Heritage Without Nostalgia

Observing Heritage from a Distance

Two events this month should have created a kind of nostalgia in me, but I seriously failed to be excited about either. I had become an observer of sorts of elements that have formed part of my identity.

Whilst in Cape Town, there was the Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey on the 9^th of March, and then yesterday came the conclusion of the first UK state visit in 37 years by a West African head of state, the Nigerian one. [The Royal Family: State Visit by The President and First Lady of Nigeria]

The first event gained significance through someone I follow on Twitter/X who had been invited to a reception at St James's Palace, though he could not attend because he was indisposed. As an activist for Nigerian immigrant causes, he had become prominent enough to be noticed and recognised as an important Nigerian diaspora figure.

For the state banquet at Windsor Castle, several people of Nigerian heritage were invited to represent the Nigerian community, many of whom have stronger roots in the United Kingdom than in Nigeria.

An English Identity

My living parents are Nigerian, but I was born in England, and though I have strong influences of Nigeria in my identity framework, I do not identify as such. To any question about where I am from, I respond that I am an Englishman, and I am originally from England.

This is reinforced by the fact that two-thirds of my life has been spent in Europe. Even for ethnic purposes, I would describe myself as Black English rather than the typical Black British or Black African.

This distinction matters to me because Black British functions as an umbrella term that groups together vastly different backgrounds and experiences, often implying a hyphenated identity or connection to a diaspora narrative.

Black English, by contrast, centres my English identity as primary. It asserts that I am English who happens to be Black, rather than suggesting divided loyalties or perpetual newcomer status.

The choice is deliberate: it reflects where I was born, where I belong, and how I understand myself. It challenges the assumption that Blackness and Englishness are somehow contradictory, and it refuses to accept that “English” is synonymous with “white.” For someone like me, whose connection to Nigeria exists more in memory than in meaningful attachment, this specificity matters.

The Outsider's Accent

I can reminisce about aspects of childhood and development that have served me well from having lived in Nigeria, yet for the simple reason that I had an accent, I was always an outsider.

That accent was no affectation; it was the sound of my formative years, the linguistic imprint of the England where I first learned to speak, to think, to understand the world. By the time we moved to Nigeria, my identity architecture was already established.

The English pronunciation I arrived with immediately identified me as different. In the playground, in the classroom, even within extended family gatherings, the way I spoke became a constant reminder that I did not belong in the same way others did.

Children would mimic my speech, adults would comment on how I sounded “British” or call me “Òyìnbó,” and I became known as “Ọmọ ìlú Òyìnbó,” the boy born abroad, or more literally, the child born in white-man’s land.

The accent was an audible barrier that no amount of time or adaptation could fully erase, a daily declaration of otherness that shaped my understanding of where I truly belonged.

The irony, of course, is that this very accent that made me perpetually foreign in Nigeria was simply part of the spectrum of English voices from the West Midlands. In Nigeria, I was told daily through reactions to my speech that I was foreign; in England, I simply was.

My parents, who moved from Nigeria to England and back, could navigate both worlds with the fluency of belonging. They spoke the languages without pronounced accents, understood the unspoken rules, carried the cultural memory in their bones. I had none of these inheritances.

Where they were returning home, I was simply living abroad. This distinction, between inherited belonging and biographical accident, crystallised my understanding that identity is not a matter of bloodline but of lived experience and genuine connection.

The experience taught me something fundamental: identity is not about where others place you, but where you place yourself, and where you are recognised as belonging without constant explanation.

Detachment and Memory

In terms of identity, whilst I am interested in what goes on in Nigeria, I am more detached than ever. The closest association nowadays depends on whether my flight between France or the Netherlands and Cape Town flies over the Nigerian landmass, where place names trigger some memory or recognition from more than 50 years ago.

In general, I have determined there is no reason to visit Nigeria since I left over 35 years ago. I have the name, I have the influences, I have the memories, but the nostalgia has fully settled into obsolescence and insignificance.

Gratitude Without Nostalgia

Yet I love that Nigeria was part of my upbringing because it strengthened elements of self-identity, self-esteem, and self-respect. For that alone, I am grateful for the Nigerian experience, as it reinforces the context and sense of who I am.

