"We are Indigenous and We Want to Be Literate in Our Own Language". The Ogiek of Mariashoni: A Good Example of How a Literacy Project with the Best Premises Can Be a Failure

The Ogiek of Mariashoni living in the Mau Forest of Kenya are a group of hunters and gatherers, who in the last 30 years have been facing a progressive process of habitat and climate change which obliged them to settle down and leave their semi-nomadic way of life. The major characteristic of the Ogiek has always been a very high degree of adapt- ability to their social and environmental context, which allowed them to develop what we can now call a fluid identity. Recently they have come into contact with new social (and economic) movements promoted and supported by national and international NGOs working in the field of human rights and for the safeguard of indigenous peoples, which gave them the pos- sibility to enter the international circuit of aid for cooperation and development. In a socio-linguistic perspective one of the most interesting aspects of this new situation is the speakers’ changed attitude towards their own language and its promotion. This paper contains an accurate description of a project aimed at the definition of a good orthographic system for the Ogiek language and the production of didactic materials for primary schools. The project, which ended up as a failure due to the lack of par- ticipation and funding from the local Kenyan official institutions, was promoted by the University of Trieste in the framework of the ATrA project.