About (Kuhusu)

Project Background

Oral tradition remains a critical primary source for scholars of African history and linguistics. Yet few bodies of oral sources are accessible, especially those collected at different time periods, allowing for comparative analysis across similar linguistic communities, such as the Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library. Regions like the Mara in Tanzania, without ancient kingdoms, a common local language or a heavy colonial presence, have been particularly under-documented. However, it is these factors that make the Mara Region particularly interesting to scholars. The linguistic diversity of the region, representing some 16 East Nyanza Bantu languages, Temi, Luo and Datooga, demonstrates both recent language shifts as well as long term patterns of interaction and movement across linguistic boundaries. Closely connected acephalous societies present a case study in shifting forms of leadership around gender, age and expertise. A particular focus of Jan Bender Shetler’s scholarship was the place-based and environmental aspects of cultural memory as it changes over time. In addition, communities that have relied on oral tradition to preserve cultural memory fear that this heritage will die as elders who speak local languages fluently and pass on oral narratives learned from their grandparents die. Repatriating the original interviews in the original languages to the Mara Region in an accessible and enduring form was the impetus for creating a digital library of these interviews and other related Mara sources.

Motivated by requests from scholars and Mara citizens for access to her interviews, Bender Shetler began the process of creating the Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library to move her extensive research archive based on more than 300 interviews into digital form in 2009. These materials include mini-cassette audio tapes and film photographs from 1995-6 interviews, VCR tapes and digital photographs from 2003 interviews, DVDs from 2007 interviews and digital audio and photographs from 2010 interviews, in addition, other materials from Mara historians including reel to reel music tapes, cassette tapes, hand drawn maps, historical manuscripts, family histories, essays, dictionaries and GPS points for historical sites overlaid on topographic maps, that will be added in time. With the support of Goshen College grants, student assistants have been transcribing, digitizing and creating a website with a limited sample of the material since 2002. The story of that work was presented at an African Studies Association Conference and published as a chapter on the ethical issues surrounding the repatriation of oral sources in an open source publication, Searching for Sharing: Heritage and Multimedia in Africa, in 2017.

A National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2021 allowed for a partnership with the Matrix Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Michigan State University to create the platform for housing the Mara documents that is consistently upgraded and serviced for accessibility and searchability on the Africa Online Digital Library. The dual language, English and Swahili interface allows for searchability by various audiences. Once Shetler’s materials have been added to the collection, supplementary material will be included based on available resources, their relevance to long-term Mara history and culture, and the material’s relationship to Bender Shetler’s core collection.

Each interview includes associated audio, photographs, transcripts, field notes, video and information on the informant and the context of the interview. The interview questions were broad ranging and speak to a variety of themes such as Cultural Memory, Democracy and Diversity, Environment and Climate Change, Gender and Livelihoods, and Linguistic and Cultural Patterns that are indicated for each interview. The interviews took place in all seven districts of the Mara Region, though primarily in the Serengeti district, and can be searched by district and village name, ethnic group, language or informant’s name. A few interviews took place in the Loliondo district of Arusha Region among Temi speakers who are claimed as ancestors of some Mara communities. Interviews in the Shirati, Roriya District among Luo and Suba speakers often make reference to events and connections in western Kenya. Project staff are open to ideas of what should be included, or not, and how to make the MCHDL more accessible to a wider audience, including secondary schools in the Mara Region.