Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Crying for Freedom: An African Across Europe to America
Crying for Freedom: An African Across Europe to America
Crying for Freedom: An African Across Europe to America
Ebook431 pages7 hours

Crying for Freedom: An African Across Europe to America

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

CRYING FOR FREEDOM tells the story of Oheneba, a young man from Africa whose desire to escape his native country's defective social, political, and economic systems propels him to Europe and eventually to the United States. He discovers that neither place is the "land of milk and honey" he had dreamt of. His experiences and observations during his travels dampen his hope for the black race, which he views as not only failing to trust itself, but also reposing blind trust in the white race and in the Christian religion of meekness and forgiveness: misplaced trust that has enabled the aggressive and the "strong" to perpetually dominate the black race. Oheneba comes to the scathing determination that the white race is a ruthless, bloodthirsty race, quick to give charity but not justice, a race that is never satisfied, that relentlessly pursues positions of command, glory and wealth of every kind, even if it means colonizing and enslaving other races and declaring them personal property.

Yet, Oheneba concedes that he has reached his current station in life partly due to the benevolence of the white race. As much as he tries to hate white people for their greedy and wanton destruction of his race, hate is a feeling very difficult for him to adopt. Oheneba cannot bring himself to apply the word "racist" to whites, partly because he has had worse experiences at the hands of his fellow blacks.

In the end, Oheneba concludes that despite the many sins in white America's past and the flaws in its present, they share with him a common humanity that is evident just below the surface. Oheneba wonders, rather boldly, whether his own life story provides evidence that white America, for all its atrocious and evil deeds, may possess a paradoxical goodness. In order for black people to find their places in mainstream America, much depends upon the generosity of white Americans. And to the extent that many white Americans of past and present are decent, fighting for black people's equal rights and access to mainstream America, sometimes even helping black folks to get ahead of their fellow whites, this paradoxical goodness is evident. Ironically, it is the very attributes of the social systems that Oheneba was running away from that ultimately became his grace: e collective culture or the "it-takes-the-village-to-raise-a-child" approach to life. Oheneba loathed this culture because he felt it created comfort and security for the African and resulted in the suppression of individual responsibility and accountability.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherAuthorHouse
Release dateJul 14, 2003
ISBN9781410771346
Crying for Freedom: An African Across Europe to America
Author

Yaw Sachi

The Author, an African born UScitizen, is a published writer and a Certified Auditor with a Fortune 100 company. He reaches his readers with the thoroughness of an anal-retentive Auditor. Yaw Sachi is his pen name.

Related to Crying for Freedom

Related ebooks

African American Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Crying for Freedom

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Crying for Freedom - Yaw Sachi

    PART I

    Chapter 1

    Today, I received the news of my mother’s death. My uncle Kwesi told me that after several days of fasting, my mother was found in a coma. Someone had discovered her, barely clinging to life; she was gone before help could arrive. Uncle Kwesi went on to say that my mother claimed to have had a vision concerning the death of a member of the family. She refused to tell who that member was. In her vision, the person was in the grips of an enormous red dragon with seven heads and seven horns. According to my mother, the demon dragon had tortured this person to the point of suicide. She decided to fast and pray to God for deliverance. She died during the fast. As I stared at the letter and gazed into the sky, I felt devastated. Anger. Enormous guilt. For some inscrutable reason, I thought I was the person who was supposed to die, which made me feel as if I had murdered my mother. I also remembered the many times I dreamed of a woman, bathed in light, an angel, perhaps, interceding in prayers for me and saving me from every kind of horror, saving me from hell itself. Little did I know it was my mother’s spirit I’m certain of it. I wish I had the spiritual discernment to understand some of my past dreams. If I had it, some of my life choices would have been different and Mother would be alive today.

