Young Motswana Doctor invents writing using African symbols
Ernest Moloi BG reporter
Amedical doctor at Princess Marina Hospital Dr. Dithapelo Temalo Medupe has cracked the secret behind African divination bones. Eureka! The African tablets use what is known as binary coding!
Dithapelo’s curiosity in Ditaola was aroused while studying at Stanford University in California.
This is the University whose graduates’ research has bequeathed the world such innovations as Google, YouTube, Instagram as well as HewlettPackard ( HP). Dithapelo took a class on African Art and Practices when she got tired of Premed classes. And as fate would have it, her professor showed a Congolese man with a basket of divination tablets
That is when she started researching to find out if there is any interesting math/ logic in Ditaola ( divination bones) and to her utter shock in 2010 discovered that “our own ditaola use binary coding”!
In an interview with Botswana Guardian at the premises of Green Card Diary when she was printing copies of her book, Dr. Medupe explained that while it was known that ditaola use a binary code, no one in published ditaola literature had realised that it was a “very unique code”.
“My discovery was that the code in Southern African divination was a unique four bit binary code. I realised that if computers use an 8 bit binary code to write words, therefore I could use ditaola to write words in the four bit binary code. “This would allow African bones to ‘ speak’ any language that uses the alphabet. I made the African bones ‘ speak’ by making them spell words,” she says. So excited was Dithapelo that she thought she was going bonkers. She had invented a way to write using African symbols, “an African writing system essentially” – this was huge.
She had cracked the Southern African Divination Code. She discovered that Batswana along with Bakalanga and Shona use a 4 tablet divination system known as Ditaola/ Akata/ Hakata.
Each tablet ( taola) is binary ( two sided) and the diviner can manipulate these just as binary coding is used in computing to represent information to allow humans to communicate with the computer. After this discovery she published an article for the newsletter of the American Journal of Math and Culture to add to new knowledge.
The next step was bringing this innovation to life, and to do this she partnered with a board game company to make a game where people code and decode words using ditaola. However, shipping the game to Botswana from the United States was costly and so she settled to make the game in Botswana, which also proved expensive. She has since partnered with Green Card Diary in Mogoditshane to make booklets where the African bones/ tablets teach children binary coding and about African heritage.
Dithapelo says the word and memory testing game booklet series teaches children binary coding. She says the series will help to introduce children to computing basics at an early age. She is confident that by giving children tablets, phones, laptops and creating interest in the basics of how computers work early will culminate in the creation of “tech creators” in the mould of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg- who can become billionaires. This will mean introducing children to computer science basics such as Binary codes Algorithms and programming. Dithapelo envisages countless possibilities from her innovation. People can write messages, design adverts or write personalised messages as well as do campaign using ditaola code. In educational games, she believes her innovation can be improved by turning it into an App. In fact her game will help modernise traditional African games and has challenged STEM students to create a remote control wire truck line for African children. It opens possibilities for tech- savvy young minds to create Apps for games such as Morabaraba; Diketo, a Mantlwane interactive App and animations for some of our folklore tales – Sananapo, Kgogomodumo, Dimo, or even Mabijo, she says. But above all else, in her quest to promote educational gaming, Dr. Medupe’s greatest wish is to land the singular honour to teach President Dr.
Mokgweetsi Masisi’s family her game.
She is also willing to buy an advert in a newspaper thanking any company that buys 20 or more books for children from any school for supporting African innovation. The booklets are available at Book Centre and can also be ordered through Email: ditorainv@ gmail. com