By Amanda Hawker
Remember the stories our parents and grandparents used to tell us when
we were little; stories of Anansi the spider, majestic lions and, short-tempered
baboons, wise old tortoise and the marvellous exploits of jackal and wolf? Am I
the only person scouring the internet for beautiful bedtime stories with an
African theme that I can tell my child?
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| The innovator behind AfroTalez, Elizabeth Kperrun |
For centuries, our forefathers preserved our
personal history through storytelling. Ours is an oral history, that tells our
side of the story of Africa and is rarely found in the books you find in the
library. With the evolution of our society and frequent use of technology to
communicate, it seems only fitting that there should be a platform to share the
stories we heard as children, with our very own children.
The
AfroTalez app is designed for children between the ages of 2 and 10. The
narrator is a character named Aunt Liz, who tells the story as it unfolds on
the cell-phone screen in colourful animation. There are also quizzes on object
recognition and counting throughout the app. With the help of her older
relatives, Elizabeth has collected stories from her people, the Tiv, an ethnic
group of 2 - 4 million people living on both sides of the Benue people in southeast
Nigeria and northwest Cameroon. Eventually, Elizabeth hopes to include folk
tales from other parts of Nigeria in various local languages.
Elizabeth
Kperrun believes that there is a place in this world for technology and
tradition. Her mission is to help people realise this by leading the way in
blending the two to keep African culture alive.
AfroTalez
is available for Android users and can be downloaded for free from the Google
Play store. I have already downloaded it for my family and my little one loves
it. So far, AfroTalez has more than 50,000 users and the second episode is now
in production.
I,
for one, can’t wait!