Untitled - witz cultural

348HYPERTEXT 3.0 signs. The narrator explains that the chief "bears proud marks on his forehead,and on his legs," and although "the stranger" sees only scars, thesemarks "distinguish him," signifying his individuality and status. In addition,he occasionally "bears other signs that are less permanent, painted for particularrituals and festivities. He can even invent signs that will immediatelybe understood by his people as his own. Indeed, these signs help to communicatesacred messages among the people" (40).The gap between Shona and British attitudes toward language producesconfusion and comedy when a well-meaning Anglican priest tries to convertKaguvi, one of the leaders of the Chimurenga, to Christianity. Yvonne Verabrilliantly dramatizes a clash of cultures in which two sincere, believing individuals misconceive each other's positions. Kaguvi, whom Vera presents as theembodiment of oral culture, finds the notion that a printed book could containdivinity intensely problematic, in part because for him, like Socrates, writingseparates the words ofthe speaker from his or her presence. Since he doesnot come from a print culture, the kind of multiplicity characteristic of a bookpuzzles him, and as he points out to the Christian, his is a "strange" god who"is inside your book, but he is also in many booksl' In contrast, to this bookbounddivinity, he explains: "My god lives up above. He is a pool of water inthe sky. My god is a rain-giver. I approach my god through my ancestors andmy mudzimu. I brew beer for my god to praise him, and I dance. My mudzimuis always with me, and I pay tribute to my protective spirit" (105).13In Charles Mungoshi's Waitingfor the Rain, which is set half a centuryafter Nehanda, another wise old man rejects the white man's informationtechnology. Mungoshi, who refuses to sentimentalize either modem or traditionalways, creates complex portraits of the gap between generations as thesecond Chimurenga, or war of liberation, begins. When the young would-berevolutionaries approach the Old Man in hopes that he will tell them what herecalls from the first uprising against British colonial oppression, he refusesto pass on his knowledge, in part because they badly misread his character,in part because he feels their acceptance of Western ways dooms them fromthe start. Mungoshi presents the Old Man's refusal as fundamentally relatedto his rejection of modern information technologies, which he sees as inhuman,though he first presents this rejection as a matter of moral values. Becausethe young men made the mistake of telling him that they would putwhat he tells them in a book, the publication of which might make him "richand famous," he first focuses on that, since he claims that "by the way he saidit to me it seems that's all he is interested in. Riches and fame. As if that were