Spring had come round again. At Wrightsville Beach (North Carolina) in our fourth floor room a large glass door opens to a balcony overlooking the Atlantic. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but endless expanse of water. Away from the shore there was calmness. The crystal blue waters shimmered. In the far distance the water appeared to rise, curve and merge with the sky. Nearby at the shoreline white waves rose and crashed in aperpetual attempt to overrun the beach.

Had I been raised in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa or on the coral Island of Zanzibar things would have been different. But, I grew up in landlocked Uganda and in a place far distant from the huge inland ocean they call Lake Victoria. Accordingly I am both repelled and fascinated by the sea. The sheer magnitude of the water, the booming noise it made and the unknown dangers that I imagined lurked beneath the surface were enough to frighten me the first time around. My wife was different and with her around I played it cool.

As we mingled with the holidaying spring crowd, how reassuring and delightful it was to observe that none of the other people appeared to share my concerns about the sea.

The beach is a feeding ground for birds, including sandpipers, seagulls and many others. Some of the birds were a delight to watch. Occasionally, a group of them would appear from a distant place flying in formations that even the best and the most daring of fighter pilots could not approach. They skimmed just inches from the surface of the water only to change direction with such speed and precision as to leave the mind uncomprehending.

On the beach I discovered a whole new world of surfing and surfers. The surfers were mostly young males with occasional young women in their midst. The surfboards varied in size, material, shape, weight and color. Equally varied was the attire the surfers wore. Surfers ventured far into the open sea, apparently without the slightest sense of danger that I felt.

There were others I found who came to the beach not so much for the waters but for the sand. You could and may count me among them. On that warm day how relaxing it felt walking bare foot on the sand in the shallow water on the beach. As the water rose and receded, I at times stood motionless while feeling the sand beneath move giving a sensation of sinking as well as being swept into the sea. I have since grown fond of jogging and walking along the beach.

In the morning we watched as the sun rose and turned the sea into a priceless golden hue. It was then I remembered. This is the same sun people in Africa see daily, hours before anyone in America does. Now the obvious revealed itself to me. This ocean was the same water that connected Europe that connected the Americas and Africa.

I knew that some of the water surely came from the small river my pals and I used to play on as children in Africa. Our river, the Atwinyo, which I considered huge at the time, drained into the bigger Aswa River that in turn drained into the mighty River Nile that drained into the Mediterranean Sea, which is connected to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Atlantic Ocean played a vital role in European colonization of the Americas. The Atlantic was also a major conduit for slaves stolen from Africa. As I watched the sun rise over this immense body of water, I wondered what the world would have been if there was no Atlantic Ocean. Would 4 million Africans have been wrenched from their families and shipped to a strange land under conditions of unimaginable cruelty? Would the USA be the superpower it is today?

In February 2010 Ngugi wa Thiongo, one of Africa’s potential candidates for a Nobel Prize, accepted my plea for him to address students of Literature at Makini Secondary School in Nairobi. It was an awesome event for students and staffs as a combined educational and political event. Ngugi had travelled from America to appear in court over a case of violent assault on him and his wife, suspected to be planned by big guns in Kenya’s politics who resent his criticism of their corrupt and unpatriotic lifestyles. Makini School enrols a large number of children of diplomats and staff of United Nations agencies who prefer not to rub noses with socialist critics of government.

Ngugi treated the students to enchanting storytelling and dramatized rendering of sections of his novels. The question-and-answer session that followed had much energy. One outstanding question was why he was teaching and living away from them in a distant United States whose students had their own literary heroes.

It was a jolting complaint and Ngugi struggled to provide a non-political answer, for he had fled into political exile after a long detention in Kenya’s maximum security prison. He told the students that literature knows no borders and his writings do not have to be written in Kenya. He refrained from invoking for cover Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka; Kenya’s Micere Mugo and  Jared Angira; Uganda’s John Ruganda and hundreds of other hawkers of brains that had drained out of Africa. He had just told me how thrilled he was with the news that Achebe had reported that he was writing a novel in Igbo.

When the news of Professor Chinua Achebe’s death came, it recalled Ngugi’s report to the students of Achebe’s book Things Fall Apart reaching East Africa when he was entering Makerere University College. The electrifying power of the book was in making him think that Igbo language and Kikuyu were very similar. While Kikuyu proverbs were not the “palm oil with which words are eaten” its equivalents were groundnut and sesame oil. African languages had always carried a literature which had been silenced by colonial textbooks written by British authors.

In 1962 Ngugi had the thrill of meeting Achebe at an African Writers Conference held at Makerere. He was working on his own novel, Weep Not Child, in the tradition set by Achebe. The East African Literature Bureau had, in 1956, published Okot p’Bitek Lak Tar (White Teeth), a novel in his Acholi language, but there had been no translation of the work in Kikuyu or English for Ngugi to reach. Achebe’s writing in an Igbo-dominated English language would so deeply affect Ngugi that he would, subsequently, regard writing in African languages as a vital tool for freedom from inferiority complexes planted in minds of colonial school students.

Okot p’Bitek’s 1966 book published in English and Acholi, Song of Lawino/Wer pa Lawino, showed that he had taken into his study of Anthropology at Oxford University that Achebe virus at the core of Things Fall Apart, namely: that Africa’s religious philosophy does exist; waiting to be adorned and shown to the international arena by her bold and proud intellectuals. Okot would, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, teach his long song at the University of Ife/OAU. His disciples on that campus built a shrine in his name. Achebe had reached Ife via East Africa.

As a beneficiary of the literary-philosophical virus invented and propagated by Achebe, Ngugi and Okot, I went to the Catholic Church’s Cathedral in Abuja in the hope that I could join in prayers and songs for Achebe’s safe journey to After-Africa. His death was not mentioned. The Sermon rebuked those who blamed evil spirits and ran to babalaos for “deliverance” and herbal medicines to fight witchcraft by mothers-in-law, witches, and business rivals. They did not see the importance, for their own moral growth and elevation, of following Jesus and be crucified on the cross. It sounded like Jomo Kenyatta calling on Kenyans to “suffer without bitterness”. He was talking to Kikuyu people who had killed and been killed by European farmers to recover land robbed from their ancestors. Kenyatta had been safely locked away in prison while the Mau Mau war raged on. A former British District Officer would tell me that the Governor had urged them to supply Kenyatta with as much whiskey as he craved in the hope that it would ruin his liver.

It is paradoxical that Achebe’s fatherland has intensified attacks on African religions, philosophical systems and languages while hailing Things Fall Apart. Preachers and managers of rituals from the main Christian branches hang on to biblical texts and denounce “cultists”. Some Pentecostal denominations prohibit uses of ancient ethnic names –including Yoruba names that link a child to clan members and historical experiences of a family. A study done for the Presidency on religious cultures and their implications for democratic culture reported that a military cultureof command and regimentation had penetrated worship environments. There was little intellectual exploration of potential ideas and philosophical values in ethnic civilisations of their diverse urban worshipers. A religious leader once condemned FESTAC as the invasion of Nigeria by Satan.

In 1972 a music shop in New York sold me an album labelled “SHAKARA and LADY” by FELA Anikulapo, a name I had never heard before. There was also a MISA LUBA album - a Catholic Mass composed and rendered in enchanting Luba ethnic music. They were fellow travellers with Chinua Achebe’s call for founding our freedom and CREATIVITY on Africa’s ancestral roots. Pope John Paul arrived with his charismatic power over worshipers. It was clear that he had been touched by FELA’s music and MISA LUBA’s new magical gift to humanity. He called for the vitality of Africa’s culture to regenerate the Church. Perhaps Achebe passed the baton to Pope Francis.