    My mother was correct in her vision. My life in the United States these past years has been a bit hard and tiresome, but at the same time, a confusingly good learning experience. I have come close to committing suicide on several occasions, and I have come close to becoming violent and breaking all the rules I normally respect unquestioningly. I’ve contemplated murder. While I can’t imagine thinking that today, there was a time when it was a perfectly natural thought. Sometimes I feel there is a huge vacuum in my life that attracts storms and tornadoes and keeps my life continually in a state of warfare. There are a couple of stupid pelican heads (an Americanism I can’t seem to forget) out there who don’t know how blessed they are. I seemed to be excluded from such blessings that I know with certainty come from God. But, like my ancestors who fought with the British ten times, kicked their lily-white buttocks nine times despite overwhelming odds only to be defeated in the tenth battle I, too, must stick to my guns. During this period, I have witnessed miracles; at least I would like to call them miracles. Some people would call them coincidences. I say those people are condemned to be eternally stupid. No small amount of providential intervention has occurred to make me what I am today. But I feel excruciating pain; not physical pain that can be numbed with aspirin or the dreaded palm wine or apeteshie, the local gin from my little village in West Africa. This pain comes from within, radiates outward, burning, consuming, never quite fed or satisfied. It is a pain that has sent many over the edge and into the abyss. It is a pain that can be silenced only by hope. (Not long ago I read in the newspapers that a guy from my country climbed onto a cable pole in New York, and killed himself because he was without hope.)

    Later, I also heard of the news of two African teenagers who had hope, but a misplaced hope: The teenagers stowed away in the wheel of an airliner bound for Belgium, hoping to escape the misery of their West African homeland. Days later a worker at the airport in Brussels, Belgium, found their lifeless bodies in the wheel of the airliner. This story might have ended as just another case of two African teenagers encountering death during their desperate and daring escape from their homeland for a better life in the land of the white man; however, a Belgian examiner found an envelope among their scanty possessions; a letter that began with the words: In Case We Die… A portion of the original text of the letter written by the two teenagers is excerpted below:

    Excellencies, Messrs. members and officials of Europe.

    We have the honor and pleasure and great confidence in you to write this letter to talk to you of the objective of our journey and the suffering of us, the children and young people of Africa.

    But first of all, we present to you our sweetest, most adoring and respectful salutations in the world. To that effect, be our support and our aid. You are for us, in Africa, the ones whom we must ask for help. …

    Help us, we suffer enormously in Africa, we have problems and several shortcomings… . We have war, disease, malnutrition, etc. …. We have too many schools but a great lack of education and training. Only in private schools can one have a good education and good training, but it takes a great sum of money, and our parents are poor and they have to feed us. …

    That is why we, African children and youth, ask you to create a great, efficient organization for Africa to allow us to progress.

    And if you see that we have sacrificed and risked our lives, it is because there is too much suffering in Africa and we need you to struggle against poverty and put an end to war in Africa. Nevertheless, we want to study and we ask you to help us in Africa to study to be like you.

    Finally, we appeal to you to excuse us very, very much for daring to write this letter to the great personages to whom we owe much respect. And do not forget that it is to you that we must bemoan our weakness in Africa…

    [I]t is to you that we must bemoan our weakness in Africa. I wondered if the teenagers knew a little bit of history that Europeans were partly to blame for the weakness in Africa. Did they know the role Europeans played in the destruction of Africa through colonization and slavery? Yet, I also wondered if it was important to look back and dwell on what went wrong or face present challenges in a pragmatist manner? I was tempted to believe that these little boys were thinking, If you cannot beat them, join them!

    I feel a lot of bitterness about life. Many a time, I wished I were never born to go through this comedy called life. Yet I continue to hold on doggedly to life, believing I have a godly responsibility to do so. Like my Ashanti and Fanti tribesmen, with hands blessed with a profound reverence and an unwavering respect for all things great and small. I felt this responsibility more when I came to realize that I’ve brought an innocent child into this world. The responsibility to continue to live with meaning and human dignity can never be finally taken away from me by anyone. Yes, my view of life, and the judgment I ultimately pass on it, which creates an equilibrium or imbalance, must find its key within me, not outside.

    Yet I still feel angry and am totally filled with rage at times. It is a rage that is not easy to suppress. I pray an awful lot and I rarely lose my temper. Que ton ame soit limpide et ton corps s’agite—action-less action. Instead of taking my life or that of another human being, I have decided to test the power of words. I understand why the English say, The pen is mightier than the sword.

    It was in Brussels, Belgium, when I first dreamed that I had written a book. In the dream, the title of the book was given to me: Crying for Freedom. Many years have passed. Now that I live in the United States, the need to write about my story has become inescapable. For me it’s not to exonerate myself, but a moral duty to humankind. I stand at a crossroads in my life; I must be given the opportunity to breathe the air of freedom. I now understand whole-heartedly why some people say, Live free or die. I don’t know if I’ll ever taste the wine of pure freedom that has eluded far too many of my black folks. Freedom, like happiness, is a subjective issue and I don’t know if I’ll ever experience it while sitting on a volcano.

