I cry Africa

I watched Blood Diamonds earlier this week, then re-watched Hotel Rwanda just yesterday, then I recalled Sometimes in April and for the first time in my life, I feel African. I know it's absurd to say that and I guess I have always thought I felt African, perhaps because I am indeed African and I have never thought of claiming otherwise, I have simply found it more suitable to be Nigerian or a blue passporter when appropriate, but this feeling is different.
I have always had a problem with people summing me up to African. In the US, it appears to be a form of lazy assessment. Africa is vast! There's the West, East, North and South. There are over a thousand peoples, cultures and languages. In Nigeria alone, we have over 200 distinct languages. So yeah, I have never been pleased with being asked questions like "Do you speak African?". No I don't, seeing as there is no such language. (No the question was not refering to Afrikaans). Even other Africans who have been in the US long enough ask the same dumb questions. Pure ignorance. I am often critical of the big western news agencies, but no matter how biased their analysis, they still do a good job of identification.

In any case, what made me feel more African this time around was the fact that I imagined all the attrocities, the war and the hatred, the tears and sadness and death...on Nigerian streets. I often place myself in other people's shoes to curb myself from acting the judge or from simply lacking understanding, but for the first time, I imagined Rwanda, Sierra leone, Darfur and Somalia, Ethiopia to be Nigeria. I imagined the Hutus to be Yorubas, the Tutsis to be Hausa. I completely recreated it all in the Giant of Africa and it felt hopeless. Could it happen so? That is another discussion for another day. Nigeria has suffered from Biafra and it appears fresh in her mind; fresh and regrettable.

But, imagine yourself stuck in Lagos, no commercial flights, parents and other family members long gone. Younger teenage brother enrolled in the militia, killing innocents, watching people get hacked. Hundreds of people crumpled up in Ikoyi Hotel or run down Hotel Bobby. Militia cars decorated with leaves, kind of like the way it used to be in Lagos during riots. Scrambling for necessities and bribing gunmen for protection. Traveling out of the question, wondering how family afar fares. Trying to get through to Ghana, Togo or Cameroun, all borders and bridges barricaded and fortified. Driving on top of hundreds of dead bodies massacred when trying to escape through the back roads. Wearing the same rags for days, weeks, months, kneeling for brainwashed 11 year old boys drunk and high, weilding matchetes and guns. Girls raped.... Just imagine it in your home if you're African and not from one of these places already and then you will really feel African.

I remember a lady I worked with over Christmas when I was in college. She had escaped to the US from Sierra Leone with two of her children, but now remarried. She has no idea what happened to her husband and her oldest son and yet had somehow managed to live on.

Is Africa truly cursed? Or are we just the dull ones? They have just accelerated dooms day (end of the world as we know it) thanks to global warming and yet we're still poor, suffering and smiling in Africa. I mean, when the world started we were primitive, behold, will it now end with us still being primitive?