An Interview with Tetu Maingi, September 2010: Reflections on the Amazon Learning Exchange

In 2005, Tetu Maingi left his home country of Kenya to travel almost 8000 miles to the heart of the Colombian Amazon. He was joined by African Biodiversity Network peers Mphatheleni Maukalule, Fassil Gebeyehu and Gathuru Mburu, and accompanied by The Gaia Foundation. Gaia started working in the Colombian Amazon in the late 80's and have continued to work with South American partner Gaia Amazonas to secure the rights of indigenous community territories in the region.

Gaia and the African Biodiversity Network organised the learning exchange between Africa and South America as a means of sharing experiences, and to inspire this new generation of grassroots African leaders with what great achievements could be made within their own communities. As Tetu, Mburu and the group discovered; by embarking on a long-term journey with communities and truly understanding their traditional cultural belief system, this indigenous knowledge can become the basis of critical work to revive traditional cultures and their ecosystems.

Now, six years after this exchange experience, Tetu Maingi talks to Gaia about how his immersion into the Colombian Amazon has impacted upon his work with the PORINI Association and the African Biodiversity Network since.

How did the Colombian exchange impact upon you?

"One of the most fundamental things that the process did for me was to affirm to me that there are still some potent communities who are surviving in this world. That gave me a lot of courage and energy to continue engaging in the work we are doing in Kenya.

In some of the places we visited we met communities who had gone through some very tragic experiences. They had become fragmented; they had almost lost their culture and their community. But through the process that they underwent - of social reconstruction and drawing closer to their spirituality - they were able to define their own path towards a strengthening and revival of their own culture. So, it affirmed to me that this is possible.

At the same time, it gave me a lot of energy. The process is so energetic. Going through the Amazon forest, meeting with the Shamans and listening to them about the relationship they have with Nature and their whole cosmos was really inspiring.

Tell us about the role that sacred sites play in your work in Kenya and how this was influenced by the Colombian exchange.

For me, the Colombian experience really affirmed the importance of sacred sites in a community. Many sacred sites in Africa are now forgotten, but in the Amazon I saw first hand how the people relate to them. These sacred spaces, and the rituals which are carried out in them, play a really vital role in creating harmony within the community.

This resonated for me because my work with the PORINI Association places a growing focus on Sacred Sites. Often our starting point for bringing the community together in dialogues is to discuss, and shed light on, some of the sacred sites that were once of great significance to the community. Many of these have now been desecrated in Kenya, and so we have been working with communities to share knowledge about these sites and in doing so to revive them. We have done this with three communities, and have seen the positive impact that this has had. The Elders of the community are able to share knowledge which is almost forgotten. And by reviving practices carried out at these sacred sites the community feel that their harmony as a collective is improving. So seeing these sacred sites in the Amazon really impacted on the work that we are doing. It has also had a big impact in my personal life in terms of my connections with my ancestors and traditional practices.

Did the role of Nature play a part in community life in the Colombian Amazon?

Nature plays a huge role in the daily lives of these people. In fact, it is embedded into their entire cultural belief system just as it is for many indigenous communities. I saw this particularly clearly in the education of the younger generation.

Their education system is very holistic, beginning when the child is very young. The child continues to learn about the environment in relation to the Malocca (homestead) because to them, the Malocca represents the universe - it is the physical manifestation of the wider cosmos. A child is taken through several stages and is taught about the importance of the environment in relation to the role that previous members of the community or household are undertaking. All these activities bring them closer to Nature, and this is no coincidence. For instance, when the child goes to take a bath early in the morning, it is explained to them that the reason they must take a very cold bath down by the river early in the morning is because it's healthy for them to be in Nature in this way.

I noticed that during meals their mothers explain to them the importance of each and every food stuff that they are eating, and how it relates to their own health. Everything is taught or practiced in a very full and holistic way. It is an indigenous system of education but they have also been able to integrate this within their modern system of education. I believe that we can do the same in Africa to great effect.

Has this traditional system of education - sharing indigenous knowledge from one generation to the next - faded in Africa?

Yes I think to a great extent those traditions have faded in Africa, and that is exactly what PORINI and our partners across the African Biodiversity Network are working to revive. There are some good traditions that are taught to the children in Africa but they have been overtaken by western models of education and religion. This is the enduring impact of Africa's colonisation. Unfortunately our current African education system and religious practices both serve to remove us from our roots. Our children are not taught about their traditional culture or how their ancestors lived in accordance with Nature. Instead we are actually taught how to get jobs, and these jobs are in the towns and cities far away from our home communities.

Unfortunately, many of the traditional practices in Africa have been demonised and so we are working to revive these and to restore confidence in Africa's own true identity. Through the work we have been doing - through dialogues and discussions over time, the communities with whom we work are inspired to return to their roots and their traditional practices. They are re-understanding their own identity and individuality. They are having the confidence to be strong and happy in the knowledge of their own rich African story of origin.

Is there one lasting thing that you would share with the rest of Africa following the exchange experience?

I learnt about the importance of food sovereignty. The Amazonian communities in this region are engaging directly with their governments about their food systems. This is quite inspiring and it showed me that in Africa, we must also become more self-reliant and engage with our governments in order to do so. We must become self-reliant in terms of our food systems and self-reliant in terms of our governance structures. We must be cohesive, strong and firm.

Find out more about Experiential Learning processes such as the Colombian Exchange and the Botswana Experience. You can also watch the film Reviving Our Culture, Mapping Our Future, which documents a reciprocal exchange when Colombian elders visited South Africa at the close of 2009.