    Things burn within me still, just below the surface. I don’t know when the eruption will come. Self-discipline eventually will be undermined by the unquenchable human desire to be truly free. We always find no better method than to serve and preserve our own interests under the pretense of self-maintenance or civility or a supreme religion and other religious invocations. But, like an eruption of red-hot lava, the untamed natural passion breaks out with all its terrible aspects. I have come close to this point many times. I have the privilege of writing today and sharing my experience because of copious providential interventions in my life.

    Once while attending a class in Brussels, my professor, Evelyn, remarked that the only way to remind people that you have a civilization is through writing. At first I felt insulted. I grew up in a culture of oral history. However, at that point in my life, the credence of Evelyn’s remark nagged me like a troublesome echo. I understood why the Chinese say the Pen leaves tracks and the mouth is wind. I owe humankind the truth, as I understand it. I don’t think of myself as having the discipline to go through the laborious task of writing a book. Yet, somehow, I’ve begun to violate the purity of the blank page with the inscription of my keyboard. Some poets have also said that nothing happens but a dream. My dream in Brussels has become a reality. I don’t know if I will succeed for I feel handicapped. The English language is quite challenging and many things are difficult to put into words in any language, let alone into English. That’s the lot for someone like me. My name is Oheneba Nyamekye. I’m an African, from Gold Coast.

    Humankind has survived because of its capacity for optimism. Just as the sparrow forgets all about being chased by the hawk and returns to its search for food, humans overcome tragedy with optimism. There is always tomorrow. If humankind were able to recall, at will, its many lifetimes of experiences, good and bad, and could be concerned with the present, without looking optimistically toward the future, individuals would most certainly eat, drink, and screw themselves into the ground.

    I have come to believe that the greatest gift of life is the gift of learning through experience, and this gift is not complete or fully wrapped until it is passed on to the next generation. As a Black man living in America, I do not have any pretentions to have this unique experience. However, we are put on this earth for a purpose and for that matter we must and can pass on our gift of learning through experience. You will encounter my darkest secrets herein. One mystic writer once said that …we strangely expand and grow in all sorts of ways we cannot and do not need to explain to anyone including ourselves… Somehow, I’m violating this secret and sacred counsel. I am ferociously, through the sharing of my life experience, arguing for causes and ideas that are the fruits of my life experiences, the gift of life for which I am indebted; because the gift found me rather than me finding it. I am passing on my gift and I hope it will engender some change and bring about evolution in the consciousness of my African brothers and sisters, as well as help with race relations in America.

    There is no single moment during which I don’t perceive life as being somewhat absurd. Religions have painted pictures that show our time on planet earth is just a passage to the divine big house where God resides. When I searched for answers in the Bible, I realized that our utmost duty here on earth is to worship and glorify God. I became even more confused for the answer to my first question brought about ten thousand new questions. I felt as if I were losing ground. The question that then kept nagging me was if my first answer was the truth of the matter, would we not be better off living with God Himself, worshipping and glorifying Him face to face, rather than mucking about in some sort of earthly waiting area, alternately making a mess of things and then making spiritual headway, before finally flying off to the big house in the sky?

    My second question is, why does He choose to place us, creatures He created in His own image, in an environment where Satan seems to rule? Christians explain that a demonic force altered the divine plan of God and declared himself —Lucifer—the ruler of this earthly world. This, of course, makes me more confused.

    Does this conform with the will of the Creator of our world, the Supreme Commander of the universe? If this assertion by Christianity is true, God is really a weird being. I hope God forgives me if I’m blaspheming here. If the assertion is not true, the most logical questions are, How can anything happen against and contrary to the will and plan of the omnipotent God? How do we reconcile the supreme omnipotence and perfect holiness of the Creator?

    Not too long ago, I read about a terrible landslide that happened in another part of the world. The earth shook and then split open, swallowing a whole church congregation. They had been singing, dancing, leaping about and praising God. Right in the middle of services, the church and the people within vanished, leaving nothing except a fading echo of screams. I was able to see why people like Jean Paul Sartre devoted their writings to the absurdity of life; God pours His rain on the good and evil and He pours misery on the good and evil. If ever I have the chance to meet with God, I will ask Him why He put us here on earth for Satan to kick about and torture. I wonder why God could not foresee that Adam and Eve would sin so as not to regret His decision of creating human beings and then banishing them from Paradise after they had sinned. Freedom! You can’t put a mouse in the same box with a cat and expect the cat to refrain from doing what comes naturally.

