Kamba Proverbs from Eastern Kenya

JEREMIAH M. KITUNDA


Thank you, Professor Kitunda, for taking the time to answer some questions about your new book Kamba Proverbs from Eastern Kenya. Can you please begin by providing a brief overview of your book?

Kamba Proverbs from Eastern Kenya contains a selection of 2000 proverbs out of 7000 proverbs that I collected over a long period of time. The proverbs touch on many subjects ranging from environmental history to cultural history of the Kamba people of East Africa. Beyond a mere assemblage of 2000 proverbs, the book examines the history of each proverb within its initial cultural and environmental settings. Centrally the book argues that history of proverbs can be recovered using content analysis or phraseology of a given proverb. Moreover, proverbs are windows into the past, for they unveil information about the past that documented sources cannot. 

Another important argument in the book is that proverbs are not relics of the past.  As the book demonstrates, some proverbs are older than others. Like the people who create them, proverbs are born, grow into popular catchphrases, and with dramatic changes in technology and society itself, some die to be replaced by new ones emerging out of the new social, political, environmental, and technological circumstances of each generation. This observation runs contrary to the Western view that proverb-creation dies with urbanization and modernity. The book demonstrates that proverb-creation is an on-going process. Modernity tends to promote the creation of new proverbs instead of killing the process.

Kamba Proverbs from Eastern Kenya

JEREMIAH M. KITUNDA


460pp
£75.00 / $99.00,
9781847012807
November 2021
Hardback
Eastern Africa Series
James Currey

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Jeremiah M. Kitunda is Professor of History, Appalachian State University; he was previously Lecturer, University of Nairobi, Kenya and a visiting scholar, University of Oregon (Eugene).