The history of migrations and settlements of the Luo people in Northern Uganda had its share of trauma and tragedy. These have been preserved in archives of stories, proverbs, riddles and folklore. The lessons they impart have shaped Luo understanding of community, leadership, justice and fair play. Perhaps the most famous of the narratives is that of the separation of two Luo brothers: Labongo and Gipir over the Spear and the Bead.

Among the Luo, the spear is an instrument of authority and the symbol of power and leadership.  The ancestral spear, in particular is a mark of respect for the first born and heir to the family.  That is why in the Labongo and Gipir story, there is a ceremony for handing over the ancestral spear to Labongo, the elder son, by his old father, before he went to the ‘place of no return’.

The royal bead, on the other hand, is a symbol of beauty and elegance for the Central Luo of Northern Uganda. This is also true for other Nilotic communities of the Nile Basin. So the separation of the two Luo brothers, Labongo and Gipir, over the loss of the Ancestral Spear and the swallowing of the Royal Bead, and the death that ensued in the family, is ultimately a Luo narrative of the consequences of fundamental disagreements within a tightly knit social group over identity, royalty and leadership.

The story goes like this.

Labongo was the elder son and Gipir the younger.  As their father was on the verge of death, he invited his two sons to his bed side. He asked Labongo to swear upon his Luo ancestors, that he would guard and defend the Ancestral Spear with his life if necessary, and when his time came, he would pass it onto to his own elder son. Labongo took the solemn oath before his dying father that he would do so.  Then his father performed the ceremony of passing on the Ancestral Spear and died not too long after.   

In the course of Luo migrations from Sudan southwards along the River Nile, Labongo, Gipir and their families settled down along the River Nile, in the geographical area of present Northern Uganda. It was in this new settlement that Gipir lost the Ancestral Spear! This is what happened.

One morning on a misty day, an elephant invaded the fields of cowpeas belonging to Labongo who, was out hunting and was nowhere near home.  His wife made an alarm and Gipir, who happened to be at home, came out and rushed into Labongo’s house and picked one of the nearest spears around. He dashed out and with all his might speared and badly wounded the elephant that started to run away. Unfortunately the spear got stuck on it even as it escaped deep into the forest. It was then that Gipir realized he had picked and used the sacred Ancestral Spear! The wounded elephant went with the Luo Ancestral Spear and died deep into the forest.  

In the meantime, Labongo returned home from his hunting expedition in the wild only to hear the story of the elephant that got away with the Ancestral Spear. His eyes became red with anger. He demanded Gipir follow the elephant and bring back the Ancestral Spear. Gipir pleaded with his brother that it was an emergency; and that he was not aware he had picked the Ancestral Spear till it was too late. He begged his brother to accept another spear in replacement.

Labongo would have none of it. Gipir should have used any other spear but the Ancestral Spear, however pressing the emergency! This was a betrayal of the highest order. It was the betrayal of the sacred ancestral lineage bond which he Labongo swore to guard even unto death. He could not imagine violating the solemn oath he made before his own father. How could he when the time came fail to pass on the ancestral spear to his son and heir. He ordered Gipir to go after the elephant at once without any delay and warned him never to come back home without the Ancestral Spear.

Feeling guilty for losing the Ancestral Spear, confused and helpless because he thought he did the next best thing in such an emergency, Gipir set out into the wild in search of the Ancestral Spear.

For months nothing was heard of Gipir. Many people back in the Luo settlement thought he may have been eaten up by wild animals in the forest. Nevertheless, Gipir eventually reached the deepest part of the forest where all the dead elephants were. He was extremely exhausted and his sandals were worn out. His feet were full of sores. He was sick and needed care.

Fortunately, there lived an old woman in the deep of the forest who came to Gipir’s help.  She nursed him back to health until he felt strong.

With her help, Gipir was able to recover the Ancestral Spear that had fallen at the spot where the elephant died. Then time came for Gipir to return home.  The old kind woman gave him some dry food (peke, in Luo), a new pair of sandals, and some of the most beautiful royal beads the Luo people had ever seen! The royal beads greatly excited Gipir who started the journey of many months back home.  

Early one bright morning, the people in the Luo settlement heard what sounded like Gipir’s bila. Indeed, it was Gipir returning home, blowing his bila (horn). The women and the children ran to greet him to welcome him home. But he went past them as if he had not seen them. Gipir went straight to his brother’s compound and shouted: ‘Labongo, come out!’  He was shaking with anger. As soon as Labongo came out, he called out: ‘Here is your spear!’ and then stuck the Ancestral Spear into the ground right in front of Labongo, and it made the sound, ‘ting’!

Before Labongo could respond and utter a welcome back to his brother, Gipir marched away still burning with anger.  He walked straight to his compound, found a stool to sit on, brooding with his head cusped in both of his hands.

Days and months passed and everybody in the settlement had forgotten the loss of the Ancestral Spear and Gipir’s journey of many months in search of it. One morning Gipir picked the skin bag in which he kept the royal beads that the kind old woman gave him. He began to thread the beads. His wife and his children, Labongo’s wife and her children, all gathered round him admiring the beads.  Some of the beads dropped on the ground. Alas, Labongo’s youngest daughters picked and swallowed one of them.

Gipir took the child to her father and his elder brother and demanded for his royal bead right there and then. Labong beg Gipir to accept another royal bead to replace the one swallowed. Gipir said no. How about waiting till the girl passed it out in her stool? Gipir said, “No, I want my royal bead now!”  Labongo’s pleas were all in vain as Gipir was ready to have his ‘pound of flesh’.   

Labongo remembered how he refused to listen to his brother’s pleas over the ancestral spear. He felt ashamed and was furious. Straightaway he had his little daughter cut open, the royal bead retrieved from her stomach, whereupon he gave it back to Gipir. And the girl died.

It was a tragic and avoidable death. It lead to the bitter separation of the two Luo brothers.  They buried the axe (latong) at the River Nile in Pakwach as a sign of their irrevocable separation. Gipir and his family crossed the River Nile to the western side at Pakwach and became ancestor of the present day Alur of Northwester Uganda and the larger Alur population in Northeastern DRC.  Labongo and his family remained on the eastern side of the Nile and became ancestor to the Acholi people.

The little known piece of epic is the work of a young writer published in 1972. In the light of what happened in Africa in the decades that followed, Tom Omara’s The Exodus  was remarkably prescient and it is full of reverberations for the politics of today.

It was Ali Mazrui who called Africa the Garden of Eden in decay. In Tom Omara's play we encounter a Garden of Eden still in pristine form. And we watch as things begin to fall apart. The location is a fairyland a stone throw away from the magic land of the  Murchison Falls, one of the prettiest and most powerful water falls in the world.

According to local legend the first man that ever lived descended from the heavens and landed here. Where you can hear the mighty Nile blast its way through rocks so ancient and gorges so narrow you would think you could leap across and touch dry ground on the other side. The ancient Acholi who lived here thought so.

A grand symphony of insects is playing. Occasionally the awesome roar of the mighty lion shutters the harmony and the peace of the night. At such moment time stood still. All sounds but the trumpet of the King, ceased.

On this paradise by the river, night has fallen. The First Man and his family are gathered around the fireplace, in the open air under moon and star lights so bright you could read a book. In our own day, till the war came and emptied the land and drove the descendants of the First Man into concentration camps where they perished in numbers, this was a scenario still common place in northern Uganda. Today local folks still  talk about those good old days.

According to Acholi legend, long, long ago, when the world was new and the earth was empty, the Molder or the Nameless One, parachuted the First Man and placed him by the great River under the steady sprinkles of the raging waters. There for years, the First Man lived and prospered, lord of all that his eyes beheld. There he grew a family and founded a clan. Long after he was dead and buried his great granddaughter gave birth to triplets, all boys, Labongo, Gipir, and Gipul. Out of the brothers sprang all the people that live in the world today.

