The African Decor Edit

I have this unnecessary habit of worrying about things that other people don’t even care about.  For almost 10 years now, I have worried about is the erosion of our culture (mainly as Baganda but generally as Africans). 

Our cultures, as Africans have been progressively eroded ever since the white man touched down.  Some claim it was a deliberate plan by our colonisers to make it easier to subjugate us. May be.  

For instance, the white man managed to convince us that our ways of believing in a higher being were demonic.  Waving the bible we were sold the fact that only their way of belief is appropriate.  In Buganda, our traditional architecture, the style of houses that was used by our ancestors for decades was relegated to being shrines, often associated with witchcraft and human sacrifices.  Most people in Buganda now who see a round grass thatched house will most probably conclude that it is a shrine.

Our unique traditionally made cloth from a bark of tree (olubugo) is thought be devilish, yet our ancestors dressed up in the same for many centuries.  The situation has been made worse by pastors and uninformed Christians who misinform others.  If you dressed in a lubugo and tried to enter a church, I am sure you will be thrown out or castigated for bringing Satan to the church.  But how can something created beautifully by a work of art from a tree be satanic?

As Baganda, our architecture and ways of practicing faith are now well and truly buried. I am bothered that the language and practices related to getting married are slowly dying.  I always joke that if I live another 30 years, I will be one of the few consultants on speaking and writing Luganda left in this country.  It may well sound exaggerated but we are not very far from that catastrophe 

That is why I am so happy to see that my cousin Nasozi Kakembo, chose to pikc up a camera and a pen to document the African art that still exists.  Her book, the African Décor Edit has invaluable information on decoration and designs of interior spaces, furniture etc with original traditional African materials.  It is an inspiring account of African décor, its origins and meanings.