History tells your story

complain that history as a subject is dull. They are not alone because even some teachers resent it too. I recall a conversation that I had with a history teacher a year or two ago.
She found teaching the same stuff over and over again in the same way getting less and less exciting. She said Hitler will always be Hitler. I empathised with her but what she said gave me a lot of homework as I explored ways that can be employed to teach the same history differently.
History informs us of the past and shapes the present and determines the future. From history we learn from the mistakes of our forefathers and know how to avoid falling into the same trap. It tells the story of how our forefathers handled challenges, adversity and celebrated happy events. This should therefore teach us to put all this into our context to shape the present and guide the future.
It is against this background that I believe that history should be taught not as simple narration but in ways that unpack the values and norms that help the present generation to better today and excel tomorrow.
Let me leave that to our education experts to look into. It is from history that an individual or a people get to understand and establish his/her/its true identity.
Dear reader, I think you recall the times when the Black Americans were searching for their roots in Africa. They really wanted to know and understand that part of them that makes them who they are.
Allow me to digress a bit and say I am a proud African and a proud Zimbabwean who believes that my identity is more than the challenges that bedevil us.
My desire is to transform the landscape of Africa’s mindset of herself and also those of others who look at us through their own lenses of perception so we can have a better Africa. I am particularly fascinated by history because it is very pregnant with meaning and is multi-dimensional. It defines a people and gives insight into a people’s life. I think understanding history also makes one compassionate as you appreciate the background and dynamics that influence disposition of a person.
Currently in my family, the Mandimika family, we have an uncle and a brother working on the family tree and I wish to join them so I can write our story.
I want to interrogate the family values, traditions and norms to see how that has shaped the way we are and how we can build on that moving forward.
History is important. If we go to the Bible in Genesis 50:25 we see Joseph making the sons of Israel swear that when God takes them out of Egypt they must carry his bones with them. Why bones you may ask? As one preacher said Joseph’s bones had a history that had to be told. In the history of Zimbabwe we have the story of Mbuya Nehanda that also alludes to bones.
It is said that before her death she told the people that “mabhonzo angu achamuka” (my bones will arise).
It is widely believed that the war of liberation was the fulfilment of the words of the matriarch. If I am to go back to the Bible we see God telling the children of Israel to teach and tell their story of how he took them out of Egypt to the Promised Land.
This story is told in detail so many times in the Bible so it could become an integral part of each generation.
God knew that knowing the history would help the children of Israel to appreciate their identity and to be a committed and faithful people. Everyday we make and write our own history. This means it is an account of the good and the bad that we do.
Some people will be remembered for what they have done, others will fade away into oblivion. The things that are remembered most will be those things that touch and make a difference to the lives of others.
Write your history today, the things that people should remember you for. Do not be a Methuselah and others mentioned in the Bible that are known as having lived and died.
Always think as a child of God, a citizen or a family member what kind of history are you writing? If it were read after you are gone what lessons will the next generation learn from it?