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We must remember our masters of knowledge, stop feigning ignorance

By Barrack Muluka

There was once a ragtag of a bible in my mother tongue, which my grandfather had discarded for a crispier copy.

The book comprised only of parts of The New Testament, most of the Gospel of Matthew and Revelations having got torn and lost, with many years of use, followed by more years of neglect.

The book became one of my valued childhood treasures. I still have this little gem, from the 1960s, as well as a little notebook that my grandfather kept, with entries from 1928 to 1956. I have always wondered how he could have used one notebook for such a long time. But I digress.

I was just getting grip of the magic of the written word, when I discovered my ragtag bible. I was fascinated by the discovery of the magic of reading.

Looking at a book and it’s talking to you! My two favourite passages were where Nicodemus, the guru of the Jewish law, pays Jesus a night visit. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher sent to us from God, for nobody can do the kind of things that you do if God is not with him.” For whatever reason, I read and reread this passage dozens of time.

I do not go back there as often as I used to. But the magic remains.

With hindsight, I see Nicodemus a professor of law in his time.

He could be the equivalent of a professor in any one of our universities today. Fancy Prof Githu Muigai going to a carpenter boy by night to consult him about the law. We are not told what happened to Nicodemus, ultimately. He fizzles out of this narrative as it deepens into theology.   

Then there was the passage about Mary Magdalene returning to the Lord’s tomb to find the stone rolled away, the tomb empty and a young man who asked her why she was looking for the living among the dead. “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?”

Add to these the story of the two men walking to Emmaus, after the crucifixion of Jesus. I cannot tell you how many times I read these passages. In adulthood, I am beholden to the Bible in a trinity of its own kind.

There is the primacy of the message, of course. But one must confess the entertainment value of some of the narratives. Then, for us who love poetry, there is the sheer richness of prosody. The Prophet Isaiah knocks you breathless with rhyme, rhythm, imagery and meaning.

These biblical passages fly crisply through time and space to find a meeting point with the narratives of George Orwell, whom I count among my topmost favourites.

The ultimate literary virtuoso is the master of form and content. That is where the people who wrote the biblical books of Isaiah, the Psalms, the story of Job, Amos, Hosea and indeed many others, come in. 

Orwell is in his element when he says in Nineteen-Eighty-Four, “You sold me under the chestnut tree, I sold you under the chestnut tree. Under the chestnut, you sold me and I sold you.”

The knowledge quotient in all of these passages is revealing. Nicodemus, the seasoned great lawyer, recognises his knowledge gap. He must seek intervention from the   youthful carpenter at night.

Mary Magdalene does not know that she is looking for the living among the dead. The revelation excites her and she dashes off to tell Peter and the disciples. Cleopa does not know that he is walking with the resurrected Lord to Emmaus.

The discovery jolts him to abandon his meal and dash to Jerusalem to tell Peter and the disciples. 

The lowest common factor among the people in these dramas is their responsiveness to knowledge and their quest to narrow the knowledge gap. This is starkly different from the players in Orwell’s Animal Farm, where so many years after the animal revolution has taken place, ignorance thrives with abandon.

Allow me to quote generously, “Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by.

A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs. 

“Muriel was dead; Bluebell, Jessie, and Pincher were dead. Jones too was dead–he had died in an inebriates’ home in another part of the country. Snowball was forgotten.

Boxer was forgotten, except by the few who had known him. Clover was an old stout mare now, stiff in the joints and with a tendency to rheumy eyes.

“She was two years past the retiring age, but in fact no animal had ever actually retired.

The talk of setting aside a corner of the pasture for superannuated animals had long since been dropped. Napoleon was now a mature boar of twenty-four stone.

Squealer was so fat that he could with difficulty see out of his eyes.  “Only old Benjamin was much the same as ever, except for being a little greyer about the muzzle, and, since Boxer’s death, more morose and taciturn than ever.

“There were many more creatures on the farm now, though the increase was not so great as had been expected in earlier years. Many animals had been born to whom the Rebellion was only a dim tradition, passed on by word of mouth, and others had been bought who had never heard mention of such a thing before their arrival.”

Then comes the clincher, “Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer – except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.

“As for the others, their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been. They were generally hungry, they slept on straw, they drank from the pool, they laboured in the fields; in winter they were troubled by the cold, and in summer by the flies. Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember.”

Do you know or remember?

The writer is a publishing editor and National Director of Communications at Raila for President Secretariat

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