The past weekend I found myself during the Botswana 50 years of independence celebrations drawn to words.
I asked myself what did influential people say?
What did some of the trail brazers say?
I think words worth saying should be celebrated.
And these words by the first president of Botswana Sir Seretse Khama to me were amongst those worth celebrating; I would buy a T-shirt with these words
“It should now be our intention to try to retrieve what we can of our past. We should write our own history books to prove that we did have a past, and that it was a past that was just as worth writing and learning about as any other. We must do this for the simple reason that a nation without a past is a lost nation, and a people without a past is a people without a soul.” Seretse Khama
It is said these words were part of a speech Sir Seretse Khama spoke gave at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, 1970.
I don’t know the context under which these were spoken but all I know even after many years these words settle perfectly in my heart.
These words are a profound truth; a proposal, perhaps even a gospel of some sort demanding our deepest thinking.
And here are some of the questions we should ask ourselves while pondering on them;
What are we retrieving from our past?
Are we writing our own history books?
Do we know the worth of our stories?
Are we ashamed of our stories?
Are we aware that our stories are lessons?
Are we aware that our stories are just worth writing and learning about as any other?
So you were poor and lived in mud houses, so you walked to schools barefooted.
So there was no money to send you to tertiary schools and you had to drop out and herd cows.
But that past of yours carries the opportunity for you to write great stories.
Sir Seretse Khama’s words call us to dive deep into our past however ugly it may be, retrieve the good and capture its lessons.
These words call us to own our stories, to write them in order to prove we have a past.
In our sorry past there is an opportunity- an opportunity to write books and opportunity to teach others something.
These words more than any quote or book I have ever read, drive my passion for writing the most.
I turn to them again and again to remind myself that I need to write to prove that I have a past.
By the way of penning our stories we prove that we existed on this earth.
Are we doing enough when it comes to writing our own books in Botswana?
Where are our books in bookshops, libraries, where are our books in our schools?
Where are our books in amazon?
But what preserves nations, what preserves the history of the nation more than its books?
Franklin said it well that if you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead you ought to be writing something worth reading.
Are we writing something worth reading?
I struggle to find books written by our very own yet I know there is so much wisdom in our country.
Our culture is rich, our current lives too carry their own depths but we as Batswana are not writing enough of our own books.
I believe this is one of those areas in which we need to grow as a country.
I want to read books and blogs that I can identify with.