    Many times I have questioned the wisdom in the saying that the meek shall inherit the earth. I mean, every day, I encounter vivid examples of the meek of the world being annihilated and plowed under at every turn. I was only about seven years old when I began to question the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth. It was time of celebrations for the Moslems in my little village in Africa. It was a tradition, after a 30-day fast, for the Moslem neighbors to offer free food to their neighbors during the festivities. I was the first person to see my Moslem neighbor place some food in a big bowl outside in the compound. With the speed of lightning, people came to the food. They scrambled for the food. In a split second, I found myself sitting there, looking into an empty bowl. The others were stronger than I and had taken everything. As a child, that was the first time it dawned on me that life is about the survival of the fittest. Or, maybe it is about the survival of the shrewdest.

    The only time I’m at peace is when I am asleep. I am thankful for this peace, hard to remember as it is. It is the only time I can truly forget about the stench of this world. With a few exceptions I always sleep well no matter how severe my problems, no matter how horrible the day has been. Yet I wake each morning to face the grim reality of life. If death is synonymous with eternal sleep, maybe it is better to be dead than alive. Then, like the priest who preaches of a blissful afterlife with God, only to run away at the sight of death, I continue to hold on to this life. Part of me remains optimistic in spite of my pessimism. After all, no one goes off into the big sleep only to return with contrived tales of sugarplum fairies and winged angels with harps. Some people claim to have done just that. But, then someone always comes along with a perfectly logical explanation, spoiling everything. It’s either the lack of oxygen to the brain or an electro-chemical surge that produces these so-called visions, which the Nay-Sayers claim are the same as a drunk’s hallucination, just cheaper. However, my late grandfather told me a story of a man who died but who had a round-trip ticket and came back to live with the living. His name was Wisdom. Wisdom had committed suicide because he had no money to pay his part of the funeral expenses for a relative who had died in the village. While they were transporting Wisdom to the cemetery for burial, they felt a movement in the casket. They became frightened and all the brave men took to their heels. The pastor was the only one who stood firm. He said a prayer and braced himself to open the casket. Wisdom sprang out and jumped to his feet. He was alive. The pastor was quite startled, thinking the end of the world had come. He lost control of several of his bodily functions, convinced that he was about to meet up with his Maker. Yes, you could say, he was more than a little afraid and unable to run away.

    Wisdom had a story to tell. He said his journey took him to a place where the inhabitants were happy to see him because they were taking up contributions to buy a casket to bury a dead man in that part of the world. The people of that world were happy he had come because his contribution would add up to the price of the much-needed casket. Wisdom said he got furious because he had committed suicide to run away from a similar problem in this world. Now, these people were making the same demand of him. It was for this reason Wisdom fought his way back to this world to make amends with his old folks. As for the pastor, he soon moved from the village and was never heard from again.

    Chapter 2

    About one o’clock on a hot, busy summer afternoon in the ancient city of Leuven, Belgium, in the all-imposing ALMA III restaurant mansion, many students were in an orderly queue patiently waiting for a turn to place the dishes on the black rubber conveyor belt. From the time I began to work at this restaurant as a student dishwasher, I had observed with some chagrin that the dishwashers were all blacks. There was one thing certain in my mind; this was not a question of racism or slavery. I felt there was a twinge of irony in the whole story. White men and black men had fought relentlessly to abolish slavery. Yet, after this abolition, Africans transported themselves, at their own expense and volition, from Africa to do the jobs the white man used to buy slaves for. Even today, some Africans willingly participate in slavery, selling their precious sons and daughters for a morsel of bread. Sometimes, I was very sad. In Europe, I got all the more confused as I saw my African brothers and sisters destroying and betraying each other, always acting like crabs in a barrel, to win the favor of the white man. I experienced and saw so much of this crab-in-a-barrel mentality from my own African brothers and sisters that I oftentimes wondered if we Africans could ever succeed in creating the great and efficient organizations, which beckoned my two little African brothers to stow away in the wheel of an airliner bound for Belgium, hoping to escape the misery of their West African homeland.

