Reclaiming the Classroom - Part 1

Image: ChatGBT

The sun poured through the louvered windows of Professor Luyando’s classroom at Mukuni National University, Zambia, casting golden light on the woven mats that lined the back wall—gifts from elders who still read the soil like scripture and knew the sky’s moods by heart.

“Today,” Luyando began, her voice calm but resolute, “we are not just learning. We are reclaiming.”
The students leaned in—future healers (doctors and nurses), teachers, and various research scientists.   This was no ordinary course. It was The Integration Studio, a new curriculum initiative that aimed to disrupt the colonial foundation of African education by fusing ancestral knowledge with contemporary learning.

“For too long,” she continued, “we’ve sat in classrooms shaped by people who did not believe our grandmothers could think.”
A ripple of silence swept the room. Her words struck deep—not in anger, but in recognition.
Luyando gestured toward the holo-screen behind her. On the left appeared a scanned page from a 1938 biology textbook, which labeled African medicine as “primitive herbology.” On the right, a molecular diagram: the chemical breakdown of mutondo bark—still used in rural Zambia to treat infections, and now under patent in Europe.

“You see?” she said, eyes scanning the room. “What was once mocked is now monetized. What our people knew, others now profit from.”

At the back of the class, Kojo raised his hand. “Professor, are we saying our local knowledge is equal to Western science?”

Luyando nodded, then paced slowly. “Equal? No. It’s older. It’s not a supplement—it’s a foundation. We are not replacing Newton or Pasteur. We are standing beside them—with our own.”

She turned and pointed out the window. Beyond the lecture hall, on university land, was an experimental garden planted in patterns passed down through song, not spreadsheets. Rows of millet and enset እንሰት grew side by side, their positions chosen not by crop rotation models, but by the wisdom of elders who listened to the land.

“What if,” she asked the class, “a child could grow up learning the Pythagorean theorem and how to read the stars to know when rain will fall? What if your degree included the study of tenadam,(ጤና ኣዳም) not just antibiotics?”

Minds stirred. Heads nodded. Something ancient and urgent was waking up.

Outside, the wind picked up, whispering in the language of trees and old stories. The future, it seemed, wasn’t something to import. It had always been here—rooted, breathing, alive—waiting for its children to remember.