A few years ago, I went to a salon to get my hair done. It was a Saturday evening and as usual there were many clients that day. The hairdresser’s sister who had just returned from one of the European countries joined her sister to help speed up the work. Then a lady came by and greeted us all. She hugged the two sisters and welcomed the Borga (the returnee).
At a point within their conversation, the hairdresser asked the visitor “it’s been ages since I saw your neighbour, Sister Akos. Has she found herself a new hairdresser?” The visitor replied that her neighbour had travelled. The hairdresser probed further to find out exactly where this neighbour had gone. The visitor explained that her neighbour had gone to Koforidua, the capital of one of the regions in Ghana. The hairdresser burst into laughter. She beckoned her sister, the Borga, to draw closer and listen to where Sister Akos has travelled to.
Our honourable Borga’s reaction was heartbreaking. “Going anywhere in Africa is not a journey to be spoken of. Just say she has stepped out and not travelled”. They all made fun of the issue and continued their work.
Today, I was listening to a Nigerian Pastor I love so much. She said “we have been binding the devil now let’s bind ignorance”. That was a powerful message for me. I quickly sent it to many of my friends on WhatsApp. Then in her next video, she made a comment that was quite unfortunate. She said “some people will not let us rest just because they travelled to Cameroon. Just Cameroon oh, Cameroon too” The whole congregation was on the floor. I heard laughter as though Mr. Bean was on the dance floor.
The story would have been different if she had mentioned a Western country. Perhaps people would not have laughed but may have thought of how materialistic and arrogant we have become. Her words and their laughter were as if to say like our Borga ” there’s no need to brag about your travelling within the continent because after all it’s just Africa”.
Even in my days in senior high school, I witnessed a fight in which one person drew a knife and threatened to stab the other. The only reason for the threat was because the latter had said the former wears clothes from Togo. Our dear sister with the knife could not believe that she had been “reduced to a wearer of Togolese clothing”. I doubt we would ever have known she had a knife if she was said to have been wearing clothes from a Western country even if they were rags.
Perhaps, this pastor and her congregation may need to bind their own ignorance in this regard. We need to reorient our society of who an African is and what it means to be African. We should learn to be proud of discovering parts of Africa.
But for the attitude and mockery with which they “attacked” the issue, our Borga could have been right. Today, we speak of the Africa of Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba; a United Africa – the Africa of which Prof. Lumumba speaks with so much passion and Pride. An Africa with no artificial borders and unnecessary foreign interference. A great continent that will speak the heavenly languages of Ewe, kiswahili, Dagaare, Ga, Hausa… with pride by our sons and daughters. An Africa where Xenophobic attacks, Ebola, malaria, hunger, ethnic wars… will sound strange and be unknown to our Grandchildren. It will however not happen if we continue to look down on our own.
We could wake up in “the stone throw away Koforidua”, take a bath in lake Victoria, seek the wisdom of our fathers in Timbuktu and Ancient Sudan, go for a break in the beautiful rich “Garden of Africa” in D.R. Congo, have fun with the Massai of Kenya and Tanzania to “do the JUMP ooo do the JUMP” and finally make our beds on the sandy carpet of the Sahara with the charming night sky as our covering.
Until then, let’s get to work!
If we do not create for ourselves the Africa we deserve, others will continue to point out to us the Africa they think we deserve.
Thetrotrogirl
If we do not create for ourselves the Africa we deserve, others will continue to point out to us the Africa they think we deserve.
