Tullum

This chapter contributes to the process of knowledge recreation by initiating a process of “retrieving” wisdom, tullum from the past, which I argue has possibilities for development. It entails the retrieval of living wisdom that resides with women and not a relic located in a museum. This living wisdom has been nurtured and guarded by African women, has been used to mitigate crisis and to support everyday living. It is wisdom that has survived all forms of domination, whether patriarchal or paternalism. It has lived through colonialism with its imperialist machinations. It has defied obliteration and annihilation because it was born out of the surviving and creative energies of a determined group of people; Gur women. This same determination should guide Africa’s efforts to undermine the forces of globalization and imperialism as exhibited in present day development. The defining tools of survival and creativity, as argued, hold the key for accomplishing the project of rebirth. The sophistications of new age colonialism, Nkrumah called it neo-colonialism, requires tools that are inaccessible to the colonizer. These tools should defy any form of piracy. The options available can only lie in the African past in the present; in our knowledge systems. They rest in condemned sites as open secrets because nobody cares to look and, exist in oblivion because of the particular types of agencies required for bearing them.  It is not a mere reclamation of lost knowledge but a project of re/valorizing diminished and condemned knowledges for the purposes of at once making meaning of African/women’s identifies and reshaping our futures. I draw from critical cultural tools of conceptual analysis, interrogative interactionism, collective memory sharing and experiential learning. The conceptual analysis draws from the works of Nkrumah, McFadden, Oyewumi and Odora Hoppers, among others. It entails various conceptual borrowings to facilitate the critical discussions of ideas and experiences with the view to finding the language and context for the discussions. Interrogative interactionism entails the use of informal interactive situations as sites for probing and learning from African systems. Collective memory sharing allows women to reflect on their individual experiences and reconstruct them as a group with the view to building a complete story. The experiential learning entails personal reflections from learning at the feet of my forebears (mother and fathers) and as a “native” speaker. It has been my own way of self-identification. The combined use of these strategies presented surprise, revelations and contestations hardly reflected in this writing.