Time passed! Generation after generation came and went. Tom Omara locates the world of the Exodus in the middle of the 18^th century well before the European scramble for Africa began. As the play opens we are at the fireside, where the First Man and his family would have been. Stories and tales fly. Kids are in their elements.

Excited and excitable youth  churn out tale after tale to a receptive and indulgent audience of adults. Many of the tales have a familiar ring. But once in a while an uncle or auntie breaks the youthful monopoly of the evening with a stirring new story that no one had heard before. In those days at such moments all competitions stopped. Everyone is ears. Who can talk when the gods are speaking?

In Omara's Exodus such a moment arrives.

“Tell me my children”, it is the familiar baritone of the much admired uncle. “Tell me tonight whether it is true that we today in Acholiland, whether we people east of this mighty river, this Nile, think of those living to the west or south of the river as brothers.” A pregnant question! One that people in several African countries might ask of themselves even today.

 Consider the gist that the Nile at the Karuma Bridge marks the single most important boundary in Africa south of the Sahara. Africa is full of boundaries. It happened that Karuma Bridge is near the spot where the First Man landed. It happened that for nearly the last thirty years the Karuma Bridge has been under armed guards who check everyone who crosses the Nile. Such a spot of beauty! One may not tarry and indulge one‘s self! No photography!

This is the boundary that in Tom Omara's play symbolizes the predicament of Africa. Is my neighbor my brother or my enemy? In northern Nigeria under the spell of the deadly Boko Haram the answer is enemy. In Kenya the day after the 2007 general elections in which thousands were massacred, the answer is enemy. In Mali even before the Tuareg rebellion that cut the country in two, the answer is enemy. In many parts of Africa the answer is enemy!

But in the play a kid has a different answer. “Why should we not be like brothers?” He challenges.  Everyone turns to look at him. Tom Omara puts this on the lips of a kid. Nelson Mandela would have agreed even as Robert Mugabe probably would not.

 “Ah, ah, ah!” laughs the uncle, “does this mean you do not know the story of the beginning!”

“No we don’t! Tell us Uncle. We want to know.” Young voices clamor.

“The story of the beginning? Yes I know it!” cries one kid.

“That’s my man!” Uncle is delighted. “Tell them my son, tell your brothers and your sisters. Tell your generation what your mothers should have told you!”

So began the evening with the story of the Spear and the Bead; which is the story of the beginning. But the story of the beginning is also the story of the calamity that befell a society through the action of its leaders.

Rather than simply recite the story the children at the fireside decides to enact the drama of the tragedy. Tradition demanded they open the play by singing the anthem of calamity. And so they do. A moving and more heart wrenching song there never was.

^{Can na! can na! Wilobo Mumiya
Can na! can na! Wilobo Mumiya
Atima ango ci! Anga makonya
Adok kwene! Anga makonya}

^{Can na! Wilobo Mumiya
Can na! Wilobo Mumiya
An do Wora aa! Can na!
An do Mama aa! Can na!}

And so now the story of the Spear and the Bead unfolds. The two Lwo brothers quarrel over Labongo's Ancestral Spear that Gipir in an emergency, hurled after a marauding elephant in the fields. The elephant disappears with the spear still stuck to its body. Labongo wants his spear back, will not accept a replacement! Ancestral Spears are not negotiable!

Gipir is compelled at great perils to his life to roam through forests infested with wild animals in search of Labongo's spear. Three long years go by and Gipir is not back. People fear he is dead eaten by wild beasts. After much hardship, with the help of a friendly spirit of the forest, Gipir recovers the lost spear and returns home alive. But he is a man consumed with rage for what he has suffered.

Time passes, calm and peace return between the brothers. The community prospers. When one day Labongo’s young daughter accidentally swallows a piece of royal beads that a kindly spirit of the forest had given Gipir and bade him not to part with. Despite Labongo’s pleas Gipir would not accept a replacement. Gifts from the gods are not negotiable!

The die is cast. Dark clouds hung over the land. With a knife Labongo rips open the belly of his own daughter and restores Gipir's lost bead. Women are in tears! The community is devastated.

Admittedly the two brothers faced a difficult situation. At great costs to themselves and particularly to their community they fail to rise to the occasion and respond and act humanely. There are many African parallels. Think of Laurent Gbagbo and Alassan Qwattera in the Ivory Coast.

Only in the death of the totally innocent kid do the brothers wake up to the enormity of the horror their own deeds had wrought. They could not live together anymore. They make a vow to split and never to meet again except as enemies on the battle field. Gipir and his followers cross the Nile to the west bank. Labongo and his people remain on the east bank. Today in the 21^st century within the same country armed soldiers guard a crossing on the Nile.

_{Tell me my children. Tell me tonight whether it is true that we today, whether it is true that we people east of this mighty river, think of those living to the west or south of it as brothers}

It was the genius of Tom Omara that he took a well known Acholi legend that he knew from his childhood days at Anaka near Murchison Falls, and clothed it in the theatrical garb of the stage. For a sixteen year old still in high school, who watched the gala opening of his play at the grand Makerere University Main Hall, it was a remarkable achievement. Professor David Cook of the Department of English, who introduced the young playwright to the University audience, later deservedly anthologized the work in the collection Short East African Plays.

The day after the successful performance of his play on the stage of his own school at King's College Budo near Kampala, Tom Omara vanished like thin air never to be seen again. No official investigations were launched. No reports of his disappearance were filled. The Garden of Eden was truly in decay.

I was in for a surprise when none of our women turned up in the national attire for women of Uganda thegomesi.  It was at the Convention of the Lango Association of North America held in Philadelphia last June.  Two weeks after the convention I asked one of the ladies who herself had showed up in the West African attire of Liberia, why?

I am sorry, I cannot dress up in Baganda attire to celebrate a Lango day; she told me. The gomesi belongs to the Baganda, she went on.  When I told her that her position on the gomesi was wrong you could see the unbelief in her eyes.

What?  What are you talking about my brother?  Prove me wrong and I will see to it that every member of our Association wears the gomesi at our next Convention.

Now I had to prove something that I had long come to take for granted that every Ugandan knew, let alone every Uganda woman, that the gomesi was the national Uganda women.

There is the widespread belief that the gomesi is a traditional dress of the Baganda women as opposed to Uganda women. For those who may not know Buganda is part of Uganda and the natives of Buganda, who are the majority population, are called Baganda.

The myth about the gomesi being exclusively Buganda is complicated by the Baganda themselves who like most people in the country may not know the true origin of the dress, and who in their majority tend to subordinate other Uganda cultures and traditions to their own.

Here is the fact of the gomesi as the de facto national dress of the Uganda women. The gomesi was fashioned and developed between 1905 and 1915 by an Indian of a Goan descent called Gomes after whom the gomesi takes its name.

The story starts at the birth of Gayaza High School in 1905. The Headmistress of Gayaza School, Miss Alfreda Allen, asked Mr. AG Gomes to design a uniform for her girls.

Gayaza had first used a suuka made of bark-cloth as the school dress. Ms Allen asked AG Gomes to make a suuka of cotton as it would be more durable. However, the suuka unraveled during manual work, so AG Gomes added a yoke. That was the prototype gomesi.  Mr. Gomes added a sash later around the waist.  He went on in 1914, which is considered as the birth-year of the modern gomesi, to incorporate aspects of Victorian/Edwardian dresses (the puffed sleeves) and the sari (depicted in the picture) from Gomes’ homeland, Goa.

The name gomesi honors CM Gomes who died in Toronto in 1981 and was the one in whose care the designer of the Gomesi, AG Gomes, left the business.  The gomesi used to be called Teitei Gomesi – the Gomes dress, “teitei” being the Swahili word for dress. “Busuuti” comes from “suit.” “Bodingi” has also been used for the gomesi, a name that probably harks back to Gayaza as a boarding school.

