I am the FUTURE... Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting

Kindezi:  The Kongo Art of Babysitting an Introduction

By Marimba Ani

                In his ground-breaking work Self-Healing Power and Therapy, Dr. Fu-Kiau tells us that muntu (the human being), the “living sun,” is perceived as a “power”, “a phenomenon of perpetual veneration from conception to death” and beyond. Kindezi is about the process of how this “living sun” is nurtured once he/she has been brought into the physical world.  The task of caring for this sacred muntu is the most important responsibility in Afrikan civilization.

                Dr. Fu-Kiau intentionally translates Kindezi as the art of “babysitting” to shock us.  My immediate impression upon reading the subtitle of his book was to question him, respectfully pointing out what seemed to be a mistaken translation- a poor choice of an English term.  Dr. Fu-Kiau’s response was given in his characteristically soft, patient, and considerate manner, which forces one to hang on his every word, convinced that wisdom is about to be bestowed.  He explained that in European culture “babysitting” is thought to be an insignificant activity- a job for the least important people in our society.  We know that  “teenagers, “ who supposedly have nothing important to do, are given this task, and Afrikan women are imported from the Caribbean to care of European-American children as a testament to our alleged racial inferiority.  Yet, according to the authors of this book, Kindezi is the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon a person in Afrikan society.

Fu-Kiau is bringing home the point, in a sharply critical manner, that while childhood is devalued in European society, Afrikan civilization is child-centered.  This becomes clear as we understand human life in the context of spiritual community: a never-ending process of growth, development, transformation and accountability.  The well-being of the community depends on the health and wholeness, the successful maturation of the persons who constitute its membership.

Kindezi, then, is an art that is focused not only on the nurturing of the young within the society, but on growth of the ndezi (the caretaker, one who practices that art of Kindezi).  In other words, as one develops the skills of Kindezi, one develops oneself as well. The ndezi must help the muntu, the “living sun,” to “shine” with the power of a living sun.  Because this process is continuous, the highest Kindezi (experience of service to the community) rests with the elders.  Elders in Afrikan society are those who have become physically more frail, but who are spiritually stronger because they have grown further in personal development and have moved closer to the Ancestors, to the spiritual world and to the “Source of Life” itself (Kalunga). An “elder” is not just an “old person”, but is someone still “mentally and spiritually strong and wise enough to maintain the community united but, above all, to build the moral foundation of the community youth and of generations to come”

The Afrikan art and practice of Kindezi places great importance on the presence of “elders” in the community and their responsibility for the health and wholeness of the group.

By linking the elders to the youth of the society, the concept stress intergenerational continuity, meaningful communication, consistency of value formation and transmission, and mutual responsibility and accountability. This brings us to the contemporary relevance of this book. 

The greatest challenge that faces people of Afrikan descent displaced from our grounding in the Motherland is social fragmentation, disconnectedness and axiological or value confusion.  The spiritual strength of our enslaved Ancestors brought us through the brutal and inhumane disruption of the Maafa.  They did this by finding ways to raise their children and teach them values.  Indeed the only source of resistance available to us was the strength of our spirit- our “Soul-Force” (Leonard Barrett)- which we used to continually recreate community.  This sense of community was always a strong and powerful force on which Afrikan descendants have depended during the major historical periods of our saga in this forced Diaspora.  Since the 1960’s, however, which appeared on the surface to bring what many thought were political and economic gains, our cultural consciousness has deteriorated.  The importance of family has diminished in our minds, and the increased exposure to the destructive forces of American society has successfully eaten away at the fabric of our social institutions. 

Our youth, on whom we depend for the future development, vindication, and strength of our community, are stolen from us by an arsenal of intellectual and cultural poisons.  They are spiritually attacked from before birth with the weapons of an anti-Afrikan enivorment.  We lack tru “elders” because they themselves have not been taken through a process of cultural development.  Those “elders” that we do have are discarded and relegated to the garbage heaps of a capitalist society, which values only that which brings material gain.  Since babies are regarded as burdens that do not add anything materially to the group, they also become peripheral to significant endeavors. “Babysitting,” therefore, is one of the least valued tasks in our cluttered lives, and elders become “useless” embarrassments. We have imitated Euro-American decadence until we no longer recognize basic Afrikan values.  Kindezi provides an answer for a people in crisis, an antidote to chronic “cultural Misorientation” (Kambon).

