Fasihi ya Kiafrika kama nyenzo ya kuelezea historia ya Afrika

Ikisiri Wanahistoria na wanafasihi wameendelea kujadili uwezo wa fasihi ya Kiafrika kusawiri historia ya Afrika. Baadhi ya wataalamu wanadai kwamba fasihi ya Kiafrika haina uwezo wa kuakisi ukweli wa kihistoria; wengine wanaona kwamba ni baadhi tu ya tanzu za fasihi zinazoweza kusawiri historia ya jamii fulani. Aidha, wengine wanaona kuwa fasihi, kwa ujumla wake, bila kujali utanzu, husawiri historia ya jamii fulani. Data zilizobainishwa hapa zinaonyesha kwamba aina zote za kazi za fasihi – ushairi, tamthilia, riwaya, na fasihi simulizi – zimesawiri historia ya jamii mahususi za Kiafrika. Hivyo, kazi za fasihi ni miongoni mwa vyanzo muhimu vya data za kihistoria.

Dual Language Instruction: Teaching Civics in Three Public Primary Schools in Tanzania

It is a widely shared hypothesis in Tanzania among educators and the general public that low academic achievement scores are typically due to pupils’ deficiencies in English comprehension. Although in most public primary schools kiSwahili is the language of instruction, while a select few use English, there is evidence showing that even where monolingual instruction is on offer in Tanzania, lessons are held most of the time in both languages concurrently. Much of the research into dual language instruction is driven by the question of whether using English as the language of instruction is superior to using another language, leaving open the question of whether learning in both kiSwahili and English concurrently delivers a better pedagogical result than classroom usage of either language in isolation from the other. In this study, experimenting with the use of Dual Language Instruction (DLI) in three public primary schools indicates that when students are taught in two languages they perform better on tests than those who receive the same lesson content through monolingual instruction.

Invisible Resilience: Indigenous Knowledge Systems of Earthquake Disaster Management in Kagera Region, Tanzania

Indigenous environmental disaster management systems are maintained in remotely located communities through intergenerational transmission. This fieldwork illuminates a wealth of unprecedented survival techniques, strategies and skills for offsetting the worst effects of a natural disaster in earthquake-prone areas of north-west Tanzania. Normally, responses from the government and its foreign development partners are hamstrung by bureaucratic red tape, taking too long in reaching disaster victims to be of any actual help. The formal mechanisms of global assistance constitute disaster management failure by design. Rather, it is the local experts who sustain human lives in the weeks and months before external aid comes to the rescue. Yet local communities’ contributions to their own survival remain invisible to central government and the global arena. Traditional means of forecasting environmental catastrophes and of providing essential assistance in the aftermath of natural disasters are reflections of cultural values, socio-economic sophistication and scientific expertise within communities whose resilience needs to be recognized, assisted and promoted. Educational curricula of the future, involving a new generation of academicians, should integrate this crucial indigenous knowledge into the nation’s mainstream disaster management framework.

Architects of the Engaruka Techno-Cultural Complex: Testing the Sonjo Connection

Engaruka is an archaeological site that became known to the world of scientific researchers for the first time in 1883. Since then the site has been the subject of many research undertakings varying in purpose and intensity. Most of the published literature about Engaruka has focused on its economy, technology, population, probable reasons for its success and demise, as well as speculations about its first settlers. Several different ethnic groups have been proposed as Engaruka’s architects: the Iraqw, Tatoga, Maasai, and the Sonjo. Despite the impressive scope of collected evidence, the original occupants of Engaruka have yet to be determined conclusively. The analysis of available evidence assembled here supports the hypothesis that the Sonjo people were the creators of Engaruka, by virtue of these indicators: (i) terrace patterns, (ii) pottery technologies, (iii) stone structures, (iv) fire places, and (v) contemporary ethnography.

Social Injustice by Prescription?

Since independence, Tanzania has instituted healthcare reforms in the quest for improving availability, quality, and social equity in access to public medical services. The extent to which the most recent healthcare reforms have impacted the existing patterns of medicinal prescription writing is largely opaque in the literature. This paper relies on data from two hospitals in Dar es Salaam. It emerges that the practice of categorising healthcare seekers into groups depending upon their varied health status and their entitlement to benefits has resulted in differential prescription allocations that might be interpreted as inequitable. The majority of very low income patients finance their healthcare through out-of-pocket payments and support of the Community Health Fund; this group receives a greater ratio of services with zero prescriptions, less poly-pharmacy and fewer prescribed generic medications than the proportion received by well-to-do patients with healthcare insurance. However, the medical and non-medical determinants of this differential in prescription allocation remain unclear, and so too, the ethical implications of such patterns in Tanzania’s out-patient medical service system are inconclusive.

Stylistic Analysis of Selected Sermons Delivered by Pentecostal Preachers

The language style of three Pentecostal sermons reveals figures of speech that not only carry artistic and rhetorical ingenuity but also enhance the effectiveness of the sermons’ impact on a congregation of believers. Pentecostal sermons make extensive use of the second singular personal pronoun ‘you’ to warn, rebuke, remind, and to command. These sermons engage both literal and metaphorical speech acts. To understand the Christian message conveyed in a sermon, factors including image schemas, the choice of pronoun and the speaker’s ecclesiastic knowledge should be addressed.

Lugha ya Kiswahili na Ukombozi wa Kifikra katika Afrika: Mkabala wa Kimapinduzi wa Frantz Fanon

Ikisiri Uchaguzi wa mtu kuitumia lugha yake kama njia ya ukombozi huanza na uamuzi wa kifikra. Uamuzi huo wa kifikra ni hatua ya ukombozi. Ni uamuzi ambao hatimaye humpa mtumiaji wa lugha mamlaka ya kuchukua hatua zaidi za kujitegemea. Ni ukombozi wa kiisimu ambao, hatimaye humpatia mtumiaji wa lugha nguvu binafsi. Lugha ni mamlaka; na wakati mwingi mamlaka huzaa nguvu. Ingawa hapa ‘nguvu’ inamaanisha uwezo wa mtu binafsi; na ‘mamlaka’ ni dhana ya kisheria, lakini dhana hizi mbili zinahusiana katika uchambuzi huu wa kujenga uwezeshaji kupitia matumizi ya lugha. Katika kuchunguza mawazo ya Frantz Fanon kuhusu dhana ya ukombozi wa fikra kwa Waafrika kama inavyojitokeza kupitia Lugha ya Kiswahili, nadharia ya Bobby Wright ya fikraufu inatoa nafasi kuangalia namna utambulisho wa watu unavyoweza kubomolewa kupitia matumizi ya lugha isiyokuwa ya asili kwao.

Marginality and Liminality in Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy

In Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy, the protagonist Habo is a young adult with albinism who struggles and eventually succeeds in navigating his multiple marginal spaces before eventually finding his position in society. Employing Victor Turner’s concept of liminality, I adopt a postcolonial lens to scrutinize in greater depth than literary critics have so far revealed the positive aspects of the marginal space occupied by Habo in virtue of the layered complexity of his social geography. Because his whole society is located in the global South, this disabled young adult faces a variety of marginalisations. Rather than an end point, the multiple margins traversed by Habo become for him a liminal space. Margins serve as a threshold for this teenager to discover and establish his position in his society. I deviate from Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s theorising about disability as a social construct, since her analysis overlooks the brute fact that Habo’s albinism is a disability which constitutes a constant life threat. The disambiguation of marginality and liminality argued here is particularly important to maintain when critiquing narratives that depict the life experience of protagonists overcoming the very real-world challenges encountered at the margins of the global economic order.