    We were six Africans, hidden in the back, doing the white man’s dishes. We were not just dishwashers, mind you; we were men who had hopes and dreams. We questioned reality and we became angry. We were human beings, with two legs and two arms, just like the white men who mingled out in the open, up front, completely oblivious to our existence. (Kwaku Nhia, a Ph.D. student with a scholarship from the white man, worked a number of odd jobs so that he could send money back to his folks who remained behind in Africa.)

    My very first experience, however, with ALMA III was as a customer, an embarrassing moment to remember. I had been in Leuven for a little less than a week, five days, maybe six. Fresh from Africa, and having yet to acquire a taste for European food, I had a hard time bringing myself to enter any of the European restaurants. I would not be able to understand the menu: the prices; what I was ordering; none of it. It was easy to go to a pub and point at a bottle of beer, but when it came to real food and menus, I might as well have been on another planet. So, one afternoon, I decided to test myself at ALMA III.

    The fear of embarrassing myself haunted me when I stepped in and the heavy wooden door closed behind me, causing a rush of warm air to squeeze in past me, pushing me forward just a little bit. A solitary black face in an ocean of white European faces, I was afraid to look in any one direction for too long. All eyes were directed at me. In my best interpretation of calm, I picked up a tray and moved forward, soon finding myself standing behind a beautiful Dutch female. (She filled her sweater nicely.)

    About ten meters ahead of me, a strange looking box dispensed soda pop into cups that the people in front of me held just below either of six tiny round openings in the box. One at a time, their cups were filled, slowly and without ceremony. I had never seen such a device before. What was puzzling for me was that the soda pop seemed to start flowing as soon as the students reached the fountain with their cups. I watched each person take his or her turn at the soda pop dispenser. Soon it was my turn; I still had not figured out what to do. I started sweating. On my first attempt, I managed to soak my arm with a clear, yellowish soda pop. I pulled my arm away, startled. A man behind me was mumbling in Dutch. I quickly moved the cup underneath the protruding nipple-like object and filled my cup. The man began laughing out loud—an embarrassing moment.

    Some days passed and I found myself washing dishes there. Suddenly, I picked a tray from the belt. The food was almost untouched. I was really feeling hungry, so I quickly picked up some of the fries, which were cold, and dashed them into my waiting mouth. Those fries tasted so good. I wanted more, but I was afraid. A couple of minutes later the manager came to warn me that it was forbidden to eat whilst working. I knew that one of my own black co-workers had leaked the information to the manager.

    Later, Simons, a fellow countryman, tipped me that it was the Nigerian who had informed the manager about my behavior. Somehow, I was saddened by the incident. I quickly got over the feeling and started a conversation. Do any of you have the courage to consider your own plight, your own status, among white people? Or, do you prefer to go about the meager business of collecting your pennies and doing your happy dance whenever the white man looks at you? Where, at all, is the black man free in this world? You can name the places on one hand? I was incensed, and trying to sound superior, well above the job of dishwasher.

    Simons, a pear-shaped man who smelled of the goat, was the first to speak up. He was a student in theology. He was known among the other workers for his bottomless lust for coffee, which was why he was always quite full of energy and ready to put in his two cents worth at a moment’s notice. He said, I think that the black race, as a whole, is a failure. Oh, well, yes, there are always exceptions to every rule. We have always played, and continue to play, second fiddle to white people. Every man wants to feel great. That’s why I let myself believe that I’m as equal as any white person!

    There was a tall, regal-looking man from East Africa, Pinto. He is the proudest black man I’ve ever met in my life. He made washing dishes or taking out the trash appear as dignified a task as being a king or saving someone’s life. I think his parents were members of the Mau Mau movement back in East Africa. I do know that he didn’t try to hide the fact that he hated white people. White people were racists. White people were snobs. If you caught him at the wrong moment, he’d use unfamiliar language that I later learned were nasty words for cursing the white man.