Dr. Fu-Kiau and his co-author Psychologist Lukondo-Wamba bring us ancient wisdom from our Ancestral home in the form of Kindezi.  The necessity of a focus on the nurturing of young children and the value of our Elder-Teachers is a simple, but not simplistic, truth.  It is the process (dingo-dingo) through which “social patterns” are transferred to “ the community’s youngest members”

Kindezi is a critical ingredient of the anti-viral serum needed to combat our condition of “cultural AIDS”.  It is the basic process of Afrikan socialization. We are talking about the reconstruction of the family in its most fundamental and dynamic sense. 

Kindezi is about using the spiritual, mental, and cultural strength of our elders to contribute to the process of developing generations of culturally healthy youth, who grow to become powerful elders, who then in turn, produce culturally healthy youth, and so on for millennia to come.

While the system of Kindezi is an ancient one, it took on greater importance during the period in which the Bakongo people were fighting against the impending onslaught of European colonial domination.  Women had to be freed to fight alongside of their men, often leading the community in battle themselves.  The art of Kindezi allowed them to do without sacrificing the care and socialization of their children.  Fu-Kiau and Lukondo-Wamba go on to explain that Afrikan women have always been “farmers" spending long hours away from their children.  According to the authors, it was Kindezi that allowed Afrikan women to be “liberated” so that they could meaningfully contribute to the economic welfare of the family.  This, they claim, is where European women got their concept of “women’s lib” because such models were lacking in the patriarchy of their own cultural history.

In brief statement contained in these pages, Fu-Kiau and Lukondo-Wamba team up to present a surprisingly thorough description of the Afrikan socialization process.  The book focuses on the importance of Afrikan Youth.  Socially, elders teach and they give counsel, so they give children a sense of their history and explain to them the meaning of “the path of life” and their importance in the life of the community.  Economically, elders help to contribute to the well-being and vibrance of the community by performing the vital function of Kindezi.  In this way, they remain useful and reciprocally are taken care of with special attention to their physical and emotional well-being.  The authors draw attention to the profound depth of the Afrikan understanding of the human spirit, explaining that because elders in traditionally Afrikan society feel useful they are (or were before Afrikans began abandoning Afrikan ways) less likely to suffer from “psychosomatic” illness and unnecessary bio-physical deterioration.  Meanwhile, more and more Afrikan Elders in the Diaspora are suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, which totally debilitate them and cause them unwillingly to become a burdensome responsibility for the adult members of the family.  Our authentic culture is spiritual and therefore physical destruction. However, the authors have presented us with a model for contemporary cultural healing.

The practical value of this book is immense.  Fu-Kiau and Lukondo-Wamba explain Kindezi in terms of its social, economic, and political significance.  In this regard, this small book has great value in the development of an Afrikan-centered pedagogy.  The approach of teaching through song is discussed at some length, a method that has traditionally spoken to the spirit of Afrikan children, but is only now being acknowledged in European pedagogical theory.  The authors explain how language-the powerful energizing force of Afrika-becomes the effective and affective tool of pedagogy through the art of Kindezi.

The answer to Afrikan cultural reconstruction lies in Sankofa, the reclamation of those processes which become the threads our mended cultural quilt.  Kindezi is a most valuable primer for Afrikan-centered (re) socialization, the healing of the Afrikan Family, and Afrikan culturally reconstruction...

Wale’mbwa  lela  kale’ndi  bakula  ntoko  za  moyo  ngatu  za  buta  mu  zola  ko

“Whoever never babysat”, says a Kongo proverb, “will never understand the beauty of life nor that of parenting with love.”