The gomesi was designed at the request of a White school headmistress by an Indian for the Gayaza school girls, irrespective of which part of Uganda they came from.  It is not correct to suggest that the gomesi is exclusively for Baganda women. The gomesi is the national dress of the Uganda women.

Thunder blasts grow louder and more frequent. Peals of lightning illumine the darkening sky. The sun is setting in shades of red, orange and yellow; a marvel to look at.  Across the flat plains of Northern Uganda you can see storms approaching from a far. The grass is still surprisingly green but the dust from three months of the dry season has become unbearable. The approach of rain is a joy. 

I am on the pillion of a taxi motor bike. The local name for this mode of transportation is boda boda; translation: from border to border. In the days when the country was less stable, the motor cycle was a means of escape from danger, hence the name boda boda.

Red dust from the dirt road is everywhere. In a hapless bid to escape the dust I hide behind the broad back of Okello Loum, my favorite boda-boda driver. Loum is determinly chasing the clouds, in a bid to get me home before the pounding rain drenches us. But soon it is clear that it is useless to continue. We take shelter under the veranda of a primary school classroom. The much welcomed rain was not going away. Loum suggests we look for a better shelter.

We’re back on the boda boda riding through puddles. We reach an area with a few homes; we stop and enter a house. An old woman with a glowing smile welcomes me. From a large thermos she pours me a cup of tea, speaking only in her native Acholi. As the rainstorm dissipates to a drizzle, Loum drives me home.  He’s not just my boda boda taxi man; he’s a friend who takes pride in caring for my safety. 

This is the heart of Acholiland.  

Once a war torn town in northern Uganda, Gulu is now world famous.  When people hear of Gulu, they are quick to associate it with the Lord’s Resistance Army of Joseph Kony, with children night-commuting to town center to seek safety, with child soldiers and of course with Kony2012.  While these are fair and true associations, much is missed across the international news reportage.

Gulu is home to the Acholi people whose dances and music are some of the most colorful. The Acholi are an ethnic group within the Luo nation that migrated south from Bar el Ghazal along the Nile River. Throughout much of Uganda’s history, the Acholi people have been marginalized and Northern Uganda kept underdeveloped. The highway between Kampala and Gulu is beautifully paved until you cross the Nile River at the Karuma Bridge, the border between South and North in Uganda. After the steel bridge, almost instantly the tarmac disappears and the remaining 1 hour journey to Gulu becomes a challenge.

Despite the unpaved roads, the lack of stable or consistent electricity and the 25 years of war and conflict, Gulu is full of life, hope and beauty.  Next to their great gift of hospitality, what I find amazing about the Acholi is their ability to move on after the horrible tragedies they endured.

Outsiders like me can’t begin to comprehend the circumstances the Acholi lived through.  Yet the ready smiles on their faces will make you think they are the happiest people in the world.  Barefoot children find great joy in the ability to simply shake the hand of a stranger or a foreigner.  The friendly women in the market love it when I buy from them while speaking in my limited Acholi. Their prayers and praises are full of passion and belief that the Lord who carried them this far through their trials will see them through.

Throughout Acholiland there are hundreds of orphans from the war but few orphanages because extended family members are quick to accept the additional children as their own.  The Acholi hospitality is far above that of Western society and perhaps the most beautiful aspect of their culture. A mother, who might lack the ability to feed her family more than 1 meal a day, will ensure that any visitor receives at least tea or a soda, if not a full meal. It’s possible to show up at a friend’s house unannounced and they invite you in as if they had been waiting for you to arrive!

Over the past few years, Gulu and Acholiland have made great strides towards restoration and improving individual livelihoods. As a result of many NGO’s focused on long-term sustainability and not simply charity or aid, job opportunities have permitted many families to become self-sufficient. Secondary schools are working hard to achieve academic excellence. National and international banks are scattered on nearly every street corner in town.  Gulu and Acholiland are recovering..

Last year Uganda celebrated its 50^th anniversary as an independent state. The most striking thing about the celebration was the lack of any critical reflection.  We made no distinction between State and Society.  We all celebrated as if we were the State or part of the State.

Of course, Society should celebrate this anniversary. 1962 marked Uganda’s independence from foreign domination.  But Society needs to reflect critically on the nature of the State we inherited at independence.

The State of Uganda was established as a colonial State at the beginning of the 20^th century.  The colonial State conquered Society.  In the years after independence nationalist scholars studied this process at the economic level.  Among the best known was Walter Rodney, who wrote How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Today we need to go beyond political economy. We need to go beyond How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, to How Europe Ruled Africa.

The Modern State

The modern state was a product of developments in Europe in the 17^th century.  The modern state has a monopoly over means of violence and stands over society as its master.  In the ideal form we have here a relationship between the State that is fully militarized and Society that is fully demilitarized.

In the West this militarization is accompanied by a factor they call democracy.  Democracy ensures that all institutions of the State (military, police, bureaucracy, etc) operate under the direction of elected civilian leaders.

The current debate in the West is about how meaningful this arrangement is.  Americans recall how President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the threat of a military-industrial complex overriding elected leaders and ruling America.  Those who elected Obama wonder how meaningful their victory was.  The Second World War ended but the military machine developed to fight it was not dismantled.  The Cold War ended but the military machine it justified was not dismantled.

Democracy as a relation between State and Society is only one part of the story of the modern State in the West.  The other part of this story concerns us. We the non-West where the military power of the West was unleashed, we the rest of the world where there was no democracy.

This brings me home to Uganda.

State and Society in Uganda

The relation between state and society changed radically with the onset of colonialism.  Before colonialism, society was strong enough to rule itself.  What we call modern law, and know as part of the modern state, were then a part of society.  The main difference between customary law and modern law is this. Customary law is a set of rules and conventions through which pre-modern society regulated affairs. Modern law is a set of rules through which the state regulates society.  Unlike with customary law, the enforcement of modern law is backed by the power of the state.  The strength of society before colonialism lay in its capacity for [peaceful] self-regulation.

With colonialism began a sustained assault on the capacity of society to regulate itself.  Not only the colonial period but this entire century should be seen as a period of conquest, of state conquering society. This conquest was not a one off thing, but a process.  This process, this conquest, is still continuing.

If you think back over the last five decades of Uganda’s existence as an independent State, you will realize that the relation between State and Society has been mediated through ongoing violence.  No matter the government in power, the Ugandan state has confronted society, different parts of society, as so many challenges to be vanquished by force. Think of the big questions in Uganda’s independence history: the Buganda Question: the Northern Question, the Karamoja Question, the Asian Question.  Each of these has been ‘resolved’ through violence at some point in our history.  And each resolution has proved unsatisfactory and thus temporary, calling for more violence.

The Buganda Question

It is well known that the colonial conquest of Buganda was a product of religious wars –war between three different factions (Ba-Ingeleza, Ba-Fransa and Ba-Islamu) and the subordination of a fourth, comprising those owing allegiance to an indigenous spiritual and political tradition.  For those interested in this historical period, I suggest you read my friend Lwanga Lunyiigo’s recently published biography of Kabaka Mwanga.

This power grab marks the onset of a tradition of violent expropriation and expulsion.  Catholics were forcibly removed from Mengo and resettled around Masaka.  Peasants lost their land, as did clans, and were forced to line up behind the new Ba-Ingeleza chiefs, backed by the power of the British colonial state, the only way for these expropriated peasants to get access to land was to follow these chiefs to new counties and sub-counties to start their lives afresh.

Anyone interested in the history of ethnic cleansing in Uganda would do well to note this salient historical fact: The first ethnic cleansing in the history of Uganda happened in Buganda.  Though British scholars like Low sanctified it as a ‘revolution,’ we need to see through this official history.

