When I was a student in elementary school, the only thing that we learned about Africa was that early American slaves came from there. In high school, we learned that the Nazis occupied it for a little while in the second World War. In college I branched out into literary terms of Africa through the eyes of a Danish woman in “Out of Africa” and through the eyes of a male chauvinist in “The Snows of Kiliminjaro.”
In my last semester at the university, as filler and because I wanted a different kind of history class, I took African History I. I don’t know why I thought that it would be different from any other history class, but it was—a history rich in fable, creationist theory, oral traditions. Taking that class was like taking a semester of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: everything was surreal and rich and you knew that if you didn’t believe something in the timeline you would regret it later. I loved that class. The professor (sadly, I have forgotten her name and have no access to the internet as I write this to find out) was a tall, bold, African-American woman who had thick, rich, braided hair down to her waist and wore the most intricate African dress. She held no accent, so my cramped Midwestern mind only assumed she was born here and getting back to her roots. She didn’t like the students so much but seemed to like me—I found the history fascinating and actually read the texts. She asked to see me and a small group of others after class once and praised us all for keeping up.
That was back when it didn’t take me six months to read a book.
That class was the last I had heard of Africa for a while, save the updates from Oprah, which didn’t impress me much. Late last year some striking images of the tragedy of the Darfur region of Africa coated the Montgomery Street subway station, and I saw the movies “Hotel Rawanda” and “Blood Diamond,” and shading started to change of the country I formerly knew as Africa. (Coincidentally, MS bought SKS’s engagement diamonds from Canada because he didn’t want blood diamonds…Africa crept closer.)
Then I started reading “What Is The What.”
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Other parts of the world were also neglected in the blandness of my education in Northwest Ohio and Southwest Missouri. Think on this—I didn’t know about the recent history of Afghanistan until a 20th Century American history class at a community college in the mid-90’s. That’s over 20 years of ignorance, followed by scant information, for the item on the Soviet-Afghan struggle was a paragraph at best in the textbook I read. I didn’t get soaked in Afghan knowledge until the deep end of the pool—September 11th, 2001. After that the New Yorker coverage made sure that I had the place memorized.
And yet…we STILL can’t solve it to the point that it won’t come back to bite us in the ass.
Last night I watched the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” written by the brilliant Aaron Sorkin and addressing the Soviet/Afghan conflict of the 80’s that I mentioned before. Nowhere in the film does the accusation come of the inevitable 9/11 down the road. (However, it is ironic to point out that Congressman Wilson was brought to charges for illegal drug possession by none other than young lawyer Rudolph Gulliani.) Yet, every person in that theatre was fully aware of the weight of the story on the screen. If the U.S. would have followed through after the war and helped rebuild Afghanistan then, the likelihood of 9/11 would have been significantly lower.
How much is enough? As with “Wilson,” I am reading the book “What Is the What” by Dave Eggers and am more than a bit miffed that I didn’t know about Sudanese refugees until now. But would I have done anything if I had? That struggle was one 20 years in length, and while settled in Sudan is now a problem in Darfur. I’ll not give away the particulars of the story, but I will grant you that once again I am reminded of the nature of the history of old that I had in college about Africa—the surrealism, the purity, the oral tradition. I also see a narrator disgusted with the nature of the United States that he flees to, and how he wrestles with that disgust.
The Lord hates a coward. And apparently so do the poorest populations of the world. I don’t know what to say or what drew me to these stories, but someday, somehow, I would like to change their post-scripts.
I can only wait and watch for the opportunity, like Charlie and Valentino.
In my last semester at the university, as filler and because I wanted a different kind of history class, I took African History I. I don’t know why I thought that it would be different from any other history class, but it was—a history rich in fable, creationist theory, oral traditions. Taking that class was like taking a semester of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: everything was surreal and rich and you knew that if you didn’t believe something in the timeline you would regret it later. I loved that class. The professor (sadly, I have forgotten her name and have no access to the internet as I write this to find out) was a tall, bold, African-American woman who had thick, rich, braided hair down to her waist and wore the most intricate African dress. She held no accent, so my cramped Midwestern mind only assumed she was born here and getting back to her roots. She didn’t like the students so much but seemed to like me—I found the history fascinating and actually read the texts. She asked to see me and a small group of others after class once and praised us all for keeping up.
That was back when it didn’t take me six months to read a book.
That class was the last I had heard of Africa for a while, save the updates from Oprah, which didn’t impress me much. Late last year some striking images of the tragedy of the Darfur region of Africa coated the Montgomery Street subway station, and I saw the movies “Hotel Rawanda” and “Blood Diamond,” and shading started to change of the country I formerly knew as Africa. (Coincidentally, MS bought SKS’s engagement diamonds from Canada because he didn’t want blood diamonds…Africa crept closer.)
Then I started reading “What Is The What.”
*********
Other parts of the world were also neglected in the blandness of my education in Northwest Ohio and Southwest Missouri. Think on this—I didn’t know about the recent history of Afghanistan until a 20th Century American history class at a community college in the mid-90’s. That’s over 20 years of ignorance, followed by scant information, for the item on the Soviet-Afghan struggle was a paragraph at best in the textbook I read. I didn’t get soaked in Afghan knowledge until the deep end of the pool—September 11th, 2001. After that the New Yorker coverage made sure that I had the place memorized.
And yet…we STILL can’t solve it to the point that it won’t come back to bite us in the ass.
Last night I watched the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” written by the brilliant Aaron Sorkin and addressing the Soviet/Afghan conflict of the 80’s that I mentioned before. Nowhere in the film does the accusation come of the inevitable 9/11 down the road. (However, it is ironic to point out that Congressman Wilson was brought to charges for illegal drug possession by none other than young lawyer Rudolph Gulliani.) Yet, every person in that theatre was fully aware of the weight of the story on the screen. If the U.S. would have followed through after the war and helped rebuild Afghanistan then, the likelihood of 9/11 would have been significantly lower.
How much is enough? As with “Wilson,” I am reading the book “What Is the What” by Dave Eggers and am more than a bit miffed that I didn’t know about Sudanese refugees until now. But would I have done anything if I had? That struggle was one 20 years in length, and while settled in Sudan is now a problem in Darfur. I’ll not give away the particulars of the story, but I will grant you that once again I am reminded of the nature of the history of old that I had in college about Africa—the surrealism, the purity, the oral tradition. I also see a narrator disgusted with the nature of the United States that he flees to, and how he wrestles with that disgust.
The Lord hates a coward. And apparently so do the poorest populations of the world. I don’t know what to say or what drew me to these stories, but someday, somehow, I would like to change their post-scripts.
I can only wait and watch for the opportunity, like Charlie and Valentino.
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