AFRICA: AN INVADED LAND

However, Africa was not to remain isolated from the rest of the world for long. I will tell you of how it all started. The Arabs were trading on the East African coasts; the Portuguese with their dhows were reaching all over via sea routes. Europe had grown and so had other countries that are well known as the West. They had progressed in a certain way because in their environment they needed the inventions. Their land could be covered by snow.

Their land was a stretch of flat land with access to so many water masses and navigable rivers. Their populations had grown so fast that people were already competing for survival. Their history was so critical that each person struggled to scale the heights. They had moved from small villages to absolute monarchies, and then to constitutional feudal states. The challenges they faced forced them to develop in ideology as in technology. The different city-states, kingdoms and regions were easily accessible to each other. The proximity and accessibility between different feudal states facilitated their learning from each other. The subject-master outlook in those lands encouraged a capitalistic worldview that made them strive even when striving was not needed. They had this insatiable desire to own and to be like the lords or the royals.

            In comparison: Africa was hidden from the rest. It had rivers that were not very navigable; it had so many deserts with the Sahara claiming supremacy. It had dense forests, many wild animals both dangerous and humble. It had no big flat lands- its topography was marked by highlands and lowlands, valleys and gullies. Communication with one another was not easy in this vast continent. People lived in small cells and knew little about the rest of the world except for the stories that some who had wandered off and luckily reached others narrated. It is because of this reason that many African tribes knew of themselves as the only existing people in the world. They knew they were the only ones created by God and the world was all theirs. The world around them was of abundance and as such, they cared less about anything else except celebrating their being. However, as they increased and migrated to places, they started to meet others.

Their coming: It is at the coasts that strange people started appearing. The East African coast saw the Arabs coming in and later the Portuguese. The first strange people to come came as adventurers or people out to explore. Some were on some wild chase for treasure following some mythical stories. Others were looking for routes to some particular places while others just wanted to see what lay beyond the water masses. Irrespective of their motivation, some found themselves in a land beyond the seas. They went and told others about the land and its attributes and more came. When they came they met these very social people who were in every way interested in nature. Their interest in nature made them never to destroy anything unless they were satisfied that it was a real danger to their existence. They welcomed these creatures that looked like them in form but very different in colour, what they did and what they owned. These white people had guns, they travelled on the wheel, they had cigarettes, they had trousers and shirt, they had the engine powered ships, and they could make iron sheets among many other commodities that can be formed depending on the malleability and the ductility of available metals and fibre.

 After seeing you, this people had no option but to be interested in Africa. The why they were interested in you, dear Africa, is very simple. Your forests were pregnant with the powerful mahoganies and Elgon teaks. The white man needed these as a source of power. Africa, no mineral was lacking from your belly. You were full with the hard sought gold, diamonds, ivory, uranium, silver and copper among the many others. Your tropical climate favoured growth of many types of plant all year round. Your mountains, lakes, animals, diverse cultures, and beautiful features attracted even the blind that could smell your scent from afar. It is because of this that they all came.

 Their travellers met with the magnificent you. They were awe struck, perturbed and enchanted. They had been exploring the world and when they thought they had reached the end of the world, to their surprise, they bumped into the towering you. They sent home reports and out of curiosity, many more came to see for themselves. They made contact with your children. Your children, because of living in an environment that was overly natural, had discovered the beauty of nature and loved nature in all its dimensions. Nature was their provider, the source and basis for everything that they engaged in. what else defines one more than what one engages in? Nature provided them with their identity. They were curious and never wished to disturb their natural surroundings. They studied everything in nature with reverence and awe. When their long forgotten brothers and sisters- the whites came, they were an extra-ordinary kind of creature altogether. They called each other and approached the wonderful but also frightening kind of creature that had been discovered. They had seen albinos, and albinos, in their understanding, were people not wanted by nature. Albinos and other people with disabilities were outcasts and in many societies they were thrown away, sacrificed or allowed to grow but with strings attached on them. Therefore, the appearance of people who looked like albinos must have spelled doom. But your children, Africa, known for their reverence did not just attack the phenomenon that had come to them. They had to consult among themselves. The wise men, the seers, the sages, the diviners, the rainmakers and the witch doctors had to be consulted.

In some places, diviners and prophets foretold doom for their people.  In the places where the prophets and the wise men foresaw doom, your children resisted and vehemently attacked the white man. In some places, the wise people saw no harm bringing the white man into their homes for further inspection. For many days they divined and studied the white man. They observed and reported all they saw him doing. The antics of the white man were baffling. With smoke, from what looked like a walking stick, he killed lions and the fast running antelopes. He could burn himself (smoking) and yet not be burnt. This made the Africans even more curious. They studied the white man and the white man was doing the same. With time, they started communicating well with each other, having perfected gestures by way of repetition. Little by little, they started to learn the sounds that the other party made and associating them with the things that were pointed to when the sounds were made; they started to get a glimpse into each other’s world. The white ones were advantaged because they could write. Writing the sounds down helped them remember and learn the language of the African very first. The African did not have the benefit of writing skill but he did fine for in no time, there were a number of Africans who were well familiar with the sounds the white ones made as to be able to understand them.