God bless Nigeria, for when things are going well in Nigeria, there is less anxiety for all of us associated, even in the remotest sense, with Nigeria.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

The Boy Born Abroad

An Unexpected Journey

When I was asked if I wanted to go to Nigeria about 55 years ago, no one intimated to me that it was a permanent move. I thought we were going on holiday. I suppose I was not that perceptive, even with my known precocity, to notice the excitement in my parents' urgings, nor the significance of that final night in England when all their friends gathered for a send-off.

The place to which my parents belonged, and which they called home, eager to return, having watched the Nigerian Civil War for years until it ended, was foreign, different, and strange. But I had no choice in the matter. They were my guardians; I was their ward. The common idea was that, as a child, I would adapt, adjust, and adhere.

A Different Reality

No sooner had we landed than the first thing I noticed was that there were more of us and fewer of them. Nigeria hits you with a kind of alternative reality. I could only wonder whether having other siblings in England might have altered the idea of taking us back before my parents had settled down. Things would most definitely have been easier than being an only child.

In the approximately two decades that I lived in Nigeria, I had assimilated to an extent, yet I was very much an alien. Even though my accent had been affected, it had not radically changed to the extent that I could not be differentiated as having some foreign influence.

Besides, something daily reminded me of being other than among. From address to observation, a middle-class bubble placed me in a kind of elite and a place of privilege. Those of us born abroad seemed to have a built-in ET beacon calling home: abroad.

Then again, we all seemed to have endured Nigeria for as long as parental or guardian influence could keep us, before we mostly took flight as soon as we completed tertiary education. Something could be written about the exodus of kids born abroad in the 1960s, once they could.

A Turning Point

I even had a kind of fantasy. I was involved in some interesting projects where I, unusually, dictated my own terms, a daring born out of earlier precociousness that had matured into a fearless tendency to assert when, typically, others might deflect and genuflect.

I walked into a visa office with enough documentation that the conversation left the idea of granting the visa for exchanging anecdotes about other applicants who might have given the consular officer a second career full of material to be a successful stand-up comedian.

He was even urging me to apply for a British passport, but the lead time from lodging an application to getting an interview was 18 months. I just did not have the time when I was travelling the next week to get kit for a company in which I owned 30% equity.

However, after a fortnight in England, during which Maggie Thatcher was turfed out of Downing Street, it took me just four weeks to decide I had had enough of Nigeria. This was exacerbated by my partner in the firm. My original idea of visiting England at will had given way to leaving Nigeria for new opportunities, and that was executed with precision.

Roots and Reflections

As I write this blog post, I would have been flying into London Heathrow on a delayed flight from Lagos 35 years ago today. I have never returned, even as I cherished the quality of heritage and stories Nigeria gave me. I was always that boy born abroad in a white man's land.

That anyone still holds the prospect of a jaunt to the fatherland or motherland is interesting to the point of amusement.

I never had the emotional, nostalgic luxury of a dreamy reconnection with my roots, as my roots were never there, even as my ancestry is grounded there. The funny thing is, I still have my last boarding card from my departure from Nigeria. It was a different time.

My boarding pass from 1990

Nigeria, some hail thee

Nigeria, off my mind

On the first of October, Nigeria celebrated its 65th year of independence; however, in my mind, I let the day slip away with a sense of the uneventful.

As the thought crossed my mind, I realised that, despite the heritage, childhood experiences, memories, and influences, these are all vital parts of my being, though my affinity for Nigeria has diminished to the phrase, ‘my parents are Nigerian’.

Thirty-five years after I left Nigeria for the final time, I have no desire to visit or revisit any part of the seemingly privileged, idyllic childhood I once experienced there.

Even so, I am as estranged as anyone can be from any of the relations and relationships that once contributed to what might be called a sense of identity. It was a place; it was never home.

Relating to Nigeria

The independence days of yore, when Nigeria was still a young nation, were celebrated under a series of murderous military juntas, whose many names and roles I still recall. How we endured the sweltering heat on parade grounds, ready to march before military governors taking the salute on a dais.

One cannot forget how the Nigerian anthem of that era, written in 1959 but replaced by socialist-themed lyrics in 1978, remained etched in the mind as more representative of Nigeria’s story, until it was readopted in 2024. Although I have not personally sung it again, it felt like a Nigeria I could relate to.

Belonging elsewhere

My sense of belonging today is to the land of my birth and a land of my dreams, along with a land of desire from where I found a love beyond compare, England, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Nigeria is a place I view from 10,000 metres when travelling at a land speed of 960 kilometres per hour. The moving map on the aeroplane shows cities as we traverse from the middle of the north through to the southeast into Cameroon.

