This week leaders of the African Union celebrated the completion of their state-of-the-art headquarters in Addis Ababa. A gift from China, built with Chinese money and Chinese Labor. Recently the Indian government completed work on the Ghanian State-House. Everywhere you turn on the continent of Africa, leaders continue to make deals and accept gifts that look like progress but in fact, as Chika Ezeanya explains it, is an insult and a crime against Africa. Through her work, writing and teaching, Chika reminds Africans and the entire world that the real tradition of this wonderful continent is not to hold out your hands and have someone build you a new headquarters, it is to work hard use your own skills and strength – that is the often ignored African Way.
Background Reading and more information; read Chika for Africa, the best out of Africans, for Africa!
I can remember at the end of every summer when I was kid, having to wake up before the sun came up, to get a ride from the town’s lone taxi driver, who would take us on the long journey via the treacherous and twisty national roads of Portugal before the dawn of highways, to catch the plane back to New Jersey. Right before my brother and I would get in the car, my grandparents would do the routine: wish us a good trip and ask us if we forgot anything. Then my grandmother, who even back then never had trouble speaking her mind, would speak a dramatic line like she was rehearsing for a very poor rendition of McBeth, “I probably won’t see you next year, as I’m old and I probably won’t survive til next summer.” This would be followed by us half-laughing at her over-dramatic delivery as we’re trying to focus on the journey ahead, and the traditional, “oh be quiet with that stuff” from my grandfather. More than 20 years later, I’ve noticed my grandmother no longer says it, as I guess around the age of 90 it is simply implied.