The Northern Question

The North-South division in Uganda is a political division between two sides of the Nile.  The North lies east of the Nile, and the South to its West. Colonialism developed the North as a labor reserve area and the South as a commodity reserve area.  When the colonial state taxed northern peasants, the only way they could get regular access to cash was to move south and work for a wage, in plantations or coffee farms, or the police or the army.  In contrast, peasants in the South were encouraged to grow cash crops, cotton, coffee, and so on, to get money to pay tax and buy necessities like salt, medicine or the hoe.  

As a result, every institution of the state developed an ethnic and a regional flavor. The army, like the police, was Northern.  The bureaucracy was Southern.  The merchant class was Asian, and so on.  The very organization of state institutions set up one part of society in opposition to the rest.

Over time, two major fissures developed in Ugandan society: on the one hand, a division between the North and the South; on the other, a tension between Africans and Asians.

Both questions have been resolved through violence, and neither question seems to go away

The relation between the political North and the political South has moved in a see-saw fashion.  It took the British longer to conquer the North than the South, because in the North they had to subdue entire societies and not just the political leadership of crystallized kingdoms. 

Once colonial rule stabilized, the center of gravity of active opposition to it shifted from the North to the South, which was the home of the cotton and coffee economy.  Faced with peasant uprisings and worker strikes in 1945 and 1949, the colonial power used armed forces recruited in the North to suppress popular resistance movements in the South.

In independent Uganda, this same division continued until Museveni’s forces defeated the Obote II and the Okello regimes and created its own army.  To understand what followed, I suggest you read the book by Adam Branch, my colleague at Makerere Institute of Social Research. 

The North has been the site of an ongoing military campaign since 1986.  The real cost of this armed confrontation has been paid by the civilian population, not by the armed groups on both sides.  The LRA kidnapped and forcibly conscripted children; as a consequence, the LRA turned into an armed force comprised mainly of forcibly recruited and armed victims.

On its part, the government decided to fight the LRA by punishing the civilian population.  Starting the mid-90s, it forcibly interned roughly 90% of the population of Acholi districts behind in camps around the country.  It was a counter-insurgency strategy that the British had perfected earlier during the Boer War in South Africa and the Mau Mau uprising in Nairobi, and the Americans had emulated in South Vietnam.

The Asian Question

The Asian Question reached its most explosive point under Idi Amin, but it was not manufactured by Amin. Amin reduced the Asian question to simplicity.  Asians, said Amin, are all exploiters: “They milked the cow but did not feed it.”

Today, the Asian Question has been again reduced to simplicity: Asians, says the NRM, are investors.  So what about those like me who work for a living, who is neither exploiter nor investor?  In the language of officialdom we cease to exist.  Linguists call this rhetorical violence.

Official rhetoric has a resonance in the society at large.  Popular usage makes no distinction between a 3^rd generation East African like me, or someone who stepped off the plane yesterday.  Both are known as a Bahindi.  To be a Muhindi is to be a permanent visitor. It is to be known by your ancestral origin, not by your present, nor by the future that you hope to build. It is to be identified as a visitor. To be a permanent visitor is, however, is to be permanently insecure and permanently irresponsible.  If the Asian minority is daily plagued by this insecurity, the majority is forever conscious of the Asians as irresponsible.

People of Africa who migrate to USA are called African Americans.  Africans who move to Britain are called Black British.  The left side of the hyphen tells you where they came from, the right side highlights where they are.  From this point of view, Ugandans of South Asian origin should be called Asian Ugandans, or Asian Africans.

The National Question

My larger point is this.  Uganda’s larger politics today is a bundle of questions: the Buganda Question, the Northern Question, the Karimojong Question, and the Asian Question.  None of these should be seen as a special question, isolated from the rest.  Each is part of a larger problem that plagues all Ugandans.  We are trapped in a state culture of violence.  This culture is both a hallmark of state practices and is perpetuated by it.  Our challenge is to find an effective anti-dote to it.

To do so, I suggest we think from the standpoint of society, not the state.

Conventional wisdom in Uganda holds that whoever controls means of violence controls society.  The most important criterion of rule, it is believed, is access to violence.

When political science students learn Western political theory at Makerere University, they learn it as a linear tradition, from Machievelli to Hobbes to Hegel to Huntington.  The lesson is repeated over: that power is about control of the state and the state is an apparatus with the monopoly of violence.

But even in Western theory, there is a counter tradition, a tradition that begins with the Greeks, with Aristotle, and comes to full flowering with anti-Nazi German philosophers, Hannah Arendt and the theorists of civil society, who argued that political community is not based on violence but on consent.  Even conquest is not durable if not translated into consent.

There are several democratic traditions, not just one.  I suggest that we think of democracy not just as a state practice, but as a societal practice, as a way society organizes its internal affairs.  From this point view, we should consider Uganda’s pre-colonial history as a treasure chest that can be mined, not so that we identify practices and apply them mechanically, but so that we may adapt these selectively and creatively.

Democracy as a Social Practice

Democracy as a state practice has a shallow history in Uganda.  It was totally absent before colonialism and during the colonial period.  After independence, state democracy has been an irregular practice.

Democracy as a societal practice has a rich and long tradition, starting with the village assembly, what the Waswahili call the Baraza.  I recall an essay we published in Mawazo in the 1980s by the Congolese historian Wamba-dia-Wamba.  It focused on the palaver; broad discussion.

The great challenge of social activists is to get those who have a monopoly on arms to see a simple truth: that arms and armaments are a very poor guarantee to a secure future.

The South African whites have been the latest to learn this lesson.  They used to think that, as a minority, they would not survive democracy without a monopoly of arms and a monopoly over political freedom. Forced to give up that monopoly in 1994, they feel even more secure as part of a larger democracy.  Today, the Boers of South Africa wonder why they did not learn this lesson earlier.

In the soft lights of the mighty hall where once dined and wined the heroes of empire, where trophies and memorabilia of empire still enjoyed the place of pride, he listened fascinated by the novelty and the flow of the new dialectics coming from the stage. What would these statesmen now staring down from the walls, covered as they are in medals and regalia, have made of this gathering?

As would be expected the place was filled with the home crowd and empire people. Besides himself he could count little more than a dozen or so African faces; Nigerians, Senegalese, Kenyans, Ethiopians and a few others. But Orientals numbered in the hundreds: Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos and others. It was in the weeks after Tiananmen Square and this was a teach-in. Emotion was raw on the Dream Campus.

The year before there had been the brutal crackdown on Burmese student protests in Rangoon. Now the successors of Mao Zedong as if to defend a gold medal they had won in the Olympics, had gone one up. The full story of the tragedy they unleashed was yet to emerge. The world was still insular. Internet, iPods and smart phones were not there.

A Burmese student, whose parents now lived in Thailand after a narrow escape from Rangoon or Myanmar in today’s terminology, enthused over a border less future, seamless without exiles, when sky trains will link the entire universe and new technologies bring the people together in a festival of peace and love.

He knew about in fact he loved John Lennon’s immortal lyrics. But listening to the Burmese girl he felt a stirring deep within. All you need is love, he heard a voice whisper. He pondered for a while about the truth of this but he could not take his eyes away from the Burmese girl. He glared and listened till the pressure within him subsided. Suddenly the sense of something momentous about to happen overtook him. His old dreams were coming back. He was at peace.

He saw again the old Africa he had heard so much about and had fantasized about; mixed now in his mind with fragments from Achebe and from Conrad. His long gone forefathers paraded before him. Without a doubt, great sportsmen their contemporaries knew they were, folks that once held sway over much of the highland plains and the Great Rift Valley herding their flocks in the beauty and the bounty of nature. Folks now much abused and much derided but whose memories still endure.

Fragments from a piece of poetry from Christendom floated through his brains: While shepherds watched their flock by night all seated on the ground. As by magic he shared now those magic moments with the shepherds, a people whose dreams he believed had come true. Before him rose new nations new peoples cleansed and purified filled with new life. It was the visage of a continent on the move. Africa not rediscovered, but reborn.