As I get less encumbered by detachment, I appreciate Nigeria’s contribution without acceding to any concept of being possessed by it. It was a place I was taken to, a place where I never truly belonged.

Every pretension to Africa for Africa Day

Africa Day in Manchester

I had planned nothing for the past Bank Holiday weekend except to catch up on some much-needed rest and sleep when I was offered a ticket to attend the Echoes of Africa event at Aviva Studios/Factory International on Saturday the 24^th.

This was in commemoration of Africa Day, previously known as African Freedom Day or African Liberation Day, initiated by the Organisation of African Unity on the 25^th of May 1963.

Looking at the agenda of events running from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM, I was unsure if I had the stamina for 7 hours of potential revelry and entertainment, but I was determined to show up, if only out of gratitude for the invitation.

Please, I’m not fooled.

The Live Painting Workshop, which had begun in the early afternoon, was already underway when I arrived. I took a seat on one of the long sofas at the back, and I tempered my cynicism regarding the artistry of the participants, who were pretending to represent some essence of Africa. It easily resembled a messy children’s paint class, yet people of all generations were engaged in it.

We have been led to believe that a certain combination of vibrant colours and abstract shapes is representative of Africa in context or origin; it reflected everything Toto’s Africa was, but not the reality of what Africa is. The inspiration for the song originated from a late-night documentary about Africa and likely the recollections of missionaries to Africa who became teachers for American schoolchildren.

An unrelatable discussion

The next item on the agenda, beyond the over-representation of Nigerians on the discussion panel, focused on a topic likely more suited for those seeking a career in Afrobeats or some contemporary genre of African music. Having first met a lady of Portuguese and Guinea-Bissau descent who knew the lyrics to everything the female disc jockey played; I spent more time with a grandmother of Caribbean heritage tending to her noticeably Caucasian grandson.

Indeed, what is now deemed the music of Africa is quite pervasive; it has a global audience, and collaborations are extending its reach into places one would never have expected such music to resonate.

Yet, in my conversation with the grandmother, I thought a more relevant topic would be how we preserve the significance of our African heritage in the diaspora and provide younger generations a sense of belonging in the various spheres that influence education, experience, and identity.

Music and fashion to the world

Perhaps this was not the forum for such a cerebral debate, and thus far, it had only intensified my scepticism regarding the purpose of this gathering. Each time we were urged to make more noise like Africans, there was a feeling that English reserve had crept upon us unawares.

The live music performances were interesting, but I knew none of the artists or their music, and I was barely connecting until one performer took the stage like the Bobby Caldwell of Afrobeats.

If there were no visuals, one would imagine the performer hailed from a large city in Africa; he had mastered everything and could pass for being as good as the popular Afrobeats artists.

Then came the fashion show; the mispronounced words by the compere regarding atelier to Aso oke were quickly forgiven when it became clear that the distinction between African designer and African fashion meant the latter garnered less attention compared to the former. Some of the items showcased on the catwalk were comical at best, but I am not the target audience for this kind of attire.

Before I knew it, it was almost 6:00 PM—a delightful day out and a reminder that the Echoes of Africa were just that; an echo is a reflection of the original sound and should not be mistaken for the real thing.

Thought Picnic: Personal questions in the aftermath of Charlottesville

Where learning history matters

There are events in the world today that may not directly affect one, but cannot be ignored as they bring to the fore some critical issues of identity and identification in the context of residence, heritage, knowledge, history and an uncertain future.

In terms of history and knowledge, there is an understanding and appreciation of the trading of humanity as cargo for slave labour and the resulting burden of deprivation and civil rights struggle that reflects the plight of the underprivileged across the globe in terms of racial prejudice, gender inequality, wealth gaps, the voiceless minors, the sexuality minorities, the religiously oppressed and those for all sorts of reasons seemingly condemned to be the lesser of our diverse humanity.

A new angle of white privilege

The Charlottesville situation has become an instructive exemplifier of a broken society, that after so many protests and agitation in the last decade of law enforcement brutality in the senseless killing of young black people in America, it has taken the killing of a Caucasian lady in Heather D. Heyer by another Caucasian man in James Alex Fields Jr. to bring the issue of race and class into a turbulent national American if not global discussion. [Wikipedia]

African-Americans have hit the streets with Black Lives Matter, but the reality of Charlottesville shows that bizarrely and practically for anything to happen in America and possibly elsewhere in the western world, White Lives Matter in context and event first for engagement to become universal. This represents the epitome of White privilege.

