HARMONY BUFFET TEST POST

TRANSCRIPT:

Today I am trying to see if Facebook will allow me to share a five-minute clip without cutting it. Now, let’s begin with something memorable. Do you remember our first slide when we started discussing natural equality? The clip had an image of six skeletons. One of them we said was a poor person, the other was rich, there was a black and a white person, and there was a Christian and a Moslem. Their skeletons looked the same because in death we return to that absolute truth of being the same.

We then considered the importance of humility because we all share the same life cycle of birth/living/death. As a Harmony society, we decided to focus on the morals that will enable us to lead a good life during that period of being alive on this planet. How should we live our lives? There are many compasses to guide us some of which are religious. Religions offer moral compass for living a life of virtue, so do cultural traditions. Some societies do not follow a particular formal religion, instead they are guided by their own values that are embedded in how they see the world. They will have tales and taboos about right and wrong. Even in Africa before foreign religions, we had our own worldviews of what is right and wrong.

For thousands of years people lived knowing what humanity is all about! They did not turn each other into food or say, hunt the neighbour’s child and cook it  In short humans knew how to live. They made rules and followed them. The most well-known of them is THE GOLDEN RULE, which can be traced all the way to ancient Egypt and China. It warned people ‘not to do to others what they would not like done to them’ and it extended even to nature, requiring everyone to maintain reverence. This rule was later adapted into an affirmative command of ‘treating others the way you want to be treated’ but it did not extend to nature. Here we deliberately forgot to include nature although we are embedded in nature, and it sustains us.

As a harmony society, we decided to focus on virtues. Those quintessential values that make life meaningful and harmonious. This is why our first HARMONY GOAL is #Humanity Education, so that we can increase our competency in finding a balance between Indigenous Knowledge and modernity without being engulfed in either.

We want to know how our ancestors lived and related to nature. What sort of relationships did they have with other kingdoms of nature? - soil, water, air, plants, forests, animals, rocks, mountains etc. What did they eat and how did they celebrate events? Why and how did they practice worship? What was the significance of names? They could have called each other by numbers!! Sure we know the meaningfulness of names but what is in the name? For instance, my Chagga birth name is Naaikye, which translates as “She should be thanked.” The accompanying story is that, a few minutes after I was born, my father came rushing past the midwives and told my surprised mother that ‘she should be called my mothers name.’ When challenged how he knew the new baby was a girl, he said that his deceased mother had just visited him in a dream and woke him up complaining that he had not honoured her. My parents had two other girls. Now then, my birth name was MEANINGFUL, but the attitude of wanting everything to sound European, I chose to prioritise my Christian name Regina and I was ashamed of being called Naaikye in school!!! This is one of the HARMFUL PERCEPTION that we feel we must address in order to restore some reverence to our heritage.

The worry is that we are cutting off the umbilical cord with our ancestral heritage. I am guilty of severing the connection with those who brought me into this world😪 There are so many things we need to purge from ourselves in order to heal from this “I am not Ok” stance and remember that we are Okay. That everyone came with unique gifts into this world but also inherited cultural and intellectual assets that enable him/her to perform a particular kind of work to the best of their abilities.

I know I have digressed today, but my aim is to test if Facebook will allow me to post a five-minute audio clip without cutting it. Next time I will prepare better, I promise. I don’t want you to attack me 😆Whoever tries we will attack each other 😁😁 Bye for now, it is me mama RKW aka Naaikye. Nawapenda/Love you Mwaaaaa 😘