As he sat there in the great Hall where once dined and wined the great statesmen of empire, as he sat there amidst the gleaming memorabilia of empire and throngs of fellow students, it dawned on him that in a matter of days the school year will be over. His life on the Dream Campus, in the middle of a once great European Empire, will become but a memory.

He relished the thought of his imminent departure and homecoming and of the task that lay ahead.

In spite of himself a vision crossed his mind, a dazzling la jejune file, daughter of the royal house of Payira. Fragments from a piece of modern pop found its way and raced through his brains and collided and mingled with fragments of the old dreams of a new Africa. In spite of himself he found himself humming Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel’s lyrics; wish I was homeward bound. Suddenly some words he knew from somewhere bothered him. You can’t go home again!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6K8wfyzAJQ

The industrial revolution of the late 18^th century that began first in England and quickly spread to other parts of the world caused a major shift in lifestyle worldwide.  New products coming out of the factories made life for those who could afford it more aboundant.

If any book heralded these momentous events The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith published in 1776 or 237 years ago, did. That seems an awfully long time ago but really it is just four life spans away. Your great-great-great-great grand parents would have lived through it.

In another 237 years from now where will we be? Dead of course, but where will the world be? Today we listen to Mozart who was born 257 years ago. We read Shakespeare who was born 439 years ago. Shakespeare and Mozart and some of the greats have survived the changing tastes of time and have spread well beyond their original orbit of European culture to countries as varied as Japan, Argentina and Tanzania. We can assume that generations yet to come will have much the same cultural interests as we do today.

In all likelihood folks living in 2250 we will probably still enjoy tastes picked up from the late twentieth and early twenty first century. Perhaps they will listen to the Beatles, visit galleries to view Picasso, or read Neruda and Chinua Achebe.

In future we are unlikely to have a better set of artists. Who can ever rival Tchaikovsky, Leonardo da Vinci, Tolstoy or Shakespeare?  But we shall have a handful of artists who will be just as good.

In future the great religions of today will persist. But Christianity will flourish mainly among the less well educated; those prone to take matters at face value.

Astronomy will probe to the very limits of our universe and go on beyond other to universes. But none will find God there to settle once and for all time the debate on belief.

In the year 2250, the great upheaval of the twentieth century, the rise and fall of communism, the dominance of the United States, the Arab Spring, the poverty and crisis in Africa, all will have become but faded memories.

Instead for most people, economic and material needs will be satisfied. People will be satiated by progress. Some people will be living until they are 200 years old, totally bored by prolonged retirement and wishing they had died a 100 years before.

There will be a flowering of the arts. Space travel will have made human activities on the moon a common occurrence. Space ships will have explored the distant reaches of our galaxy, beaming back intimate pictures of furthest outer space.

Just like today, the future of economic progress will be a topic of intense conversation. But the limits of growth will no longer be discussed. Making do with less: the world will have abundant energy, food and minerals; and these will be available everywhere. Science will have brought us fusion power, crops that produce unimaginable yields and ways of transportation that require only small amounts of energy.

John Maynard Keynes' thoughts will still dominate the thinking of economists. His ideas on demand management will be in vogue. The ideas on austerity to balance the books will have been long declared. “We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful.”

The likes of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mobutu, Pinochet and Assad will have been thrown into the dustbin of history. People will be too well educated and prosperous to allow tyrants to emerge and the world will be so cosmopolitan that nationalism will have withered away.

Democracy and the observance of human rights will prevail. The Catholic Church, Judaism and Islam will no longer be theocracies. Atheistic non-violent Buddhism will be ever more popular as the source of a universal moral code. Buddha's denunciation of war will make military conflict and the abuse of human rights, regarded for what it is: the practice of inferior human beings.

The words one Michael Mandelbaum once wrote in the early twenty first century, will have been shown to be spot on: “The great chess game of international politics is finished.....A pawn is now just a pawn, not a sentry standing guard against an attack on the king.”

_{^{Okello Oculi is the Director of Vision 525 Initiative}}

There were songs in those days that lifted the spirits of young people from across the globe as in their hundreds they hurried to Spain to defend the beleaguered country against Franco’s fascism. Years later a Frenchmen would pay tribute to them in a splendid and tender movie documentary To Die in Madrid.

At first glance the parallel may seem inappropriate. It may seem crude and uncaring, given the suffering, the awful tragedy and the unpardonable waste of human lives; but it is there never the less. One can hear echoes of songs from across Africa as the Ghanaian novelist and poet Kofi Awoonor lay dying on that September morning of 2013, shot by the cruel guns of the multi-national Al Shabaab Somali, confronting the Kenyan/American war machine.

Hours before he was gunned down Awoonor had told audience of eager students at Nairobi University that the country needed to take responsibility for its own the destiny. He deplored that Kenyans had stopped believing in themselves when what they needed is to thirst for power and seize control and go for economics as a platform for success.

The great Chinua Achebe once remarked that Awoonor was always focused on Africa’s seeming purposelessness and self-destruction. In one of his poems Awoonor laments about the failures of postcolonial governance in Africa:

I have no sons to fire the gun when I die

And no daughter to wail when I close my mouth

I have wandered in the wilderness

The great wilderness men call life

The rain has beaten me......

A snake has bitten me

My right arm is broken

And the tree on which I lean is fallen

Awoonor was clearly a man on a freedom ride, hastening to the old Jaramogi Odinga’s call to battle. Despite its President Uhuru Kenyatta’s name, it was Not Yet Uhuru in Kenya has Odinga had affirmed years ago. Uhuru is the Swahili word for Freedom.

Like Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiongo, Awoonor had served prison time for allegedly aiding and abetting a military coup. Soyinka and Ngugi both wrote prison diaries. Upon his release from prison in 1969 Soyinka penned down The Man Died. When Daniel arap Moi finally released him from the elder Kenyatta’s jailhouse, Ngugi wrote Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary. Awoonor did the same when he wrote The House By the Sea, upon regaining his freedom. It was bitter literary gift to his country.

Unlike Kenya or Nigeria, Ghana borrowed the Latin American tradition of honoring celebrated writers and artists with high powered diplomatic positions. Awonoor served as Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil (1984-1988); and was its Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1990-1994). In 1971 when he won the Nobel for Literature, Pablo Neruda of Chile was his country’s ambassador to France. Although in the years ahead, dictator Pinochet would cause his death.

If we were to use W.E.B. Dubois’ category of the talented tenth, Kofi Awonoor would be among the line up of Independence Africa’s literary First Eleven; sharing the honor with Camara Laye (Guinea), Leopold Senghor, Birago Diop, Cheik Ahmanu Kane (Senegal); David Rubadiri (Malawi); Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark and Christopher Okigbo (Nigeria); Okot p’Bitek (Uganda); Ngugi wa Thiongo (Kenya); and Tayeb Saleh (Sudan). Too bad the colonial language they rode upon alienated them from their village roots.

Until some unease crept in and burst out in rebellion, and Ngugi began to write in his Kikuyu mother tongue. And Achebe promised he would produce a work in his own Igbo language. Something Achebe did not live to fulfill. Awoonor on his part turned to melodies and the proverbs of his own Ewe people. It yielded a rich coterie of poetry that ran parallel with and close to daily life as experienced by the majority poor in Africa.

His death at the high brow shopping mall in Nairobi by a bullet, that leveler of human bodies regardless of class, sadly put an end to his life and his mission to help restore African pride and purpose. A simple hatred from a simple Diaspora Somali religious wrath saw him in that shop with a simple racist resentment. It was a moment Awonoor most probably smiled at, advisedly, as his last poem to Africa. In that flash of thought and resigned panic, he may have recalled these lines from his own pen:

Kutusiami the benevolent boatman

when I come to the river shore

please ferry me across

I do not have tied in my cloth

the price of your stewardship
 

This reference to struggling market women all across Africa holding their little cash in bundles tied around their waist is a tender and touching tribute.