A Nero on the fiddle

By consequence, it also revealed President Trump’s incapacity to reflect and consider his position as leader of a nation he intends to make great again to find the words and actions necessary to unite the whole country in all its diversity towards the purpose of greatness. Rather, he stood in the dividing line between the conflicting issues and spiritedly widened the gulf irresponsibly like Emperor Nero long before him who fiddled whilst Rome burnt down around him. [This is more metaphor of relevance than an allusion to historical fact.]

Where a man who such power should have found a way to walk in the worn shoes of the many whose soles bleed from treading the rugged roads as they flee the ravenous beasts of terrible American history roam to devour any that seek a semblance of freedom, like a cloven hoofed mule he laid a trail of dung from the beasts to people in flight exposing all to peril in senseless and unguarded verbosity.

We were once again intimated with the unfortunate observation that never in contemporary times has any man been given such great responsibility to only use the office he occupies with no inkling of duty or purpose, his breath-taking irresponsibility which has received deserved opprobrium might only well stiffen his unteachable mule-like imperviousness to reasonable discourse.

The questions that arise

However, the broader issue extends to how as a minority of many degrees this affects my status, my identity and sense of safety in a Brexit-convulsed United Kingdom. For instance, where have elements of privilege I have enjoyed by circumstance, upbringing and good fortune created both a profile and a shield against suffering what others like me do suffer?

What has given me the sense of highly-developed self-esteem that allows me to tackle racialised scenarios with the purpose to educate rather than take offence?

Why have I now begun to realise that I have in many cases endured and absorbed slight, abuse, belittlement, humiliation and denigration from people who in other circumstances besides the ones that brought us together in seemingly egalitarian settings where were it not for that, they would never have found the means to venture into my purview, but for the privilege of nature rather than upbringing?

Embracing my heritage and my humanity

Yes, I am presented with many questions I must find new answers to in the journey of self-discovery, yet, at the same time, I must not be absorbed by this quest as to lose my privileged sense of well-being, however, I hope it allows me to walk a long hard mile in the shoes of many who have never found opportunity, privilege, fortune or right as I have found to thrive everywhere I have lived.

I cannot deny who I am and the rich heritage that makes up my person, my personality and my outlook, but I have to embrace and contextualise how my own experience should engage better in either an individual or in a broader way redound to others who I may be blessed to bestow a greater sense of self-esteem and self-respect in our wonderfully amazing humanity.

There are lessons to learn from what happened in the aftermath of Charlottesville, whether that opportunity would be taken is to be left to history, I hope many are taking the better lessons to heart.

Opinion: On the pejorative of being 'white on the inside'

So he said

Steven Patrick Morrissey who is commonly known as Morrissey and really from my perspective might have been noticed for the fact that the name is recognisable but whatever he might have done and I am led to believe he sings in a band known as The Smiths whose music has had no personal recollection as to be forgettable, appears to have opinions.

Reading the Wikipedia entry as pertains this man suggests for an Englishman that he is apparently controversial as if I care a hoot.

However, I am drawn to comment on a view he expressed to Larry King in a somewhat candid interview, they say, when he surmised in the following words, “So is Obama, is he white inside? It’s a very logical question, but I think he probably is.”

The pejoratives are many

I have never really been sure as how to respond to this kind of view, the many variants of this “white in the inside” pejorative is probably, ‘bounty’, ‘coconut’, ‘not one of us’, or ‘thinking like a Westerner’.

All of these I have been called at various times for having an opinion, standing by a principle, enjoying an interest, stating an objective or daring a particular conspicuousness of appearance.

It is a maligning form of slanderous condemnation borne of you not acting to a type or a stereotype, where your somewhat unique worldview is excoriated as a betrayal of the identity you are supposed to project and accept.

In this case, Morrissey was suggesting Barack Obama was not doing enough for black people in America especially after the globally significant incidents that have affected young black men in encounters with the police.

Barack Obama leads a nation

Maybe it is too much to say that Barack Obama is mixed race and was primarily brought up by his Caucasian maternal grandparents, even if he more or less identifies as black, his heritage is indisputable. Should one also say that he is the president of a very diverse United States of America, representing all peoples and in which the African American population does not number 20% of the total population?