    I remember one day we (Simons and I) had to carry the trash downstairs with him. We had to cross the parking lot behind ALMA III before we could throw the trash away. There were two young white youths, perhaps students, who had just finished taking their lunch. They pulled out in their nice little Renault car from the parking lot. I suggested to Pinto that he wait for a moment until the car had passed. He became furious and accused me of cowardice. I asked him why he hated white people, especially since white people had given him a plump scholarship to study in Belgium. He answered that he saw the scholarship as reparation for the rape of his country, the wanton robbery his country had endured because of white people. He added two or three examples of what he was referring to, examples that turned my stomach, examples that made me wonder about an old phrase that I had read in a dusty book, man’s inhumanity towards man… He was deadly serious. The look he gave me made me feel so small. Now, we were hidden in the back, doing the white man’s dishes, and having fun arguing about our plight.

    I think you’re poisoned by white society to believe that you’re inferior, Pinto interrupted. I tell you frankly that the white man is never superior to the black man. You see, God created all human beings equal. Even Jesus Christ and all great philosophers and thinkers attest to this. How on earth can you delude yourself that you’re inferior? Let me tell you that the black man is as good as any white man!

    I disagree. Simons was on the defensive. I think you are making a mountain out of a…a… Out of a molehill. It’s out of a molehill.

    That’s what I mean, Simons continued. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. The white man gives you a scholarship and immediately you hate him and claim that the scholarship is nothing more than reparation for past deeds. Reparations. Restitution. A bribe. Whatever you want to call it. You want to call it anything but what it really is, a gift. I disagree with your line of thinking. Maybe the white man simply is interested in seeing you get ahead in this world? How can you say that the white man today is the same white man from three hundred years ago, Pinto? Can a man live for centuries? The answer is no! The white man of today is not the white man from those dark times when our people were forced into slavery. I think it’s high time people stopped whining about the past and looked toward the future.

    Look, Pinto interjected, saying with a twinge of pity in his voice, I think you need to go back to your own country’s history. You seem to have grown up learning the white man’s mind, eating his food, listening to his radio and sleeping with his women. Let me tell you guys, Africa is the cradle of Western civilization. But, everyone wants to believe that the Greeks invented everything. No one wants to accept the fact that Africa has a glorious past. Do you know that one of the first persons that performed a cesarean operation was an Ethiopian woman! Africans were once the leading people on this planet earth.

    Pinto, I am sorry. Simons did not like confrontation. You raise a good issue. The black man does not get the credit he deserves. The black man is often ignored or looked down upon, even today. I still can’t help but think that rather than complain and moan and raise fists in anger, we should take up the challenge to change the world around us. After all, what good does your anger do you? What good does anger do anyone? What do you gain from the victim or entitlement" mentality? Nothing. It makes you miserable; you loose sleep and your view of God—that’s what it does.

    Maybe an Ethiopian woman did perform one of the first cesarean births. Rather than moan about it, why not write an article, put it in the paper and put a note at the end of the article that implies you are dissatisfied with the history we are taught so often being wrong. Teach people the truth, rather than stomp around in anger, making others angry. Your anger, in fact all anger, is a disease and, like a disease, it can spread, making entire populations miserable. Who has infected you, Pinto?"

    I could discern some confusion in the face of everybody at this point. Pinto was gazing into the air, perhaps trying to manufacture his next response. Simons gave out a loud belch that broke the tension in the room. He loved Coca-Cola too.

    Hey, Simons, I shouted, When did you become a philosopher? You never cease to amaze me. You are just too smart. You should go get a proper job and stop workin’ with us bastards.

    Pinto, Simons continued, not skipping a beat. Do you have an answer to this? Who has infected you? Since you do not answer, I shall answer for you. You have infected yourself. You choose to be angry. Most people would be pleased to have the chance to go to the University and have someone else pay for it. You choose to see the gift as a burden and, therefore, it makes you angry. Whose fault is that?

    I realized at this point that Simons was beginning to make Pinto angry. I could see the muscles in Pinto’s jaw begin to flex. I could see a look in his eyes that Simons noticed at the same time as I did. Simons switched gears in order to avoid a conflict. I mean, what is in the mind of the white man that has enabled him effectively to disguise inventions by blacks as those of his own? Maybe it has everything to do with that old phrase, ‘to the victor go the spoils.’ Pinto, you have an interesting point. I’m sorry to make it seem as if I am not considering your thoughts seriously. Maybe it is enough to know that our people did things, things that make the world a better place.

