Treasures from my grandfather, Lung’afa

This is how for years the old leather bag has hanged. Squeezed inside were papers that passed as less important, perhaps with better documents gone. Aimed for destruction after a clean-up, my interest in Lulogooli brings them to light.

It is clearer to me that a name and land or cash are the least of an inheritance you can pass down to your progeny. You can buy your own land, make your own name but you will remain in the dark if your family or community development history is hidden from you – which is the invaluable self-awareness. 

My grandfather died suddenly in 1992 at 74 years. He was just getting the best of his engagements as a community leader. I was one and half years. I am told of how committed to act he was, how he faced my maternal family and ensured that I was raised in strong paternal belonging. In the gazy eyes of my infant life, our eyes locked. I live to honor his name. 

As I went through the brown papered oxidized files, I appreciated that he had sat down and knit together many documents which give me light to many a things. Their value rises sharply as near all are in Lulogooli, a language of my interest that I work to propagate. 

From the communal church meetings and teachings to varied correspondences, Lung’afa Isagi my grandfather also documents family events and happenings. In one of his letters where he was applying to be a sub-chief, he says he only schooled to class 4. Had he had the education that he gave his 11 children, he would be a brand by self. 

All these would have caught fire had my brother, Victor, been in a hurry to clean through and through grandmother’s house with a small fire backhouse. She is not 100 but 98 as per what Grandpa documents, born ’28 and him ’18. There is more, long after grandpa had died, that she included in the files and I was happy to find. 

With a poor family archival system, we have lost much more about ourselves and keep losing. Hope is dwindling on the search for grandpa’s bicycle that I wanted to keep as a relic. The old leather bag that carried the said two files hanged dustily on a wall; and in that outlook it waited destruction.

Hearsay on many issues would be best understood by a simple case scenario of a documented paper. With more than eighty grandchildren and numerous born and unborn grandchildren, there is something that we can inherit all and equal – archived knowledge. 

Lucky that the command to burn them so useless and dusty papers was checked by a let-me-see-the-papers curiosity. I am afraid that I have also gazed at what would be wished kept away but yet important to the provision of light. Rather light shine so bright to make you blind than live in darkness. 

Where much that may have been thought worthy, earlier scrambled for 30 years since his death, and the years following grandmother’s ageing, I can be thankful for the little that adds to the increasing collection of Logooli literature. Knowledge (applied information) is priceless and by the simple act of organizing some papers and writing a diary, the soul is being packaged – for generations unborn.

Good grandmother and Great grandfather pose for a photo, circa mid 1970's.