Whilst again, he might have an affinity with fellow African Americans, the level-headedness with which he has addressed these issues is more what you will expect of a leader, he is not a controversial reactionary. In my view, he is not the reincarnation of Martin Luther King Jr nor a Moses that has come in the spirit of Exodus to lead a people away from a history of slavery depicted in the racism and the deprivation that has hallmarked the existence of the African American in the United States of America.

His job is to speak to reason, speak to hearts and minds and get people to contemplate what kind of country they want to live in that represents the theoretically attainable aims of freedom, of justice, of equality, of fairness and of liberty. He does that well and that is why he is also in his second term as president.

We refuse to be stereotyped

Yet, this whole matter harks to a kind of clannish politics of identity where you are expected to think and act in a particular way, hold up placards and lead protests within a stereotypical pigeonhole that you have been allotted but have refused to occupy.

In that, I remember when a friend asked that I give him an academic reference when we both knew I had never held an academic position, talk less of guaranteeing the academic nous of a friend; a serious conflict of interest and opinion. I countered and generously offered to write a character reference which I believed will be as good and any reference he might require.

I do remember that years after that, I did write a character reference for another friend seeking admission to a university and on the strength of that, the admissions officer called me to suggest I was also the kind of person they were looking for to attend their university. That is how I started a postgraduate programme with the University of Liverpool.

Race does not define virtue

Yet, my friend contemned me and abused me for refusing to give him an academic reference and ended his diatribe with calling me a coconut.

Rather than take offence, I understood his inference and responded, “It is not the exclusive prerogative of the Caucasian to be objective.” If I were in his close proximity, I might have been decapitated, but the self-same fact could not be ignored.

Race or identity does not determine virtue or character, and whilst experience and heritage might shape certain views, they do not have to rigidly define you that you become another example of a stereotype or be found to true to type.

Your character is the greater impression

Indeed, there are people who put it on, who have a particular mannerism with its affectations and there are others who are naturally who they are. By nature or by nurture, we are products of different influences that do not necessarily mean we cannot be liberal, be fair, be just, be honest, be true, be objective, be loving, be forthright and be much else.

Your race is not what decides whether you stick to the rules or not, that is a function of your character, the principles you espouse and the impression that you want to make either consciously or unconsciously.

I will not apologise for who I am or what I have become as a result of my life’s experiences, my pigmentation is a gift of nature, my attitudes, however, are not dictated by the colour of my skin, but by the strength of my character – even Martin Luther King Jr dreamt of a day when my colour will not automatically include me in a stereotypical straitjacket when I am just trying to be an understanding and a teachable member of the human race.

To Morrissey, one might be tempted to say, he is ‘blank on the inside’, but that will be to stoop to his primaeval level. Perish the thought.

Maison Tropicale - Grand Projects

The context of grand projects

The most recent grand project in Africa was the 2010 FIFA World Cup and that had its detractors. Many who thought the billions spent on hosting the jamboree could have been better spent on development and poverty alleviation projects.

In some ways, there is feeling that grand projects should be sited anywhere else but Africa until it develops to a certain standard of living before it gratifies itself with something big.

Apart from a major art commission in Senegal, the issue of the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro [1] in Cote d’Ivoire was discussed, this was at one time in the Guinness World Records the world’s largest church.

In context, the Catholics of Cote d’Ivoire are quite proud of this church as theirs in Africa and it was consecrated by Pope John Paul II in 1990.

For the masses and for excellence

As we discussed this, it reminded me of Oprah Winfrey Lady’s Academy for Girls [2] (OWLAG) in South Africa where the American media mogul had sunk $40 million of her own money to create an institution of educational excellence.

Many thought it would have been better for her to create 40 $1m schools instead but I offered the argument that it the job of governments to build schools for the populace and if Ms Winfrey were to spread resources thin in this manner, she would who have to rely on already failing governments to manage and run those schools.

OWLAG as a beacon of educational excellence can serve as a standard of what is achievable just as grand projects that foster pockets of development and create aspirations to raising the standards of living and quality all around Africa.

The springboard of grand projects

Whilst sadly the Maison Tropicale prototypes did not get rolled out to the 10,000 units originally planned they could have provided an upward review of traditional architectural practices and the ease of dismantling the structures could have made for easier provision of housing.

