Sharing Knowledge

There’s a lot of attention focused on indigenous knowledge, on finding it, on accessing it, and on using it to expand what I call our ‘formal, school-based’ knowledge. 

We were cleaning the river at Vukani with the usual wonderful mix of local children, local citizens and Rhodes students when a little boy (I’ll call him Sizwe) ran up to me, caught me by the hand, walked me to the bush pictured below and pointed to the grey leaves.

“Gogo, gogo, what is this plant? Is it good or bad?”

“I don’t know – but that girl over there with the white hair (I pointed to Kaye*, one of the Rhodes students, unmistakeable with her blonde hair), she knows about plants like this. Go and ask her.”

So, off he went and returned, pulling Kaye by the hand; then he repeated his question.

Kaye told him the name of the plant, both Latin and local; explained that it was an ‘alien’, and what that meant; that it was ‘invasive’ and what that meant. She pulled off one of the thorny fruits and showed him how they hooked in the coats of goats, cows and dogs and were carried to new places to grow again. And they agreed that they should try to pull it up and put it into the skip.

I watched his face as she told him – he hung on every word, new questions forming as she spoke.

When she’d finished answering his questions, I pointed to the different, greener leaves growing through the grey shrub. “Kaye, what’s that?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Oh, my mother gives me when I’m sick,” Sizwe said.

Kaye: “Do you just eat it? The leaves? The fruit? The whole plant?”

Sizwe: “No” (and his eyes got big in surprise). “Take leaves. Put in hot water.”

Kaye: “And then?”

Sizwe: “Then drink.”

Kaye: “Does it taste nice?”

Sizwe’s face said it all, and a shudder ran from head to toe. “No!”

Kaye: “Does it work? Do you feel better afterwards?”

Sizwe hesitated, then …. “Yes.”

Kaye: “How often must you drink it?”

And so the conversation continued; Kaye’s entire attention on his every word; Sizwe looking at her carefully to make sure she understood what he was trying to explain.

Then they got up, and hand in hand, returned to the task of pulling the muck out of the river, each knowing more than they had a few minutes earlier, and having established a bond of finding out together.

I was left with the image of two faces looking intently at each other over a bush on the banks of a river as they listened to each other with eyes, ears and hearts. I walked back to my muck-pulling task, feeling privileged to have witnessed an exchange of knowledge that created equals.

[* not her real name]