Volume 5 – The Truth Africa Tells

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I had lied to myself for years, convinced that if I moved here my transition would be seamless, that assimilation would be easy. The lack of critical dialogue about Africa in the “modern world” allows Africa’s story to be carelessly told through images laced with bias. Shirtless malnourished children with outstretched hands, warlords sitting in jungles recruiting kids to kill, and the belief that the most deadly diseases of the world originated from an African primate contribute to a stunting of our collective consciousness, retarding our ability to hold meaningful discord about our common history. I heard this flawed story for years and refused to accept it but to simply deny what I knew Africa wasn’t, didn’t mean that I had any idea what Africa was…..

Africa changed me. Not in the way I assumed it would, not in a romantic way, for Africa scoffs at the idealistic visions of foreigners who come to live out their unwritten stories. If you come to Africa with dreams of reclaiming your past, to star in a personalized remake of a slave narrative that ends with iron chains being cast into the sea, if you come to spread the gospel, to claim to be an evangelist while ignoring the role of race politics in religion, if you come assuming to know what the “less fortunate” need, to save brown and black people from themselves, or if you come to dig into the sand to claim artifacts that prove your scholarly assertions, Africa will quietly mock you, it will unforgivingly turn your story into a cliche, leaving you to question all you thought you knew about the characters of your contrived fiction.

Africa mocks the western narrative for Africa mocks time, mocks how time is measured, minutes and hours lose their respect when centuries of injustice go uncounted, days are greeted with passivity when lifetimes of achievement are treated as insignificant. Seconds don’t represent the passing of minutes, they count the incessant steps of privileged feet pressing their soles into land they claim as a moral playground, hoping to wipe their conscience clean of the privileges their passports grant them. One day Africa will stop mocking time, stop mocking humanity for living a lie….

I didn’t know what to expect when I first stepped off the plane, there was a moisture in the air that mixed with the oder of something burning. I would learn that the smell was from outdated Diesel engines, taxis and buses carrying people in reconstructed metal carriages blowing pollution into sun lite skies, and like a second rate magician performing his final trick, illusions of modernization vanish in the clouds of grey smoke, the smell of exhaust suffocating a nation trying to break free from the grip of post colonial monetary manipulation. It would be the burnt air of Dakar that would offer me my first lesson in understanding the continent and the truth its story tells…..

The second lesson was waiting for me inside the terminal. It was just before sunrise and as I approached the security checkpoint an immigration officer slowly stood from his chair. He was wearing flip flops with government issue pants rolled up just above his ankles, a sign that he had performed his ablutions for the morning prayer. But his demeanor was not of someone interested in a higher power, his morning duties outweighing his intentions to declare God’s greatness. He begrudgingly made his way towards the booth to process my arrival. I greeted him with the one French word I knew, “bonjour”, he glanced at me unimpressed, sighed and proceeded to clean his teeth with some sort of twig. He slowly removed the stick from his mouth, blew small wooden slivers from his lips to the floor and returned my greeting with an inaudible mumble. He asked me questions that I couldn’t understand and with each shrug of my shoulders he would ask again in a louder tone, as if gradually increasing the volume of his voice would somehow improve my level of French. Frustrated, he finally conceded to my ignorance, shooing me on my way, relieving him from the burden of my presence and liberating him to seek his sanity in a string of prayer beads.

Here was a man that spent his days watching foreigners eagerly maneuver their way into his country, many unable to speak even one of the multiple languages he knew. He surely realized that there was nothing that separated him from each new arrival, nothing except his nationality and the hand life had dealt him. Whereas the people he was forced to greet everyday were considered tourist in his country, he would be labeled an immigrant should he ever attempt to travel to the very places they had come from, his world made smaller by the legacy of colonialism and the economic interests of the “developed” world. He would have to learn to swallow this bitter irony while continuing to process each new visitor, delaying him from practicing his faith and praying for the patience to be able stamp the passport of the next overly assuming foreigner.

With my American self centeredness I had brushed aside the officer’s discontent and retrieved my luggage to begin my life in his country, oblivious to what had just taken place. This man had signaled the beginning of the end of my own contrived narrative, the continent quietly mocking me, unbeknownst to me the truth its story tells was only beginning to be revealed…..

To all the people of Senegal, you’ve taught me more than I could have ever imagined, the US raised me, but you have formed me, I am forever grateful …