Unfortunately, those were lessons we failed to learn but 33 years after the event in the Nigeria, the villages built [3] for the 2^nd Black Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC ‘77) represent one of the largest housing projects ever embarked upon in Africa.

Sources

[1] Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls [akin.blog-city.com]

[3] Festac Town - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

La Maison Tropicale Series

Maison Tropicale film in Amsterdam

Deconstructing Maison Tropicale - Introduction

Maison Tropicale - Ownership

Maison Tropicale - Heritage

Maison Tropicale - Corrupt enterprise

Maison Tropicale - Grand Projects

Maison Tropicale - Corrupt enterprise

Corrupt enterprise

The audience might have worn a wry smile when the camera focused on an interview with one of the top government officials in Congo Brazzaville.

He completely denied knowledge of the removal of the Maison Tropicale prototypes and offered that he only really learnt of their disappearance and the circumstance around the situation at the interview.

It was not convincing, silver had definitely crossed palms for the removal of that structure beyond the payment that was made to the landlady who used the paltry sum she made compared to current market value of the prototype to become a powerful slum landlord developing all the land surrounding the original prototype foundations.

In Niamey, the people seemed to have a lesser claim to the prototype and simply felt powerless in preventing their monument from being dismantled and carried away.

Powerless people

In the words of that neighbor, she said, “Poor people have no power”. This again represents the helplessness of the ordinary African in exacting their rights and getting justice.

In age-old colonial-speak, they gave us the Bible and took our land; in this case, they offered a few bronze coins for the prototypes and sold them for truckloads of gold.

The money they paid would have smoothed the bureaucratic hurdles that would have impeded the opportunities to take the prototypes out of the countries with the blessing of government officials who were supposed to hold African treasures in trust for the people and ensure they are not pilfered for personal profit of as it were art thieves.

The need for reeducation

However, without a strong sense of ownership and an appreciation of heritage very little can be done to generate the activism that would militate against African treasures being stolen out of African for the business enterprise of thieves.

There is a reeducation context to this which should include embracing our colonialist past and what came with it with the greater prospects of proud African history open to tourism and the recognition of our culture in situ.

La Maison Tropicale Series

Maison Tropicale film in Amsterdam

Deconstructing Maison Tropicale - Introduction

Maison Tropicale - Ownership

Maison Tropicale - Heritage

Maison Tropicale - Corrupt enterprise

Maison Tropicale - Grand Projects

Maison Tropicale - Heritage

A lack of appreciation

Moving on from the ownership context of Maison Tropicale, when these prototypes were somewhat rediscovered for the world that would better appreciate them, they were literally derelict.

The building in Congo Brazzaville was like a castle with a moat of overgrown weeds and shrubs, occupied by a lady who returned home after the death of her father to an inheritance that had been usurped by his relations leaving her this structure that no one thought had value.

In Niamey, the building was not occupied but one of the neighbours reminisced saying the building was like a big sister and very good shelter from the rain. This was what she missed the most about the prototype.

What is heritage?

The appreciation of heritage grows from a sense of ownership and it was a revelation when one of the important interviewees said that heritage was an un-African thing bordering on taboo.

One can almost agree entirely with this assertion, there are many historical places in Africa that have failed to realise the level of conservation that exudes national pride at first before leading to tourist interest apart from the Egyptian world treasures.

If much care and attention had been paid to these structures in Africa, it would have been impossible or quite difficult to remove them from their locations in Africa to Europe and other parts of the world.

It is arguable that if the Egyptian pyramids could be transported they might well have found homes elsewhere, the Maison Tropicale prototypes were modular and easy to dismantle [1]; it just needed someone with the means and wherewithal to cart them away.

The pillage continues

Africa has consistently suffered the pillage of her treasures and the removal of these very large structures in broad daylight as late as the year 2000 is more an indictment of our sense of ownership and heritage than of the corrupt enterprise that allowed the action to take place.

It was interesting to see the activism that seemed to follow the removal of the buildings depicted in the film but given the appreciation and value these prototypes have now gained in Paris and New York, I doubt if those prototypes would ever return to Africa

We are left to view the foundations of the prototypes where domesticated livestock graze with the regret of what could have been.

