African Insights Blog – February 2005
Listening for the Sounds of Africa:
In my youth I used to listen to shortwave news in the evening when reception
was best. I w
ould get updates via the BBC, Swiss
and Austrian Stations, Radio Moscow and, of course, various German stations;
all of them putting me in touch with the world both near and far. Oh-- I
almost forgot, there was the AFN Network, the US Armed Forces Radio in Germany,
and even though I did not speak English at the time, I enjoyed listening
to the music they played!
In those days, I would be resting in my bed, listening to hours of news
via shortwave radio, especially when I came down with scarlet fever and
was confined to my room for months. It was then that I learned something
of the art of listening to the news and just letting it soak in, making
mental notes; taking in history as it was being made. I became a news buff
and today I am an avowed news-aholic, especially regarding news from Africa.
Before the Internet, my favorite news source was the shortwave radio stations
from around the world. I was always on the lookout for a better Grundig
Shortwave Radio that would put me in touch with news that one could not
hear or read locally.
When I went to Africa, my Grundig radios came along (three left my suitcase
in a mysterious manner at Jomo Kenyatta Airport). I would
spend
many a night in Nairobi, Kampala, and Kigali, or at the UN camp in Lokichoggio
underneath a clear African night listening to BBC or Voice of America, Deutsche
Welle, or some other far off place that brought news from afar and often
about the very place where I was at that moment in time.
Nowhere else in the world did I find a deeper interest for the latest news
as amongst the Southern Sudanese. Everyone, who was someone, had a shortwave
receiver. Morning coffee, showers, breakfast, all accompanied by BBC World
Service bringing the latest updates from around the world, Africa and including
what was happening in the Sudan.
I am still listening to radio from far away, but now I do it via high speed
Internet access allowing me to listen to radio programs about Africa or
from Africa. The sounds are great! On BBC I can listen to musical presentations
from Kampala, or a play written by a re
tired
an in Nigeria. It is a far cry from my scratchy Grundig reception but times
are changing. Today I can listen to the sounds of Africa while sitting at
my computer or in my bed with my laptop, reminding me of those early days
of my news addiction. It is a delight to hear the ideas and input of Kenyan,
Ugandans, Ethiopians, all while sitting near my computer or simply doing
my chores and hearing some new song with a haunting melody that reminds
me of driving through the majestic Rift Valley of Kenya, or coming down
toward Lake Victoria from the Highlands.
It is good to listen to African sounds, African voices, and African ideas.
Maybe, just maybe, all those who want to “fix” Africa and its problems,
maybe all those with their so-called “solutions,” have not been listening
to Africa and its people.
Just recently, Sir Bob Geldof, of Live Aid Africa fame, made some comments
about why President Museveni should not run for a third term. Geldof said
that his admiration for Mr. Museveni's fight against poverty and Aids had
now been lost.
"Get a grip Museveni. Your time is up, go away," Geldof said at the launch
of the Commission for Africa
Report, which is supposed to map out how best
to raise living standards in Africa.
Ugandans took offense and thousands protested Sir Geldof
in the streets of Kampala and rightfully so. It seems that most of the time
the West comes with “Father knows best” advice, but does not take the time
and effort to listen. After all, the Western mindset assumes that Africa
had no history until the colonial powers came to enlighten the uncivilized
savages of the continent by bringing “civilization.” It would be quite a
shock for many of those so-called discoverers to discover that the oldest
human beings have been found in East Africa and that history started in
Africa.
As European nations colonized Africa, anything African was considered inferior
to European ways. Some used religion to subjugate the African people causing
Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of Kenya to say, “The missionaries came
with the Bible in their hand and we had the land. They taught us to pray
with our eyes closed, and then when we opened them, we had the Bible in
our hand and they had the land.” (One will not
encounter many atheists in sub-Sahara Africa. Africans have embraced Islam
and Christianity. In fact, African Christian Churches are now evangelizing
the West by starting churches in the USA and Europe.)
If one looked more closely, when those early explorers, missionaries and
merchants set foot on Africa, there was not just a loss of land. A greater
loss had begun much earlier to the Mid-East and East, but the Europeans
used Africa as their manpower resource to staff their plantations in the
new world of North and South America with African slaves. The nations of
the Caribbean and the Americas imported millions of slaves from all over
Africa, causing a people drain the world had never seen before or since.
Africa not only lost millions of its people to the slave trade, people from
many different tribes and kingdoms, that had existed for centuries before,
but Africa lost with its people, its heart and soul, its self-respect. Africa
was subjugated by other powers at home and abroad from Charleston South
Carolina to Rio de Janeiro. No one listened to the cries of Africa for years
to come, Africa cried from its soul, but its cries were ignored.
If you look at how the present states of Africa came into being, many of
the present problems have to do with the way the map was drawn at a table
in Berlin far from Africa. Far from the tribal lands and kingdoms such lines
would separate, far from the families that were now part of different nations.
Certainly no one was listening to Africa back then.
As I write this newsletter, Tony Blair’s Commission on Africa is publishing
another European report on Africa. A lot of good things have been said and
written by Africans and non-Africans alike, yet if you would ask people
on the streets of Africa, you would find a bit of skepticism. They have
seen many important people come to Africa to write reports, take pictures,
give interviews and fly back home without listening to the average person
on the streets of Africa’s cities.
Africa will not change, unless one listens to Africa, listens to what is
really needed instead of our Western solutions based on a world model that
does not take Africa’s needs, resources, and of course its people into consideration.
When one listens to Africa, one hears that the world needs to buy the products
of Africa at a fair price, eliminate Western subsidies to American, European,
Canadian farmers in order that the African farmers who receive no subsidies
can compete in the world market on a level playing field.
I pray for the day that the riches of Africa’s earth will no longer be extracted
by foreign companies and processed in the West or East. I hope for the day
that African leaders will no longer take out the billions of dollars and
put them into Western banks, but instead take that money and invest it in
Africa s schools, industries, factories, and its people and their well-being.
Africa does not need Western pity, but Western respect. Change in Africa
will take time. It has taken the West many years and a few wars to live
in peace; it will take a few more years in Africa. Changes are taking place
on a daily basis in Africa. Democratic elections are taking place everywhere,
we only read about those things that go sour. The cell phone is revolutionizing
Africa. Farmers are using it to check on the present prices of their crops,
people are staying in touch. Email at the Internet cafes of Africa is keeping
Africans in touch with relatives; the wealth of the Internet comes to Africa
through those screens throughout the larger cities in Africa.
Countries like Uganda are prospering with an annual growth rate of over
6 percent. New shopping centers are popping up yearly and the Ugandan middle
class has choices. Africa is changing from within.
Africa is reclaiming its soul, decolonizing its heart and mind, and the
day will come when Mother Africa will be made of nations that are listened
to and have the respect as an equal at the global table. I hope I live to
see that day.
Today I listen to the sounds and happenings in Africa from a distance, I listen to the heart of Africa via the letters I receive, the news I read, the literature of African writers, and I like what I hear, I enjoy listening to Africa. Try listening to Africa; it might give you a whole new perspective as to what Mother Africa is really like…jon
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