Promoting peace by rock art

If rock art provides a tantalising window into the past, a community on the islands of Lake Victoria is taking the art a notch higher in an effort to promote peace and preserve a vanishing African heritage.

Largely drawn by women, the most magnificent rock art is found on Mfang’ano Island, whose name derives from the Suba language word

for “reconciliation”.

“In times of war and trouble, people would come to the painted caves to ask the ancestors to bring peace,” says Jack Obonyo, founder and curator of the Abasuba Community Peace Museum.

The museum preserves this prehistoric art in order to hopefully inspire contemporary artists.
Though not as widely appreciated as images from northern and southern Africa, Kenya has a rich collection of images, which the Trust for African Rock Art (Tara) and the Abasuba Peace Museum are working to make accessible to the wider public.

Tara’s mission is to create greater global awareness of the importance and endangered state of African rock art.
It was founded in 1996 by photographer David Coulson under the patronage of the renowned archaeologist Mary Leakey, and author/conservationist Laurens van der Post.

With the support of Nobel Peace Prize laureates Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan, the trust has documented rock art in 16 African countries and digitised 50,000 images, 10,000 of which are already available online.

“Over one million people have visited Tara’s exhibitions in 12 countries,” says Ms Gloria Borona, the Tara manager for Community Projects and Outreach.

Abasuba Peace Museum was established in 2000 by Jack Obonyo.
In collaboration with Tara and the National Museums of Kenya, the museum works to promote and protect cultural and natural heritage.

Unesco book

The museum is based among the Abasuba ethnic community, whose language is now listed in the Unesco’s Red Book of Endangered

Languages (2003).

The centrepiece of the museum is the rock art at the Kwitone and Mawanga sites on the Mfang’ano Island.
The sites are managed by the community through the local clan system.

“Proceeds from entry fees are invested in community development interventions such as education, and health as agreed between community members,” says Mr Obonyo.

While much of African rock art was created in exposed places and couldn’t stand the text of time due to vagaries of nature, the Suba art has survived because it was drawn in caves.

“Much of the Suba art is intact. It dates between 1,000- 4,000 years,” says Ms Borona.
The need to preserve the art has been echoed across the African continent.

“The rock art of Africa makes up one of the oldest and most extensive records on earth of human thought.
It shows the very emergence of the human imagination.

It is a priceless treasure. And it is irreplaceable,” says Mr Annan, a former UN secretary-general.
In Kenya, Mr Obonyo is happy the community feels that they are central to this peace project.

“The Abasuba embraced the art as part of their own ancient heritage when they settled in the area around 200 years ago,” says Ms Borona.
The museum and its rock arts project are “a true testament to heritage making economic sense of the communities living

around the sites,” says Ms Borona.