I like to call myself a Pan-Africanist . Not because I am an expert on it. I read a few articles and bios, I paid to see a documentary about Marcus Garvey in a cinema in Amsterdam and fell asleep. Not because the topic didn't interest me but for some reason these past 20 years I fall asleep in darkened spaced.
The reason I am a Panafricanist is because I live it.
You see when I was eleven I had my first brushes with what is now called White Supremacy that I recall as such. It was not the name-calling, it was more insidious. I was supposed to do my Holy Communion. My parents were Catholics not even devout ones but it was a "tradition" within my mother's family that you do Holy Communion. To this day I have no idea what is the point of it. I could google it but I choose not to. I got my presents and that for me was the only motivation.
Anyways every Wednesday afternoon, we were trained or inducted towards this great Event.
We were taught about the life of Christ the Redeemer, his many deeds and I was an eager student. Then one day our teacher told us to colour some prints that described his life and deeds.
So colour we did but our neighbourhood was a diverse one and so was our group so when I was colouring the people that were in the background or around Jesus I coloured them in , white, black and yellow. "Of course" Jesus was white or better yet pinky. We were studying in a church building you could not go 2 metres without seeing a statue or a painting of Jesus and all the many many saints and they were all depicting white people. It never crossed my mind that Jesus could be any other colour. It was strange that sometimes he had brown hair and brown eyes, or brown hair and blue eyes or blond hair and blue eyes but the consistent thing is that he is white. I am sure he still is in that church.
Anyway I am colouring my multicultural scenes and the teacher comes by and I can see she doesn't like what I am doing. The scenes were not supposed to be multicultural but I am not imagining things because she asks me why I am using different colours.
Imagine that! It wasn't enough that the main players were white even the bystanders, listeners had to be white.
I did not budge but from that moment on the relationship with my religious teacher was frosty and even though I understood that it irked her it took me years to understand why. At that moment I thought she just wanted to impose herself on my artistic expressiveness.
It took me almost five years before I fully understand what happened. This was because by chance I met a man from Guyana. His name was Gustave. He introduced me to Pan-Africanism and his impact on me could have been a lot greater if it weren't for his more outlandish ideas.
This man introduced me to Walter Rodney (How Europe underdeveloped Africa) and Chancellor Williams (the Destruction of Black Civilization) and if it weren't for this constant cloud of negativity that almost literally followed him, I think that we as in I and other black adolescents would have paid attention to him a lot more. I don't know what personal dealings he had with white people that he thought like that but I always remember that I wondered why he did not go back to Guyana but with hindsight maybe that was politically not expedient.
Anyway this man to whom I will always be indebted thought me what Pan-Africanism was to him. For me it means that you as a black man are an African wherever you are and that you try to connect with Africans wherever you find them or wherever they find you. It was easy for him to convince me because I could hardly claim Germanic ancestry or history and I already tried helped by my mother to find books about Africa but most books I got were sometimes openly negative about Africa's history and/or made a great concerted effort to extract Egypt from Africa.
This man helped me to understand what went on in my life and why it was happening while at the same time giving me a whole new outlook, a new perspective concerning my African heritage. Suddenly being African was cool!
When I was twenty I decided for myself that living in Africa would not have to be bad idea despite the negative image of the continent. I just wanted to be somewhere where I would fit in.
I just had no idea how that was going to pan out practically. Or how to begin. For the next ten or so years nothing happened. Then in 2000 I went to Egypt for a holiday that I would also use to see some ancient Egyptian history with my own eyes. For this reason I visited the Valley of the Kings and Karnak and I was in awe of what the ancients achieved. But it was my interaction with the Egyptians that struck me. I remember talking with some Nubian guides and I enjoyed that for the obvious reasons that they were black. We had different hair types and even our faces were not the same but it was good to see people that shared my melanin.
On the last day when going back to the Netherlands, the Egyptian (not a Nubian) customs officer refused to give me back my passport until I admitted that I was a Nubian. I don't know why it was important to him. Maybe he really thought I was an immigrant coming back to Egypt to flaunt my newly found wealth or he meant to teach me not to forget my 'roots". I still have no idea.
In 2003 I went to Senegal. This was an important journey because it was the first time I was in Sub-Saharan Africa and I loved it for the simple reason that everybody looked like me and I didn't stand out. As long as I kept my mouth shut I could pass for the real deal.
I went to Gorée and decided that visiting the slave forts was not for the faint-hearted. I only walked past or around other forts ever since. I could not stomach another visit to the innards of these constructions where my ancestors were kept before the fateful one-way trip.
When I spent three or four days in the north in a town called Saint Louis I was sold. Literally. I decided that I would be in Saint Louis (in Senegal) by 2006 no matter what. I have no idea why I chose 2006 but I knew I had to give it urgency or it would be another 20 years.
Fast forward, it's 2020 I am married to an African woman from Mali and I have son who speaks Bambara.