I met him in Rome. Madam Mariapia Fanfani, former First Lady of Italy, had hauled him from his ambassadorial seat in Brazil to join a group of African writers to talk about the role of literature for fermenting peace. What remains in my memory are two little details. As we waited for a bus ride to a dinner with top Italian businessmen, a thrill seized a man from Sierra Leone unto offering a yell of ecstasy so loud that it shook the hotel. Awoonor promptly named it a ‘’braying’’ as melodious as a donkey at song. No one protested that label. He later asked for some meat to be put on a skeleton of a children’s story I had done. He said he liked it; but added that, like Brazilians, we should learn to see our politics like a game of football; loving our leaders when, once in a while, they score goals.

Born in 1935, Ghana’s leader, Kwame Nkrumah, brought the thrill of charismatic politics into his vibrant, youthful and idealistic twenties. Nkrumah’s subsequent fall and the violence and economic ruin that military rule brought, introduced a bitterness into his life. Travelling to University College London for a Masters degree and a doctorate from Sony Brooks University in New York, he also took solid academic learning to an increasingly bitter literary output.

 His scholarly works were ambitious, notably: The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature ofAfrica South of the Sahara (1975); and Ghana: A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (1990).

He died in Kenya, a country with a record of hounding into exile Ngugi wa Thiongo, its globally celebrated literary luminary. Jomo Kenyatta, its founding ruler, forced Ngugi to flee for security in Uganda in 1966 for defending Oginga Odinga’s freedom to deliver a critical speech to students. Now teaching in an American university, Ngugi may well see the drop of Kofi Awoonor’s blood on Kenya’s soil as a pan-African libation to a smoldering anger over unfulfilled war for economic justice that Mau Mau warriors waged in the 1950s. That would draw a smile from Kofi as he travels on his way to After Africa.

The ancient city of Harar in the far north eastern corner of Ethiopia is a dreamland. Hanging on a hilltop 1800 meters above sea level the city presents a breathtaking panorama bursting with layers of history and influences, coalescing in a proud mixture of Islamic and indigenous culture dating back to the 7^th century.

Because of its remoteness from much of mainstream Ethiopia history played differently here. While mainland Ethiopia whose Christianity is the oldest on record has a strong Christian tradition, Harar was embedded in the indigenous and colorful Oromo culture. Over the years Harar developed close trade links with Somalia, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, a fact that set it on the road towards Islam.

By the 7^th century Harar had become a centre of Islamic learning, drawing scholars and students from all over the Islamic world. Hundreds of revered Islamic scholars lived here, worked here, died and were buried here. Today Harar is known as the city of saints. Many of those burial grounds have become a place of pilgrimage.  After Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem Harar is Islam’s 4^th holiest site. But Harar has other offerings as well; unique among them is the city’s hyena cult, the only one of its kind in the world.

In the year 2004 and again in 2013 a group of us had the privilege to visit Harar and experience its many attractions. We headed for its museums, spent time in antique shops, at the silver smiths’ workshops and showrooms, watch the sun rise and set over the city, and had the privilege of conversations with a handful of the city’s cultural elite, including Kumal Badenga, the owner of the famous Lalibela antique shop where rich pickings of prized works can be had.

The documented history of Harar begins around 1500. The hyena cult emerged sometime later. It followed a period of severe drought and hunger in the land when the simple act of fetching water from beyond the city’s gates became a deadly errand. Many times many of the young women fetching water were ambushed and eaten by hungry hyenas.

As legend has it, this catastrophe led to a contract between man and beast. Hyenas would give up ambushing humans in exchange for a cup of honey. Thus was born the famous hyena cult of Harar and the feeding rituals still extent today.  At evenings by the main city gate just before sundown the hyena man who is familiar with all the hyenas feeds the hyenas with pieces of meat he has carefully prepared before end. By prior permission tourists and others may participate in the feeding act. Once the last hyena is fed the city gates are closed for the night. And till the next morning no one may leave or enter the city.

In contrast to other holy cities of Islam such as Ghardaia, el Gholeia or Shibam, in Harar non Muslims may reside within the city walls.

An artist’s expression of this cult is shown in Figure 1, where the claw of a hyena is worked in silver as part of patchwork work of necklace that may be worn to protect the wearer in the manner of an amulet.

Harar has a rich and turbulent history. In 1647 after a series of battles it became an Emirate under the dynasty of Ali ibn Dawad, which survived for two centuries. In the year ... the English explorer Richard Burton arrived in the city, the first European to do so (2). But was an acute observer and an excellent writer but his accounts of Harar published in 1860 sounded strange to many of his Victorian readers who would not believe him.

Between 1880 and 1897 the famous French poet Arthur Rimbaud spent more than five years in Harar and became a rich coffee trader. He got on well with the locals who called him endearingly the “man with souls of the wind”.

On account of his fame eccentricity and literary works we took an interest in Rimbaud and tracked down Fath Umar, an old woman whose grandmother saw Rimbaud enter the city.

Harar developed to become a great center of Islamic culture. By about 1780 the city was so prosperous that it issued its own money, the Mahalak, which remained in circulation till about 1890. For a city to issue its own coin was a sign of great success. The Krause Mishler World Catalogue (2006) of coins records 11 issues of the Mahalak coins (Figure 2). Evidence suggests that Harar may have in fact issued a considerably greater number of coins

.

A good deal of these coins was buried in the ground as the army of Menelik II approached the city and eventually destroyed Harar in 1896.

Following the conquest of Harar the Mahalak ceased to be in circulation and was replaced by the Menelik coins which remained in circulation till the time of Haile Selassie when the modernization of Ethiopia began in earnest.

At the core of the prosperity in Harar that led to the city’s issuing of its own coins was its great art of the silver smith that combined the silver smithing art of Southern Arabia, the Swahili coast, the Red Sea coast, and the Horn of Africa. The influence of the great Indian art of the silver is quite discernable. The result is an art of great ornamental splendor and beauty in the classical style.

The Harar cultural guide (1) lists only one silver work on page 35, but it includes various gold works of great splendor, among them an amazing gold wedding ornament; the Harar wedding rings Figure 3. By contrast Figure 4 show predominantly health rings in the foreground.

To underscore the importance of Harar in modern Ethiopia a new railway line was planned to run from Addis Ababa and go through Harar. At the last moment, due to the punishing terrain around Harar in 1917 the new railway went through Dira Dawa instead. Subsequently Dira Dawa became a major trading post as the influence of Harar declined.

In1981 after the overthrow of the Marxist regime of Haile Merriam, who himself had overthrown the great Emperor Haile Sellassie Harar was accorded partial autonomy as Harar Peoples National Regional State within the modern Ethiopian State.

Figure 5 and 6 show examples of a Harar’s trove of Osmanic coins (Akce coins) that was discovered in 2010. The collection comes mainly from the time of Suleiman II and consists of silver Akce coins from around 1560 to 1568. The coins seem to originate from Yemen, as the name of the Yemeni city of Zabid is often marked on the coins

.

It remains unclear whether the coins ever circulated in Harar or whether it was only a hoard buried in the ground. It is probable the collection were precisely those coins that had left Yemen because of their higher silver content, in comparison to those that remained behind. According to Gruishans law, bad money pushes out good money. This may have been the case.

Figure 7 displays another speciality of Harar, the colored amber shown in the upper left corner.

Harar represents the Islamic east of Ethiopia, marked out by its intricate silver works. Its geography and location exposed the city to diverse cultural currents. They included those from the Interior of Africa proper; those from the Horn of Africa, those from Arabia to the north; and to its south east those from India via the Swahili coast of East Africa. A combination of these influences among others brought the art of the silver and gold smithing of Harar to a very high mark. It is a worthy tribute to its achievement that for more than 150 years the city of Harar enjoyed the use of its own coins.