So-Called Discoveries: Pockets of trading centres grew on the coasts of Africa. More traders took stories home of your fame dear Africa. Explorers were struggling to discover more of the unknown Africa. They travelled and discovered… discovered indeed. It is boldly written everywhere e.g. ‘Dr. Livingston, first man to reach Mount Kenya.’- as if no man lived around the mountain before him. Nevertheless, the facts are that, they are the children of Africa that, playing the good host, took these explorers around. They led them on the known paths in the forests and guided them to beauties like the snow caped goddesses.

They took them to the lakes, to the hot springs, to the biggest trees in the land and to the lowest valleys in the land. The white man was busy writing home memoirs, journals, and reports. Some were describing how the advanced monkeys, gorillas, or chimpanzees they had met looked like and did their gimmicks.  Others dwelt on the gullible and savage side of the children of Africa. Some dwelt on the warmth, calmness and good will of the black people they had come across. While many dwelt on the primitivism and underdevelopment of the children of Africa.

The white man was seeing a completely new world. It was a world full of bizarre things. The people had bizarre practises, did not have cotton clothing but back cloth or skins, they did not have schools, there were no hospitals and many dreadful diseases abounded.

 Slavery: Some white traders discovered that they could benefit a lot from selling the children of Africa. Therefore, Africans were captured like locusts and carried away to far of lands, to work in plantations as slaves. There was a boom in slave trade and the white intellectuals did not hesitate to offer reasons to justify the mistreatment of Africans. Of course, how else could one justify slavery rather than by defining Africans as human but not as human as the white man? What an interesting conclusion? Shame on them who could ascribe humanity to something that was human enough! A human being without the reasoning capacity, whether it be in potency! How would you say of such a noble people that they could not reason? A deserved reprimand is necessary, but who cares about the consequences of such stereotypes? Their psychologists spoke about false self-fulfilling prophecies but my brothers and sisters adamantly refused to acknowledge their folly in regard to Africans for a very long time; no matter how hard the facts persuaded them. Believe me you, even today, there are still many white guys and some learned Africans who propagate claims like “ Africans are not capable of abstract thinking so their minds can easily accommodate contradictions” what filth! As if the contradicting doctrines and stories from the white man’s porch are not abundant enough!

They explained it in terms of evolution. They compared Africans to people of other lands and concluded; Africans are under-evolved. As a consequence of not being under- evolved they did not think, they did not have a soul and were incapable of conceptualising. Such like theories were designed in the most beautiful and appealing ways.

Evangelisation: The religious were alarmed. Here were a people or animals that were about to become human. They needed come and help these people see the light. These people needed souls. They remembered Jesus’ humble words “there is no greater love than this; that one lays down his life for a brother”.  Many young devotees gave their lives but for the salvation of the children of Africa. Africa, you truly have to be grateful to some missionaries that came. They came to offer your people a message of love. They came to civilize you and to offer you a soul. They came to make you rational and orderly. Of course, they had heard that your children are incapable of reasoning. They knew that animals without souls are savages. They knew they were coming to a jungle in which survival is for the fittest. As such, they armed themselves to the tooth. The bible was in left hand but the index of their right hand was ready on the trigger of a gun.

When they came, they looked around at the poor Africans. The African woke up in the morning, uttered some words, spat towards the rising sun and went off to his duties. On his body, he wore charms, amulets, and special bangles. Before eating, he poured or put a little of the food on the ground or at some special place. At sunset, he spat towards the setting sun, uttered some words and retired into his house. On some particular days, he went with reverence to sacrifice at a certain big tree, on top of some mountain, near a water body or in a small hut in his compound. He always left or put some special pierce of meat at the place of sacrifice or at the entrance to his homestead or house after every sacrifice.  On special days, he went ranting the names of his ancestors or offering them sacrifice after sacrifice.

The white man without asking or inquiring from the African just went ahead and theorized. These are very ignorant people. They do not know that our Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross to take away our sins. Why are they so ignorant? It is because they are at the primitive stage of human development or evolution. Do these people believe in God? No, ignorant as they are, how could they even have the concept of the Supreme Being? They seem to worship the trees, the lakes, the mountains and the ancestors. Have you seen the way they believe in the power of their amulets? They are totally fetish. They believe in charms other than trusting God our father as our lord Jesus Christ taught. We can call this their primitive religion ancestor worship. For it seems their ancestors is all they know of in the world of the beyond.