    Ken, a student from Nigeria, spoke up, enraged, passionate, taking everyone completely by surprise. My, brothers! There’s certainly tragedy in our history! Too much tragedy! Long ago, Africa was a paradise, a land of milk and honey. Everything grew there. Then bloodthirsty people from other lands—Rome, Greece, Spain and Belgium—came with hearts filled with greed. While the Africans were trying to demonstrate the African spirit of nobility and generosity, these imperialists took it upon themselves to slaughter the Africans, rape them, burn them, and enslave them. And the African peoples, they had no formal system of writing, so in the midst of all this slaughtering, burning and death, many truths about the Africans were lost. Anything worthy of a second glance was fair game, such as the loot taken back to someone else’s queen or king to be claimed and renamed. The French, the German, the Portuguese, the English, you name it; they all came to conquer the Africans. And they had marvelous technologies of their own. Besides they were aided by some Africans who were disgruntled by the corruption in their land and their system of government. These disgruntled Africans thought the White man would help them usurp power, but they were wrong. The white man decimated them after they have been used!

    After Ken finished, I felt my head filling with more questions than answers. Ken was an intelligent man who put a great deal of thought into what he had to say; perhaps that was the reason behind his usually calm, reserved nature. The other workers knew him as a man with an odd sense of humor. One minute he was quoting Shakespeare as if he himself had written Othello or Hamlet, and the next moment he was giggling foolishly and plotting silly revenge against a neighbor or co-worker.

    I was still stinging from his pointed jab at Simons. It did not take long to realize that I was no different from the picture Ken had just painted about my ancestors some centuries ago. Ken was somehow elated after his talk. We were all captivated. Ken began to tell more.

    You see the white man is a very aggressive human being. There’s not a white man alive today, on the face of this earth, without some sort of hang-up. He’s a being never satisfied, relentlessly pursuing command positions, glory and wealth of every kind. He’s a being who is prepared to die in order for his name to be eternal. On the other hand, the black man strikes only in retaliation for prior wrongs done to him. Presumably, I think that the word ‘human’ has to be redefined because the black man is too human and forgiving to live on this planet.

    It didn’t take long for Simons to rejoin the conversation. (One of the other workers, feeling left out and out-gunned, turned and went back to work. No one was interested in talking about his cats and how they puked on the carpet all the time. And no one wanted to talk about his old crusty Volvo car.)

    But, I think, that is hardly a compliment in a world where the very meaning of civilization is lost, Simons began. In the face of the white man’s lust for power and domination, this religion of meekness and forgiveness, of which the black race is an epitome, is equal to the perpetual dominion of the aggressive and the strong, a validation of Darwinism. This is the testimony of history! Simons retorted.

    At this point, I offered a question: Why did Jesus say ‘the meek would inherit the earth? That should be good news for black people, shouldn’t it? I felt that would stir things up a bit.

    I think, retorted Ken, that Jesus meant heaven instead of this physical world. I will put my life at stake to prove that this world is not for the meek.

    I then questioned: But, how do you reconcile your assertion with what is written in the gospel of Jesus that God’s ‘will’ be established here on ‘earth as it is in ‘heaven’? A more important puzzle in my mind is: Why does the black man achieve excellence only in the land of the white man—but not on his own soil back in Africa? Even those who eventually achieved excellence in Africa have had some form of contact with the white man, you know, like a formal education at Oxford or Cambridge in England or Harvard in America. And, yet another riddle: What is in the blood of the white man that pushes him to conquer at all times? Do you guys know that some Japanese boast that if they had control of Africa, within the first six months, the entire continent would be transformed into the land of milk and honey? Remember, we Africans and the Japanese have similar cultures—a communal approach to life is a key element in our fundamental existence. I believe that it has nothing to do with the fact that we’re lazy. But, if anyone wants to contradict me, answer me, why did the white man go to Africa for slave labor to till his farms and build his roads? There’s a theory that the white man went to Africa and brought black people to America because we blacks were supposedly the most tractable and pliable of all races. However, I want to differ from that opinion. I believe the white man brought our people to America because our people were exceptional workers. Worked harder. Worked longer. Worked better.

    Let me set the record right, Ken quickly interrupted. I wanted to argue with Ken, but it turned out we were both on the same side of the page. Ken continued, "The issue is neither about philosophy nor economics, pliable versus not-so-pliable. It’s about the fate of black people. German St. Maurice—what about him? He was a black man. There also was a doctor I’ve read about, a guy named Williams. Daniel Williams. He performed the first heart surgery. I’m not sure about the year, perhaps in the

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1