Home » Nigeria » Another African Day

Africa began with no call, no sign, no indication. The gate for boarding at Heathrow International Airport opened and that was the start. All rows, all seats, all passengers crowded like a Haitian voting-poll, but eventually formed into two snaking lines as black as a cobra’s sheen. A few white spots speckled the arrangement, I among them. Suddenly, the minority I sought was found—and it was me.

Another African Day

Camron Karsten
2006-02-18 20:22:17

Displayed times (last time: )

not want to believe Africa was
Women's cloth ranges from all patterns to all shades of color- vivid, raw, but soft.Africa. I wanted to see Hemmingway’s green hills and Mother Earth’s Sahara. I didn’t want to ever think of them stained the color blood-red.

Over Nigeria’s forty-five years of independence, only nine of the years have been under a form somewhat akin to democracy (if you want to call it that). It has seen its overburdening horrors of dictatorship—and all within that package—as well as military coups, a civil war, intergovernmental degradation, oil and its unjust industry, selfishness, and the complementary environmental destruction. As a struggling democracy, leaders of Nigeria accomplished everything of what not to do, and presented a democratic vision as far from rational reality as possible. Discord, divisiveness, greed, and more money, more exploitation. People suffered. People protested. They were aware of their rights. People murdered.

Across a diverse land, where over 250 ethnicities reside, where over 250 dialects are spoken, Nigeria is Africa’s melting pot—like the UK’s London, like the United States. What is different here, what is contrary to cooperation, is a birthright, a born-and-raised exposure to a society run with problems and then one adjusted with found solutions to those very problems. All the characters and qualities, all the negatives—poverty, sickness, war and violence; they have become habit. Violence is habit to Nigeria—habit to Africa—as violence is habit to man.

“Nigeria is…” Lisa paused to search for the right word.

“Nigeria is…” Wayne continued, likewise finding himself lost.

I stepped to the plate and thought of all the papers, all the research and statistics; the demography, the leaders, their actions and their inevitable end. I thought of all the blood spilled, not only on Nigeria, and not only on all of Africa, but across the whole planet throughout the history of man, the history of life from its very origins. One word emerged from the abyss, a darkness of the mind, located at the roots of Conrad’s heart and its experience. I finished the sentence:

Nigeria is brutal. Nigeria is raw.

Erased of the input, unplugging the feedback and doing away with the vicarious knowledge of other’s perceptions, I cleared my thoughts. Like that starting piece of paper; white, blue, black, red—whatever color—it was empty. And from this source of unknowing, unconditioned by the senses, I was drawn to travel and greet Africa with my blank pages of joy: She is neither brutal nor grand. She is neither happy nor sad. Simply, Africa, and specifically Nigeria, is a land to behold. It is a land with its people and its culture, beset in its own evolutionary process, and we twenty-plus citizens from another land, a separate world, come to gain our own insights and share our own personalities. Within our own group of people, we are our own unique melting pot, and beneath the superficial differences presenting a canvas of words, thoughts, and actions, we all rise and are bound by the same Love.

I left Lisa and Wayne. I departed London via Heathrow. And I entered a vast country with its many characters, qualities, and personalities. Here, I carried each influence from today, yesterday, from twenty-one years passed, and washed myself clean as Africa began; one without warning or sign. It just did and simply is. This is Africa. This is the world I was raised, the London I saw, the Nigeria I entered. Welcome to Lagos.