In a time of widespread misinformation, disinformation, fake news and outright lies throughout the world, many people are wondering what the truth really is and how to find it.
In Africa, it is embedded in the power of story.
“The oral tradition has always been a hallmark of West African culture for generations long before colonization, and so storytellers have been the truth tellers,” said Dr. Geremie Sawadogo, a World Bank talent manager and storyteller, who, as a child growing up in Burkina Faso, would gather with his family to listen to story hour on national radio every Tuesday evening.
David Thuku, an executive coach and storyteller in Nairobi, Kenya, agreed. “Stories are a very structured system of managing life and giving knowledge about such things as governance, values, laws, social sciences and medicine. Medicine men, for example, would tell people which plants to use for different illnesses,” Thuku said.
“They also taught us morals and our code of acceptable behaviours,” Sawadago added. For many, they are a form of timeless, universal truth.
African stories can come in many different forms: two- to three-hour speeches, long monologues, oral renditions, poems, sayings, proverbs, fables, folklore tales, visual language, songs and even dance.