Afrique , The Questions

Afrique ,  The Questions

 

Africa the big , Africa the misunderstood  even by its own people.  Many of  the non-Africans stitch together  have baked images  based on misinformation  generated by repeated slanted reporting by mainly a western press that has  international reach

 

With the Africans it manifest is a confused sense of identity . They don’t know much about their history most Africans cant point to other African countries on the map., They too have been influenced by the stories generated b y the western media they know more about what happens in Europe or America than their own continent.

 

In this confusion  comes the question  what is Africa?   Define it or  Define her ? The continent big as it is diverse as it is, all 11 million square miles of it , its population in the low billions and growing faster than anywhere else on Earth. Accompanied with most diverse set of Languages and cultures anywhere where do you start?

 

What is an African who are they?  there will be, to start with 54 different answers  representing its  nations before the question of  sub national identities.  Included in this question  will be its Diaspora some of who have been away from their  mother continent for over 4 centuries  and this advent  coincided with coming of the  European contact and influence  that been such a potent force in shaping of Africa’s fate and that of all her peoples both on the continent and out of it.

 

So what of her history?. The archeologists will tell us that as far as humanity is concerned, Africa is where is all started and there was more than wave of early migrants  out  of what was Africa outwards, on  an earth that would look Alien to us today . and that thread  winds thorough  the civilizations of Egypt, Nubia, Abbysinia,  Zimbabwe , Nok, Zulu kingdoms,  The myriad  of west African empires including Ghana,Mali, Songhai and Kanem-Bornu,  The  Moors and Almoravids of North Africa to name a few and the roles its Great rivers , lakes, deserts and forests  played in telling this story.

 

If one could go back in a time machine and landed in the middle of ancient Casablanca or Benin in the 1400’s at its height and  mentioned to them  Africa  you probably lucky to get away with your life for you the question will be your sanity for they will be seen as having nothing in common. The same question will also be seen as insane at the height of the slave trade,  the Africans had no concept of themselves as on people, this question of separate identities has bedeviled the modern progress of Africa but yet the question return in another  form  who  is an African? and what defines us returns again.

 

The closes pointer  will be a shared  recent  experience . Bur that shared experience is due to the actions of an external actor and in Historical terms , is rather  recent . The actors  Europe  and, by extension the West which includes North America. The North Africans have Berber culture and the Arabic culture ties them to the Middle East.  The White people of Southern Africa have tied their identity to  the Africa’s land but they are also tied to their ancestral continent of Europe.  there are Arab-Africans , White Africans ,  Cushitic-Africans,  Nubians ,  Bantus and the list goes on and on. But each of these groups have felt oppression at the hands of the Europeans , The colonization of North Africa , the Boer  concentration  camps of the late 1800’s by the English. The Translantic Slave trade and later Africa’s  partition in Berlin in 1884.

 

 This blog will address my own personal search for what it means  to be African through its stories and my opinions of those stories of its peoples

BLAH