Sources

[1] YouTube - Jean Prouvé – 3D Animation construction of La Maison Tropicale

La Maison Tropicale Series

Maison Tropicale film in Amsterdam

Deconstructing Maison Tropicale - Introduction

Maison Tropicale - Ownership

Maison Tropicale - Heritage

Maison Tropicale - Corrupt enterprise

Maison Tropicale - Grand Projects

White and African and belonging too

My Economist

This morning, I picked up a tweet from the Economist, somehow, I seem to go through the weekly newspaper online long before I have physically flipped the pages of my print edition.

Suffice it to say, I am usually behind on catching up with the topics covered, it had to have been a case of prescience that I took out a two-year subscription in January 2009 to end somewhere in May 2011 without realizing I would experience a brief famine of opportunity and means not long afterwards.

The tweet - @TheEconomist: The short sad life of whites in Africa http://econ.st/9Aj5GZ - To which I added the comment - A story that also must be heard and seen.

Africans – black & white

Considering how Black Africans have “suffered” at one time under whites, one might tend to not consider the plight of presumably white Africans – but without too much controversy, it is arguable that independent sovereign black Africans are suffering badly under their own African leaders.

This is not to stir up any controversy but to assert the fact that there are white Africans who have claim and affinity to Africa than some of us who are African by reason of race, birth, custom or residence.

Putting aside the squabbles of land and resources, in a world where documentary evidence might well count for eligibility and entitlement, some whites in some African lands might be able to verifiably trace their lineage back many more generations than our black oral histories can muster – I fortunately, had a great grandmother into my 20s, she had a narrative that allowed a plot back of 6 generations from mine.

More African than I

The other day, some 15 years ago in an office in Kingston-upon-Thames, South-West of London, I heard my name called with a Yoruba perfect accent, the “N” is a bit nasalised but rarely emulated by non-Nigerians.

I turned around and was startled to see the lovely white girl who had a deeper Nigerian accent than I could ever attempt to jest with who was born in Nigeria, spoke Yoruba fluently – she said proudly, she was Nigerian by birth just as I would have said I was English – beyond the many white schoolmates I had in primary school who were Nigerian it was nice to recognise the kinship across races.

Then again, I remember another instance where a white colleague said he was more African than the 4 other black Britons of Nigerian heritage – I promptly concurred whilst the others took umbrage, considering hardly any of them could speak an African language nor had they experienced much of anything Nigerian in their lives.

Well, he was born in Kenya, he had lived in at least 3 African countries, visited 9 in addition to that, spoke Swahili, managed a bit of passable Yoruba and Hausa and bantered with corrupt African terms that made me almost too colonial to appreciate – I was beaten on that track, he was more African, period.

Loving Africa by choice

Going back to the Economist story, it is not the first time that the presumed Messianic white person has tried to do something in Africa and come to grieve at the hands of the natives – to excite passions flippantly – just as Dian Fossey comes to mind, she chose to make Africa home in the course of her research.

Another in the commendable class is Susan Wenger who became the custodian of the animist grottos of Osun in Nigeria, being one who for all intents and purposes has helped maintain those customs against the onslaught of religions that portend to declare our traditions inherently evil.

They belong as we do

We have to accept that we have ordinary white Africans who are just like you and I, who have every right to freedoms, justice, due process and consideration, just as we who proclaim for those of the black race in Africa.

They should not only be looked at in terms of colonialism, land-grabs or foils for feigned liberation struggles masking rotten leadership and corrupt – they also belong in Africa and like everyone would fight for their little piece of Africa than gives them a history and heritage.

In the end, it does not matter what colour you are or if you are in a minority, if you have a claim to be African, as anyone elsewhere might well have a claim to be who they aver they are, then you are welcome as an African brother and fellow citizen of our amazing global village.

Sources

Dian Fossey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Susan Wenger, Adunni Orisa, Dies at 83

Susan Wenger, Adunni Orisa, Dies at 83 - Worldnews.com - Videos

An interpretation of Islam lost in the embrace of a house slave

I never taught you

A good friend of mine about 12 years ago asked me for an academic reference to complete an application for a university course. I was at first surprised that I was asked for such a reference indicating I needed to manufacture a story of how I observed and assessed him academically.

I had in some ways been a mentor but that did not make me his teacher or lecturer, I could however give him a character reference which in all honestly and for all intents and purposes would be glowing and commendable that readers would be interested in him.

An argument ensued that ended up in my being called a coconut to which I retorted, it was the not the exclusive preserve of the white man to be objective – I almost had my head torn off.

