Thursday, January 27, 2005
he's bono-rific!
I was home sick all day today, and will be tomorrow. I'm also up kind of sleepless right now for some reason, though I feel the meds kicking in as I type this.
Since I was home, I was surprised to flip past C-SPAN and see, right there in living color, black leather and wrap around opaque glasses, Bono. So I stopped my dull scanning of cable channels to see what he was up to. I was bemused by his coolness so much that I just had to listen. He was at the G8 summit on Africa, I think. It was a six (I think) person panel, with such diverse names as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Tony Blair, President Mbeke from South Africa, another African president (Nigeria, I think) who's name escapes me, and some French lady moderating the discussion in front of what looked to be thousands of journalists, writers, activists, etc.. etc.. etc... My ears perked up because of the topic, so I hung out on that channel and listened for a while. Coupled with some of what I know and have learned about Africa in both my class, and first hand knowledge (though the latter is very limited), I listened intently for some of the hot topics we've been discussing.
I've said before that the west often forgets about Africa. It used to be called the dark continent, but there is no excuse for that epithet now, if the darkness refers to the unknown. However, the history of Africa remains not only muddled, but markedly absent from both High School and College curriculums around the country. How can we have such a blind spot? The African continent easily has enough land mass to house the land masses of ALL of North America, ALL of Europe, and ALL of India and the near east. It is a MASSIVE continent with almost a billion or more inhabitants. Mankind has been on that continent for eons, and recent discoveries have noted that it is possible that the earliest forms of horticulture and agriculture began in Africa (Ethiopian Highlands). In addition, some of the early cities and kingdoms of Africa rivaled those of Europe during the same time period, and were even perhaps more advanced (Kingdom of Ghana, The Great Zimbabwe). These kingdoms had trade routes that spanned half the globe.
But, in came Vasco De Gama, and the crusades. They put an end to all that. Then came colonialism, who put a further end to the rest. And when the colonialists found the ruins of massive cities (The Great Zimbabwe), they refused to believe the savages could have built on such a scale. In typical 19th century arrogance, they automatically assumed that some ancient white anglo, or middle eastern people had built them. They believed that they had found the Kingdom of Sheba mentioned in the Bible. Simple blindness and arrogance.
We don't need to forget about Africa, nor do we need to falsify it's history. Africa is a far richer and more diverse place than we know. Africa isn't just about animals who still live there. It's where the human story begins.
And so, Bono waxed on philosophically about the needs Africa has. About abject poverty. About the war on terror, and the possibility that Africa might be one of the next fronts on this, the most ambiguous of wars. The panel talked about simple needs. Needs for which the rest of the planet could easily pay for. They talked about debt forgiveness for African nations, which is much needed. What I didn't hear, even in all the poetical talk from that cool Irishman, was talk about action.
What Africa needs is action, not talk. And yet, as an anthropologist, I remain trepidatious. Will it be done right? Will we offend? Will we slowly erode millennia of tradition? I guess that's the job of the anthropologist, to be concerned, and ultimately, to document and remember.
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