Africa, who are we? Can we define who we are by comparing ourselves to where we’ve come from? And are we in danger of forgetting who we are as we rapidly grow and develop economically and socially?
It’s easy to forget because we’ve been ‘forgetting’ for a long time. During the Scramble for Africa we endured assimilation (an ideological basis of French colonial policy in the 19th and 20th centuries where the French were coerced into adopting French language and culture while abandoning their own) and the ‘divide and rule’ strategy that broke up the traditional power and community relationships throughout Africa while telling us our language, dress, culture and customs were inferior to that of the west.
“We were divided – by race, tribe, class, gender and skin colour and the poor African was at the bottom of the heap. We believed the lie that we were not good enough and forgot that we are a beautiful, hardworking, kind and loving people.”
I remember walking into a store in Nairobi in the early 90s where I bought a few groceries. Ahead of me in the checkout lane was a European lady with a packet of milk. The Indian clerk rang in her purchase, then politely and sweetly bagged her single packet of milk. When I approached, his manner changed, he rang up my purchases with a sniff of derision then followed on to decline bagging my 20 odd groceries. He even went as far as refusing to give me a worthless piece of plastic when I offered to do the bagging myself.
While Kenya was a free and democratic nation at the time, the hidden nuances, hints, and subliminal put-downs left me with an unspoken sense that I would never be as good enough as my fellow white or lighter skinned brothers and sisters – and all of it I was unconscious to, until I traveled outside of Africa.
------From Online