Owning the house and the field

As the conversation cooled down, I had an interesting question thrown at me, it went – Are you a field slave or a house slave? [1]

It did not take me long to answer back that I was neither and if I did have anything to do with that sort of thing, I would probably be someone to own a field and house slave.

That was my first real exposure to the fact that the black race is not one homogenous identity and one collection of people, we all differ in our heritage, societies, communities, upbringing and outlook.

More interestingly, it showed how blacks from different cultures have tried to identify with blacks of other cultures and subsumed themselves to histories and cultures that have no semblance to their heritage.

Skin colour is only a visual identity it does not offer anything close to a shared heritage and we should be careful not to be caught up in such false identities in the quest for assumed brotherliness.

Understanding my own heritage

I had to check myself the other day in Amsterdam when someone thought he was racially abusing me by calling me a nigger – without catching a breath, I replied, I do not understand that term, I am free-born African.

In other words, even though I was born in the UK and have a British passport, I also have a Nigerian heritage where when I was growing up my blackness was always part of me that I feel so comfortable in my skin any abuse simply presents an opportunity for any education [2] rather than fall into a fit of uncontrollable anger and more abuse which many expect.

So, it was interesting to read that Ayman al-Zawahiri of Al-Qaeda had the most derogatory stuff to say [3] about President-elect Obama when he called him a house-negro. It exposed more of the ignorance of Al-Qaeda than the little understood heritage of Barack Obama.

Fatherly duties matter for impartation

Being born of a Kenyan father and a white American mother, there is no way Barack Obama would have been that acquainted with the realities of those who really did descend from slaves who were yanked out of Africa hundreds of years ago into so hostile a society that made animals of human beings.

He might have had an identity crisis but the worthy contributions of the maternal line of his heritage made him what he has become and we can all be grateful for that. President-elect Obama ran as an American who just happens to be black, NOT as a black man who happens to be an American – we need to get that distinction very, very clear.

Much as the Al-Qaeda stooge tried to play on Barack Obama’s supposed Muslim heritage, he seemed to forget that bequeathing a religion to a child includes the father being around to nurture the child.

Obama’s father was an absent father, a negligent father and someone who contributed very little to helping shape the identity and outlook of his son – I would suppose there is nothing that requires a father take responsibility in those matters of child development in the mind of Al-Qaeda and that it is best for the child to show the utmost ingratitude to those who poured themselves into the child to make him the success that he has become – they being Christian.

Muslim crimes and kafir exploits

Furthermore, I am concerned about that the other development that portrays Islam in even worse light, Somali Islamists are pursuing the pirates that took the Saudi-owned super-tanker on the premise that hijacking a Muslim owned ship is a major crime [4]. Bunkum!

A crime is a crime regardless of the religion or the victim, to consider that offending non-Muslims is a lesser crime than offending Muslims might be a matter of conscience but in has no place in modern-day civilisation.

If such hair-splitting analyses of heinous crimes are becoming the brand of Islam that has the louder voice, I would contend that Islam has nothing good to offer humanity and it should come under the siege of tolerant and reasonable sanction till it begins to see its greater function in the wider world.

The concept of Muslim crimes and kafir [5] exploits is abhorrent to the extreme, it is unimaginably callous and it must be completely unIslamic until I am told otherwise, it is out of kilter with civilised expression.

I know Muslims too

I also have a Muslim heritage [6], my paternal grandfather was a Muslim and he was the most reasonable and tolerant man I have met in the matters of religion; he married a Christian wife and of the 6 children he had, their religious inclinations came down to three on either side.

We celebrated both religious festivals with goodwill, good humour and reverence on all sides and there was never a time when we the Christians were treated with any contempt or lesser consideration with respect to our other relations that were Muslim.

I expect the well-meaning Islamic intelligentsia and elders around the world to condemn in the most severe terms this endorsement of lawlessness against non-Muslims – a crime should be a crime regardless of inclination or adherence, this kind of view must not gain traction.

All religion must be in aid and service of humanity or it has no place amongst us; I hope that message becomes the cornerstone of every creed, gospel, faith, affirmation or religion practiced anywhere in this whole wide world.

Sources

[1] House slave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Do Africans still live on trees? [akin.blog-city.com]

[3] BBC NEWS | Middle East | Al-Qaeda vows to hurt Obama's US

[4] BBC NEWS | Africa | Somali Islamists 'hunt pirates'

[5] Kafir - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] The people are high on opium - III [akin.blog-city.com]