Stepping out of Foreign beauties: Africa’s enlightenment
This past Sunday, I was coming from the barbershop and I met several people in the streets. I could have concluded that it was a march or demonstration happening in the road, if it was not at 7:30 pm. I remembered that all those excited, enthusiastic, and energetic people were coming from watching halls and bars. This is not because they were partying or anything, no! They had been watching a premier league match between Manchester City and Chelsea. When I tried to count the number of people in my range of vision, I realized that they can fill the biggest stadium in Rwanda. However, all the matches that I tried to attend, even the smallest stadium was half-empty.
True! Probably Rwanda is not as good as England in soccer. In fact, we are not even comparable — We’ve never won the world cup and we only played in the African cup once — without forgetting that soccer started in England. But, my concern is: Why do we still crave for being the second bests? In other words, why are we so fond of foreign cultures or why do we usually imitate others?
I’m not against the Football federation in Rwanda, although I have all reasons to be. I, personally, am a great fan of football, and watching it is among my biggest hobbies. What I’m against is worshipping other countries’ beauties while forgetting our owns. In the last few years, China has been damaging European teams by boarding a great number of their talents. Nonetheless, these large investments in a foreign sport do not obscure their dominance in Ping Pong, or Martial arts, or Badminton. Let’s take another example. Brazil is the most decorated country in football, and it’s considered the face of the game. However, the Rio de Janeiro’s annual festival is the largest and most exciting cultural exhibition in the world. My point here is simple. We do not need to abandon foreign sports or any other things that we enjoy, we just need to remember our identity and praise our culture.
Yes! Culture, culture, and culture. I will repeat this several times because I know that Rwanda and Africa, at large, have plenty of it, and because our continent has suffered a lot because of it becoming retrograde. As England has an interesting football culture, Rwanda also used to have a lot of interesting fun activities that used to portray the culture and at the same time emphasize the African philosophy of humanity and sharing. Apart from traditional dances and drums, there was “Kumasha” (arrow shooting), “Gukirana” (wrestling), among others. Besides, fun activities, there were also “Kuvuga amazina y’inka” (Long poems about cows), “Ibisakuzo” (riddles), and “Imigani” (proverbs and folk tales). All these are the things that I no longer see at home or at school. We’re losing our moments of joy and literature, but most importantly our way of living.
Now, we have to take a close look at our situation when we start losing all those things. I will again refer to football because it is the one I’m able to come up with vivid facts quickly. All African best players are in European leagues, and it’s good because they also want to compete among the world’s bests, and we usually cheer them up for representing us. However, what happens to the majority of them. Most of the times, when I try to read an article on goal.com or Skysports, I find stories like England and Ivory Coast are disputing over a player, France and Senegal, Belgium and DRC, and the list goes on. Most of the times, European countries win the debates because everyone dreams of making a name for himself by playing in the world cup and other big competitions. Sadly, as that individual makes a name for himself, his country loses its name and identity. The point here is when we start dropping our culture, our countries become more vulnerable to brain drains, and believe me, this is not only in football, it applies everywhere.
It’s time to paint a new image of Rwanda and Africa. I’m honestly tired of hearing Gorillas, beautiful forests or hills, and great leadership as the only positive things about Rwanda. I grew up admiring history a lot and enjoying to read. I read a lot about the ancient Rome and the Greek mythology. I was always so proud of the knowledge I had about the western civilization that my friends, to please me, referred to me as “Roman” or “Greek”. It is through being given a foreign identity by my friends that I realized the weight of what I was dropping. But again, I still liked those things and I did not want to part with them. So, I made research, and guess what?? Rwanda has also a MYTHOLOGY! I discovered that there is a more than 1000 years old history of a powerful kingdom in the heart of Africa whose start is a very intriguing and unique mythology. I also realized that as I have read many pieces about Plato, Aristotle, and The Buddha, there was also a philosophy and philosophers in Africa. I was amazed by the “Ubuntu” philosophy of Africans, by great pieces of people like Alexis Kagama and Chinua Achebe.
Still, after discovering all these great things about Rwanda and Africa, I was still troubled by one serious issue. Why is it that all these stories are not known? Why didn’t I learn it the same way I learned about Western civilization? Why was it almost impossible to find a book or an article talking about Rwandan or even African cultures? Why aren’t there artworks that display our principles and culture? Certainly not because there are no talents. The answer is that we have been blinded by foreign beauties that we forgot that we can make beautiful things by ourselves. Well, my childhood heroes were Spiderman and Lucky Luke. When I was a child, I only thought that Americans can do great things because that’s what my comic books, television, and clothes made me believe. However, now that I know that I have been fooled this whole time, I feel obliged to take action and inspire others to do the same.
I take advantage of this moment, where we are all in high spirits after watching Hollywood’s blockbuster Black Panther, in order to challenge all African, especially Rwandan, authors, artists, educationalists, and the rest of the people to tell our stories. To talk about African history and revive it in young people’s life. We have the responsibility of telling our generation and others to come about African heroes. We have to share the knowledge that Africa has nurtured heroes in the past, and that it can nurture others in the future. We need to give a sense of pride to the name “Africa” because Africans we are proud and we deserve it. By moving our stories from oral tales to more vivid and permanent means of telling them, we will be progressing towards Africa’s enlightenment.
This is just the beginning!!!!!!!!!!
