TIGblogs - ISAYA YUNGE

Coming to Ethiopia was an accident of circumstance. I had no intention of ever coming to Africa. The father of a friend was looking for someone to fill a position in his newly started business in Addis, my qualifications fit the required profile and I was hired. Apart from the 1980s famine and a few allusions to the Emperor Haile Selassie I had no prior knowledge of Ethiopia. I knew nothing of Ethiopian culture, language nor did I have any expectations.

The lack of expectations is something that worked out to my advantage. I was more curious than anything else. Very few things shocked me and I think that I was more open than most to Ethiopians and their culture. I worked for some time in an environment that was almost exclusively Ethiopian. I was able to pick up the language faster than most and I shared my living premises with my 70-year old Ethiopian landlady and her family.

The time has come for me to leave this place. The prospect of leaving Addis Ababa isn’t as gut-wrenching as I thought it would be. After almost three years in the Ethiopian capital, I can’t wait to leave. I look forward to discovering other African landscapes and cultures. Last year, around April of last year I decided that I would not renew my employment contract. By that time, I had already had my fair share of disappointments in the African Capital. Disillusioned by life in the city, and after having spoken to quite a few foreign individuals like myself, I decided to embark on a journey to explore the vices and the virtues of this Dark Continent.

Most well-travelled foreigners versed in matters relating to the African Continent all say that Ethiopia is a country that stands apart from the rest. Effectively, never having suffered the wrath of colonialism and having operated under a feudal system until the overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassie, the country has only recently been opened up to foreigners. Ethiopians are a very “proud” people. They can also be very stubborn and annoying.

Looking back, there is no doubt in my mind that I chose to come to Ethiopia simply because I didn’t want to return to Trinidad. If someone had offered me a job as a lifeguard, whose major preoccupation were to consist of saving penguins from drowning off the coast of Antarctica, I would have taken it without a second thought.

My first memories of Africa can be traced back to my grandmother’s kitchen. She told me the story of an old woman; a witch with skin as black as night that lived in trees. At night, the old woman would shed her skin and turn into a ball of fire. She would then proceed to seek out victims. She needed their blood. Their blood would provide her with the necessary strength for the long journey that awaited her. She would then proceed to fly over the seas to Africa from whence she came. She would return to her tree before daybreak. Such an old woman was called a Soucouyant. For months after having heard that story, I was afraid to leave the house at night. Our village was nestled in the thickly forested hills of Morvant, and on the darkest of nights, I was convinced that treetops took the form of old black women or were transformed into balls of fire.

I had never seen Africa, I didn’t know where Africa was at the time. But I knew that it was far removed from Trinidad and that it had special significance for the Soucouyant and for my grandmother as well.
Later on, I would learn that the Soucouyant was probably the disgruntled spirit of a slave, forcibly taken from Africa to work on the slave masters’ sugar plantations.

I also learnt of former African Empires, but even then, Africa was only a geographical abstraction, portrayed on the world map as a continent consisting of 50-something odd countries that shared a contiguous border with the sea.

As a child, I remember seeing black and white images of skeletal adults posing with their equally skeletal offspring, the latter sporting bloated bellies on their diminished skeletal frames. I would later associate these images with the Ethiopian famine that took place in the 1980s.

The West Indian of African descent, harbours very conflicting sentiments toward the African continent. This dichotomy is represented by the glorification of the continent, an oral history littered with tales speaking of past kings and their great kingdoms and the loathing of a continent plagued by poverty, wars, disease, chronic and inescapable backwardness just to name a few. It is also reflected in our ‘pekong’ and in our anecdotes parfois blessants.

I often tell people that I didn’t know that I was black while I was in Trinidad. The idea never occurred to me. I was Kamilah, a Trinidadian and a West Indian. I only became conscious of my blackness after I left home to live in a country where blacks were a minority. How is it possible to live in a country where the population is made up primarily of people with black skin and never question one’s black identity?

The idea started taking form tentatively. As time went by, it became clear that this voyage from Addis to Accra was not just a whim but a necessity. Black West Indians have always looked to Africa as a source of hope and inspiration. Members of the West Indian community living in Europe and America started lobbying for Africa’s liberation from colonial rule even before Africans themselves (Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Henry Sylvester, Aimé Césaire, Stokely Carmichael also known as Kwame Toure, CLR James and the list goes on) as well as the right to return to the continent. I started thinking about these men and I came to the following conclusion: for these West Indians, the Middle Passage was not only representative of a physical rupture with the continent but a cultural bridge that was broken and a cultural bridge that needed to be rebuilt in order to facilitate their search for identity and sense of belonging.

The idea of the Middle Passage being a bridge instead of an instrument of separation has become something of an obsession; a fascinating new perspective of sorts. The African continent has made and continues numerous invaluable contributions to the West and its development. The manpower that was used to construct the foundations of today’s modern industrialised nations came from Africa. Africa’s contribution to and continued influence in the domain of Arts and Culture on a global scale are often overlooked or underestimated. Half if not more of the primary materials needed for the construction of hi-tech digital devices and many more objects prized by the West, are taken from the Continent.

Today, many comprising Africa’s lost generations, are now looking toward the Continent for answers. Some come to visit, others “repatriate”. I’m just curious.

Lately, I have been secretly harbouring the idea that the descendants of West Indian slaves are in fact the most evolved, successful, well-adjusted blacks in the entire world.

I am of the opinion that slavery was a blessing in many ways. My forebears may have borne the brunt of many evils but I number among the many that have reaped the rewards of their labour and of the inherent iniquity that characterised West Indian Slavery.

