“One generation’s home is another generation’s diaspora.” These words, spoken by Prof Zulfikar Hirji to a packed audience at the Ukumbi Mdogo conference hall of the Kenya Cultural Centre, aptly captured one of the running themes that dominated discussions at this year’s Macondo Literary Festival.

Forced displacements are as old as mankind, a consequence of wars for access to resources but also the desire for dominion over other communities and ideological conflicts. Resulting crises have defined humanity through the ages.

Hirji, an associate professor in anthropology at York University in Toronto, Canada, made his eloquent contribution on the final day of the festival in a panel discussion on the topic, “Tides and transitions: navigating history.” He was joined by renowned authors M.G. Vassanji (born in Nairobi) from Canada and Shubnum Khan from South Africa, as well as Kenyan academic Mshai Mwangola, in a session moderated by Godwin Siundu.

But this was only one panel at which the theme of forced migrations found its way into the discourse. One after another, the sessions at Macondo could not help but veer into the subjects of colonialism and slavery. These, in turn, led to discussions of the ways in which oppression manifests and arising expressions of protest.

Stateless

Speaking at a different panel session on “Writing the self,” Canadian author Janika Oza explained how she had used the history of her own family to write her monumental novel, A History of Burning. The novel narrates a story of migration across four continents. It begins in India, where British exploitation impoverished millions of people, rendering them desperate victims of migration through sheer trickery and force. Not knowing their eventual destinations, many of these hapless Indians found themselves dumped in East Africa to work in the construction of the Uganda Railway, as it was then known.

Later, some of the descendants of those pioneering Indians found themselves on the move once again, having been expelled by the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada. India, their home of origin, refused to take them back. Stateless, they fled to Europe, with some eventually finding their way to North America.

But forced migration isn’t peculiar to Asians. Black Africans have perhaps borne the brunt of European (and Arab) imperialism more than any other group. The inescapable consequences of forced migration, a hallmark of such conquests, have taken a heavy toll on Africa and the diaspora that continues to be felt in the twenty-first century. Scattered across the seas through the trans-Atlantic slave trade in West Africa and the Arab slave trade in East Africa, Africans were for centuries a people continually on the move. History texts have largely failed to provide context for the Bantu, Nilotic and other migrations across the African continent, as though entire peoples simply woke up one morning and decided to begin moving southwards, westwards and eastwards.

Gaps in history

It is left to authors to fill in the gaps from the rich recesses of their imagination in semi-fictionalised accounts, and hopefully prompt history and social science researchers in universities to dig deeper. It is a task that calls for authors to encourage communities to look to the sea for answers—a sea that was the source of so much pain in times past. In the words of Mwangola, “We have to be brave and claim the past, because it is all that we have.”

One would want to dream of a world where there is harmony between nations and communities, with the disputes of the past tucked away and those that may arise in our day resolved through negotiations, mediation, and the precepts of international law. But alas, that remains a pipedream: every conflict spawns new migrations and new refugees, some of whom will never return to their former homes. From Ukraine to Palestine and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Somalia, the truth that mankind never learns from history stares us in the face.

These forced migrations are not just between states, but also within countries. Kenyans are only too familiar with the regular internal displacements that ritually take place at every election cycle, with communities suddenly pointing fingers at neighbours who somehow, overnight, transform into enemies. The situation is possibly worse in Southern Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and numerous other countries across Africa where peace is a mere pause between recurring wars that displace people both within and outside these countries’ borders.

Just as Pirbhai in Oza’s A History of Burning jumped at the first opportunity to get away from the problems at home only to later discover he had been deceived, thousands of young girls from East Africa find their way to the Middle East every year, the prospect of finding meaningful work too tempting to turn down. Many of them return home crying, others in caskets, even as more prepare to leave for the Middle East.

Kidnapped

The constant movement of populations from one generation to the next—particularly forced migrations—further forces a rethink of the concept of “home”. Is home the place we came from centuries ago, or where parents live with their children, or perhaps where the grandparents are? Can those in the African diaspora claim those places as their homes, places far away from the shores of Africa where their forefathers were brutally kidnapped from their communities? Do rural homes in Siaya, Nyeri, Kajiado or Kitui qualify to be called home, even when only a few generations of our ancestors have lived there? Just as each author at Macondo had their own idea of what “home” meant to them, it is incumbent upon readers to think deeply about their “home” as against a mere “house”.

The stories of injustices and forced migrations from hundreds of years ago, running through the colonial and post-independence periods, can easily lead to despondency. “My question is very simple,” I told Oza at the end of the panel session on “Writing the self” as the floor was opened to the plenary. “Is there hope for the oppressed?”

“Absolutely,” responded Oza. “There are so many forms of resistance. Yes, there are oppressed people the world over, but there is a tenderness among us, and there is community among us, and those are the things that bring me hope. That sort of solidarity among us, being able to connect and share our stories, gives me a feeling of strength, which gives me hope.”

Isaac Mwangi is Managing Editor of eKitabu. Email: isaac.mwangi@ekitabu.com