The Spirit of Africa
Fifty thousand years ago, a small group of Africans set out to explore their world in search of food. Their journey, with its expanding routes and constant divergences, lasted for hundreds of generations until it inevitably led to the population of the entire world.
If this is news to you, stretch your mind! While it may seem like a strange New Age creation story, this explanation of the development of our global community has been confirmed in the past few years by archaeologists, anthropologists and most recently geneticists.
For those of us in America and Asia and Australia, it is a bittersweet moment of recognition. How exciting to find that we can all be traced back to our common ancestry, but also how tragic to admit that a global sense of “family” remains mostly a pipedream. Fractious conflicts over land, resources and religion have reduced our considerations of “others” to fear rather than frith. In fact, even as the European Union and the United Nations demonstrate the political power of collaboration, in Africa where this all began, civil war and violence have thwarted the continent’s unification and further its hopes of peace.
Until now. The balance may be tipping. With my lifelong interest in the continent heightened by Oprah’s investment in her girls school, recent emails from a dear friend who has spent the past few months caring for AIDS orphans in Southern Africa and my plans to attend the International Women’s Peace Conference in Dallas next week, I have lately been atuned to news of all things African. Then, in the past few days, there has been an interesting convergence of public voices calling for renewed hope in Africa’s future.
The first came via the radio. NPR’s Program, Morning Edition, offered a week-long exploration of literature and war that included a novelist from Somalia. Each writer spoke with honesty about their country’s brutal conflicts, and the writer from Africa had such reverence for his people and their future.
The second notable reminder of Africa was a magazine with a cover that shouted its commitment in bold, capital letters (AFRICA), and noted that “Africa is the world’s most optimistic region.” The July 2007 Vanity Fair magazine is a special issue, guest-edited by superstar musician and social activist Bono, and includes twenty Annie Liebowitz portraits of Bono’s choices of Americans impacting Africa. Portraits include Madonna, Barak Obama, Oprah, Warren Buffet, Bill & Melinda Gates and even President Bush. Other spreads introduce readers to some of Africa’s “heroes and she-roes” as well as African music, literature and film. Even the magazine’s ads are intentional: one highlights a new initative by Bono to designate companies like GAP who share their profits with AIDS efforts in Africa as (RED) and another ad by Simmons Jewelry that showcases a Green Bracelet to support initiatives in diamond rich but environmentally challenged African nations. This issue of the magazine is physically and intellectually heavy, but full of compelling truth and celebration.
Finally, back to my feeling of convergence, this past week was also the annual meeting in Ghana of African leaders whose goal it is to cooperatively address the continent’s persistent dilemmas– AIDS, civil war, famine, economic injustice, education, transporation, infrastructure– and to discuss a revolutionary (in the best sense of the word) political idea: an African Union.
Until now, African countries have had to interact in the global community as individual nations whose economic standing has left them minimalized and exploited. Pan-African unity could lead to bargaining power with western countries by focusing disparate energies. While the conference delegates noted continued pessimism by some based on continuing violence, several attendees voiced cautious optimism that the African vocabulary is gradually changing to include unification.
With all this in mind, it is as if Africa were whispering its hopes to me on every side! Listening to the voices of African writers this week, reading the pages of July’s Vanity Fair, considering the dreams of African Union delegates and reviewing my own notes from visionaries like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, I am filled with hope that my children may yet see an Africa coming together instead of coming apart!
Today, even amid the violence of the Middle East, I am reaffirmed in the wisdom of InSpiritry ideals like compassion, creativity, collaboration and courage and peace. In fact, as global citizens, if we can find the courage to turn our humanitarian attentions and problem-solving skills to places like Africa, we may find our best hope of some future family reunion of man.
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