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  • Mwongozo—the Study Guide to Swahili Literary Works:Its Role as a Component in Education in Kenya
  • Said A.M. Khamis

Designed to play a pedagogic role, mwongozo,1 the study guide to Swahili literature, had by the 1970s already penetrated2 Kenya educational practice, causing the "relationship" between Swahili literature and Swahili literary study to appear more visible, in spite of the opposition inherent in them: literature being an art, and literary study, if not precisely a science, a species of knowledge (Wellek and Warren 15). Such an opposition however, raises a number of theoretical issues that are beyond the limit of this essay. Suffice it to stress that it especially offers two "alternatives": one stressing the conception that literature can "only" be read, enjoyed, and appreciated, but not studied; and the other, maintaining that for academic and intellectual reasons, literature should thus be taught as well as appreciated and enjoyed.

The word "teach," however, carries many connotations and can therefore be interpreted in various ways. With reference to literature, its meaning goes beyond the need to digest the substance of a given work of literature, to that of grasping the work in its totality, translating it into intellectual experiences that affect the reader's mental attitude. The word also has the sense of providing students with the analytical tools necessary to cope with rules and conventions that structure texts; of sharpening their intellectual skills. Reading a literary work means reading it on its own terms, but also in relation to other works by the same author or others.

Though the above objectives are essential to the teaching of literature in general, they by no means give a complete picture of why study guides to Swahili literary works, mwongozo, were introduced in Kenya's educational practice. It was, it could be argued, the quantitative and qualitative growth of Swahili literature [End Page 217] in the 1970s that gave rise to a number of pedagogic and practical challenges regarding the way it should be read, taught, and examined. This was the time when Swahili authors in Kenya and Tanzania explored new themes, methods, and techniques in an effort to break free from the colonial heritage of writing. As a result, new formal and structural designs appeared in all genres of Swahili literature, which meant that henceforth the reader had to grapple with more complex, and sometimes odd, stylistic and linguistic devices that challenged the "austere" nature of Swahili literature. This is, for example, Amina Vuzo's "public response" to the alleged obscurity of Mohamed's play Amezidi (Too Much) iv3 (1995):

Mwongozo huu umeandikwa ili uwe kama kitulizo cha kilio kikubwa cha watu wengi katika mihadhara mbalimbali ya Kiswahili na hata kupitia kwenye magazeti, wakisema kuwa kitabu cha Amezidi kimezidi kwa ugumu.

This study guide has been written to help many people who have been turned off by the obscurity of Amezidi. Though it has been looked at and discussed in many forums including newspapers, it is claimed that Amezidi is too complex and difficult to digest.

(Amina Vuzo, Mwongozo wa Amezidi [Study Guide to Too Much] iv; trans. mine)

Also, Kimani Njogu, in his Mwongozo wa Amezidi, discusses the issue of obscurity in Amezidi in more objective terms:

Tamthilia ya Amezidi ni juhudi ya mwandishi huyu kuibua usanifu mpya katika tamthilia ya Kiswahili. Tamthilia ya Amezidi imeegemea katika sanaa ya ubwege iliyokita sana Uropa baada ya Vita Vikuu vya Pili vya Dunia (1939–45). Baadhi ya tamthilia za kibwege za wakati huo ni Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett) na Rhinoceros, The Chair na The Lesson (Eugene Ionesco).

The play Amezidi is an attempt by this writer to come out with some novelty to add to the repository of Swahili drama. Amezidi tends toward the techniques of the theater of the absurd, a form that was prominent in Europe after (sic) the Second World War (1939–1945). Some of the plays that were written using this method are Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and Rhinoceros, The Chairs, and The Lesson by Eugene Ionesco.

(trans. mine)

These comments, certainly provide a clue that from the 1970s to date, Swahili literature has been diversifying its methods and shifting from the...

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