My personal quest is as good as over. I don't need to speak Swahili, Peul (Fulani) or Zulu to be an African. I have a son who carries my family name and is an African who speaks the local language.
The reason I am a Panafricanist is because I live it.
You see when I was eleven I had my first brushes with what is now called White Supremacy that I recall as such. It was not the name-calling, it was more insidious. I was supposed to do my Holy Communion. My parents were Catholics not even devout ones but it was a "tradition" within my mother's family that you do Holy Communion. To this day I have no idea what is the point of it. I could google it but I choose not to. I got my presents and that for me was the only motivation.
Anyways every Wednesday afternoon, we were trained or inducted towards this great Event.
We were taught about the life of Christ the Redeemer, his many deeds and I was an eager student. Then one day our teacher told us to colour some prints that described his life and deeds.
So colour we did but our neighbourhood was a diverse one and so was our group so when I was colouring the people that were in the background or around Jesus I coloured them in , white, black and yellow. "Of course" Jesus was white or better yet pinky. We were studying in a church building you could not go 2 metres without seeing a statue or a painting of Jesus and all the many many saints and they were all depicting white people. It never crossed my mind that Jesus could be any other colour. It was strange that sometimes he had brown hair and brown eyes, or brown hair and blue eyes or blond hair and blue eyes but the consistent thing is that he is white. I am sure he still is in that church.
Anyway I am colouring my multicultural scenes and the teacher comes by and I can see she doesn't like what I am doing. The scenes were not supposed to be multicultural but I am not imagining things because she asks me why I am using different colours.
Imagine that! It wasn't enough that the main players were white even the bystanders, listeners had to be white.
I did not budge but from that moment on the relationship with my religious teacher was frosty and even though I understood that it irked her it took me years to understand why. At that moment I thought she just wanted to impose herself on my artistic expressiveness.
It took me almost five years before I fully understand what happened. This was because by chance I met a man from Guyana. His name was Gustave. He introduced me to Pan-Africanism and his impact on me could have been a lot greater if it weren't for his more outlandish ideas.
This man introduced me to Walter Rodney (How Europe underdeveloped Africa) and Chancellor Williams (the Destruction of Black Civilization) and if it weren't for this constant cloud of negativity that almost literally followed him, I think that we as in I and other black adolescents would have paid attention to him a lot more. I don't know what personal dealings he had with white people that he thought like that but I always remember that I wondered why he did not go back to Guyana but with hindsight maybe that was politically not expedient.
Anyway this man to whom I will always be indebted thought me what Pan-Africanism was to him. For me it means that you as a black man are an African wherever you are and that you try to connect with Africans wherever you find them or wherever they find you. It was easy for him to convince me because I could hardly claim Germanic ancestry or history and I already tried helped by my mother to find books about Africa but most books I got were sometimes openly negative about Africa's history and/or made a great concerted effort to extract Egypt from Africa.
This man helped me to understand what went on in my life and why it was happening while at the same time giving me a whole new outlook, a new perspective concerning my African heritage. Suddenly being African was cool!
When I was twenty I decided for myself that living in Africa would not have to be bad idea despite the negative image of the continent. I just wanted to be somewhere where I would fit in.
I just had no idea how that was going to pan out practically. Or how to begin. For the next ten or so years nothing happened. Then in 2000 I went to Egypt for a holiday that I would also use to see some ancient Egyptian history with my own eyes. For this reason I visited the Valley of the Kings and Karnak and I was in awe of what the ancients achieved. But it was my interaction with the Egyptians that struck me. I remember talking with some Nubian guides and I enjoyed that for the obvious reasons that they were black. We had different hair types and even our faces were not the same but it was good to see people that shared my melanin.
On the last day when going back to the Netherlands, the Egyptian (not a Nubian) customs officer refused to give me back my passport until I admitted that I was a Nubian. I don't know why it was important to him. Maybe he really thought I was an immigrant coming back to Egypt to flaunt my newly found wealth or he meant to teach me not to forget my 'roots". I still have no idea.
In 2003 I went to Senegal. This was an important journey because it was the first time I was in Sub-Saharan Africa and I loved it for the simple reason that everybody looked like me and I didn't stand out. As long as I kept my mouth shut I could pass for the real deal.
I went to Gorée and decided that visiting the slave forts was not for the faint-hearted. I only walked past or around other forts ever since. I could not stomach another visit to the innards of these constructions where my ancestors were kept before the fateful one-way trip.
When I spent three or four days in the north in a town called Saint Louis I was sold. Literally. I decided that I would be in Saint Louis (in Senegal) by 2006 no matter what. I have no idea why I chose 2006 but I knew I had to give it urgency or it would be another 20 years.
Fast forward, it's 2020 I am married to an African woman from Mali and I have son who speaks Bambara.
My personal quest is as good as over. I don't need to speak Swahili, Peul (Fulani) or Zulu to be an African. I have a son who carries my family name and is an African who speaks the local language.
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