African Insights
Ezine – 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 would get updates via the BBC, Sw
iss
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
newsaholic, 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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