain text, by the famous explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton: Wit and Wisdom From West Africa; or, a Book of Proverbial Philosophy, Idioms, Enigmas, and Laconisms.

This book was published in 1865 (and Burton actually completed the work in 1863), making it one of the early contributions to "native African literature" whose mere existence many white people denied at the time; Burton's defense of African cultural arts in the introduction gives a sense of what the debate was like at that time. (More about Burton's wide-ranging career in Africa.)

Burton compiled the book from the linguistic publications available at the time (and which are quite difficult to obtain now), resulting in over 2000 proverbs: appx. 200 in Wolof, 100 in Kanuri, 300 in Ashanti (Oji), 200 in Ga, 600 in Yoruba, 800 in Efik, along with smaller collections in other languages of western Africa. Each proverb has the original language plus an English translation. 

Burton's does not have the great apparatus of commentary like in Musere's book, for example, but nevertheless it is extremely valuable, especially in having the original languages. There are also occasional bits of commentary as you can see here. 

Because the original language is quoted, you can tell that the Wolof proverb about the wolf is not really about a wolf at all; it is about a hyena, bouki. I can't speak Wolof, but I am trying to learn as many animal names in as many African languages as I can so that when English translators mistake the African animals (as often happens, especially with animals not found in Europe), I can recognize the name of the hyena, bouki, and bay is the goat.

So, there are thousands of proverbs for you to read and enjoy and ponder in today's books, and there will be more proverb books tomorrow and all this week. :-)

African Proverbs and Proverbial Names

by Jonathan Musere

Wit and Wisdom From West Africa

by Richard Francis Burton