Here in Africa, the concept of nationhood barely exists. The ethnic origins of many are displayed on their identity cards. Tribalism and clannish behaviour are rife. An Ethiopian Somali is a Somali first and he will only agree to consider himself as being Ethiopian after much effort and wrangling. An Ethiopian Gurague distinguishes himself from his fellow non Gurague countrymen and the same goes for those belonging to the Tigray, Amhara, Sidama, and Oromo communities just to name a few.

Almost all of the civil conflicts in Africa – Somalia being the only exception – in addition to being fuelled by foreign money and foreign weapons, are fuelled by ethnic differences.

These kinds of disputes between men of the same colour are unheard of in the West Indies, where, because of slavery, ethnic identities were eliminated from collective memory. The whites, having realised that their interests were not served by keeping blacks of the same ethnic group together, simply dispersed them. In the absence of a common language or culture to unite them, they were coerced into shedding their ethnic identity. This technique, initially used by whites to sow disorder and disunity among the blacks would be instrumental in causing them to unite against slavery with one resounding voice.

No ethnic identity transformed itself into one common identity… that of the Black Slave Identity. Lack of linguistic diversity transformed itself in to One Common Language, one which the slave masters were either unable to understand or were only able understand with great difficulty. These were the conditions that led to rebellions (concealed or overt). These repeated uprisings and demonstrations of resistance coupled with the economic transformations and the rise of the Humanitarians of the epoch, led colonial powers put an end to slavery in the West Indian Islands.

With the emancipation of the slave came another burning question: How were the whites supposed to maintain their symbolic superiority and live in a secure environment, in a place where they were now part of a vilified minority in the midst of a sea of angry revenge-seeking blacks?

The answer was education. Education was employed as a means to appease their hatred and their anger, but also as a means of population control, as a means to continue to assert white power over a black majority. First it started off as teaching former slaves a trade, then it evolved into teaching the children of former slaves basic reading, writing and arithmetic and finally the grandchildren of slaves demanded more. They received an education and some were even awarded scholarships to study at illustrious European Universities and were allowed to travel. The West Indian islands produced intellectuals that rivalled their European contemporaries and because of their unusual mobility were able to influence and shape many a policy. To this day, education is a highly valued commodity among Blacks in the West Indies. This was not the case in Africa.

One of the things that I most dislike about the African is his tendency to blame others, to externalise instead of to interiorise. It’s probably grossly unfair to say that this is particularly an African trait. It’s probably a very human trait, but the people of this continent have a marked propensity for exaggerating this particular human flaw. They also demonstrate an innate talent for supplication also commonly referred to as arse-kissing.

When I think of my experiences here, I have to say that they have been bitter-sweet. And if I were to be brutally honest, I would have to say that they have been more bitter than sweet.

Most people visit this country in passing. They are awed by the landscapes and the eucalyptus scaffolding used to support workers on building sites; in short, they are completely taken by this country’s physical attributes and exoticisms. They spend a couple of weeks and then they leave contented with the images that were fed to them. When I travel, the impressions that I often take with me are that of the people. I never stay in the best hotels and I rarely eat in the posh restaurants because what I really take pleasure in, is observing the locals.

I have travelled to many places in the world. I have been both part of the minority and part of the majority. I have had countless wonderful encounters and experiences with locals and with other travellers. Every where I’ve been, I almost always seemed to find some semblance or sentiment of “home”; a place in which and people with whom I feel at ease. Strangely, this has hardly been the case here in Ethiopia. Ever since my arrival here, I have never felt completely at ease. I can’t seem to shake the feeling of being a foreigner among the locals. I can honestly say that I have never been made to feel as much of a foreigner anywhere else in the world. After almost three years, integration or any semblance thereof has remained elusive.

Pet peeves:

• The transactional nature that characterises almost every relationship between locals and foreigners.
• Beggars.
• False pride, false aid and false development: the kinds that encourage a man to shed his dignity in favour of adopting a dog-like posture so that he might be rewarded for sitting up on his hind legs while holding out his front paws expectantly when confronted with his benevolent master.

Several weeks after my arrival in Ethiopia I distinctly recall thinking to myself: ‘I feel like I’ve been here for a thousand yesterdays.’ Such a sentiment was not an exaggeration. The feeling was accompanied by a surge of introspective questions. Frustration began to take hold and I felt that with every step forward I took two giant leaps backward. The days became monotonous because the results never varied. I could not see the fruits of my labour but what shocked me the most was the lack of initiative of those that were in need of assistance. Never before had I committed myself to staying in one place for such a long time and for the first time I had begun doubt my decision because by the end of those first several weeks, formerly exhilarating and interesting tasks soon became dauntingly repetitive. I was fatigued.

I admit that patience is not one of my virtues and it is often said that one comes to Ethiopia to become versed in this particular art. Most people think that the preferred sport of Ethiopians is long distance running. I beg to differ. After having spent some time here, I consider myself to be an authority on the matter and I can categorically state that the preferred sport of Ethiopians is called “tinish k’oy” which is closely followed by the equally ambiguous “ishee” and “nega”. While all of these words may have varying literal translations, their common usage is frequently employed by the speaker to convey the idea that one will have to wait – usually for an unspecified amount of time- before anything gets done.

What is this thing called development? How does Africa define it? More importantly, how is it measured? What fruits has it borne? How has the continent benefited? How have the people within its boundaries benefited?