Acknowledgements
We indebted people of Harar and those of Addis whom we consulted extensively to produce this work; we must mention especially Adunga Nigussie and Kumal Badenga.

Literature cited

1. Harar, a cultural guide.

Van DV, Guleid MJ and collaborators.

Shana Books, Addis Abeba, 2007.

ISBN: 999 44 – 0 – 016 – 9.

2. Richard Burton, 1855.

First footsteps in East Africa, an exploration of Harar

3. Krause Mishler Catalogue of Wotld coiuns.  2006

Corruption is never far from the spotlight. With the European Union’s recent report that corruption is losing the Community billions in dollars a year, corruption is headlines again. European Union report followed reports from Uganda that billions of dollars in aid money meant for war victims of northern Uganda have gone missing from the office of the prime minister. In Kampala the prime minister did not resign much lees lose his job.

For years some government and institutions in some countries have struggled to rid themselves of corruption, corrupt practices and corrupt elements in their midst but without much success.  Despite what economists know as moral hazard, which is the temptation that confronts nearly everyone at one point or another, to do the wrong thing for personal gain, and which some people cannot resist, there are people who persist with the explanation that corruption is all in the genes.

Whether or not corruption be in the genes and is inheritable is not a new debate. Since corruption, that is the abuse of position of power or trust for personal gain, is a crime one may address this question in the context of criminal behavior generally. What follow here is a brief history of the claim it is all in the genes and of the conclusions we have drawn from these debates.

In 1870, an Italian doctor, Cesar Lombroso proposed what he called the theory of the criminal mind and endeavored to prove it. Lombroso studied the skull of a notorious brigand. From this single case study the good doctor claimed that the criminal has specific physical features that are identifiable. Lombroso’s claims were laughable.

The development of the science of heredity in the late 19^th century by Gregor Mendel an Austrian monk, and the emergence of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection expanded the debate on the cause of criminal behavior.  In 1983 man named Galton (cousin to Darwin) came up with the term eugenics. Eugenics embraced the belief that the quality of human beings can be improved through selective breeding.  For many years the practice of eugenics or selective breeding was carried on in many European countries and in the United States. Wherever it was practiced it caused great human suffering.

The practice did not and could not as it practitioners claimed, eliminate the perceived undesirables from the human population.  Heredity and the dynamics of the interaction between the genes, diet and the environment were far too complex. People did not always produce children with traits that are similar to their own.

From the science of eugenics the search for the criminal and corruption trait invaded the zone of the chromosome. We know that the average person carry 46 chromosomes of which X and Y are the sex chromosomes. It is the Y chromosome that will determine whether a newborn will be male or female.

Females have XX chromosome combinations while males have XY combinations.

In 1962 a 46 year old man turned up who had an extra Y chromosome giving him the unusual combination of XYY. This discovery led to the absurd claim that the Y chromosome was responsible for criminal behavior. A man with an extra Y chromosome, the XYY man would be it was argued more aggressive and therefore possess greater tendency towards violent crimes.

We know of course that in real life violent crimes are committed by both men and women who as you know possess no Y chromosome. Moreover with men violent crimes occur in men with the XYY as well as in men with the XY chromosome combinations.

Before the door could be closed on the notion that Y chromosomes caused or are linked to criminal behavior, a new idea called warrior gene arrived. The idea involved enzymes which are proteins that catalyze or speed up the rates of chemical reactions in the body.  An altered form of the enzyme is non functional and there are people who inherit this non functional variant. Such individuals usually have low IQ, are fearful, impulsive, aggressive and violent.

In 1993 a man called Brunner found that 14 male members of a Dutch family who all had a long history of violent crimes all shared the gene for this enzyme. Brunner and his colleagues concluded that the gene for this enzyme was responsible for violent crimes. For a brief while Brunner and his colleagues held sway and their conclusions got named the Brunner syndrome. But this was soon discarded. The simple inheriting of the non functional enzyme variant did not make one a criminal. An appropriate environment was necessary to make one with such a gene to become a criminal.

Even with the dumping of the warrior gene theory as an explanation for criminality and corrupt practices the door to the claim that it is all in the gene could not be shut entirely.

Developments of new technologies for visualizing brain activities soon allowed doctors to detect active and non-active parts of the brain. Studies showed that certain parts of the brain of the violent criminal compared to brain activity of the normal person had very low brain activity. This finding led to the conclusion that the fore brain is what controls criminal behavior.

However other studies of brain scans found that some normal individuals shared similar pattern of brain activity with the criminals in the study, therefore nullifying the claim that low activity in the fore brain was a sure sign of criminality. While studies of twins suggest greater similarities in the types of crimes identical twins commit compared to non-twins or non-identical twins, there is no known gene linked to criminal behavior. This leaves us for now with the theory of moral hazard as the only valid explanation for the prevalence of corruption and corrupt practices around the world.

For years in the metropolitan countries where he lived Ahmed carried with him the feeling of a nowhere man. Ahmed had lost all contacts with his family and with his homeland and this bothered him. Almost to the day he left Africa to pursue his studies abroad violence had broken out in his homeland. A civil war followed, which ended in a genocide that targeted his people.

Ahmed is not Tutsi and does not come from Rwanda. For all he knew his family were long dead, wiped out in the deliberately slow-paced low key genocide. But the world is a strange place and hope endures in many hearts and many stories there abound of survival even in the direst of circumstances. One day Ahmed surprised even himself and wrote home.

Against all odds the mail and the package that accompanied it arrived in a small town which fifteen years ago was the scene of a brutal massacre that had been for a brief moment the focus of world attention in the central African country where he hailed from. In this town his old mother still lived. Considering the scale of the destruction and the displacements that followed it was a miracle.

In the package were items and goodies picked from end of season sales in small town America where Ahmed, long since graduated, now lived and taught African literature at the local college. He loved campus life and enjoyed the work he did and was pretty good at it. He had friends and was married to a local girl and despite his constant pining for Africa Ahmad felt at home here. Home is where you make a living, a wise Nigerian friend had once told him.

In the package he lovingly put together, there were items of clothing and household goods that Ahmed knew his people would need if they were still alive. There were edibles; there was an assortment of red wine, something his old mother loved. There were brewages and dried fruits. There were cameras and audio and video recorders. He took care to include a pair of powerful radio receivers so that folks at home can keep in touch with the world at large. When they received the package his mother and his people were elated and overcome with joy.

In the midst of their misery had come this irrefutable piece of evidence that their beloved and long lost son was alive and well. In the midst of the hostility that still raged around them this was all they needed. The family had not felt this good for a long, long time. Omotola, Ahmed’s only sister read the letter out aloud to incredulous ears. And now came the request, and they were taken aback. Was Ahmed truly well and safe in America? The family knew that terrible things sometimes happen in America. The shooting down of Tryvon Martin, the unarmed Black teen as he walked home was just the latest.

In the carefully worded message, written as if to reassure them in his own familiar long hand Ahmed requested of his people a favor. Please would they record the cry and the buzz of night insects by the stream below their home and would they send him a copy. Here on this spot unknown to his people Ahmed had received his first kiss from a local beauty as the night insects serenaded. Now his mother and the others could see for themselves the up to date recording gear he had included in the package, now unpacked and staring at them from the table.

This was typical Ahmed. He took care to leave no one in doubt about his meaning. Now it was up to them. But surely only a madman could ask what Ahmed was asking for. His people knew that the war and the genocide had produced many traumatized people now loitering about the countryside, mostly young people, who went about staring blankly into space and laughing at insects and animals they encountered along the way. God forbid! But the elders were convinced that Ahmed had gone crazy in America. They shook their heads meaningfully.

In this world there is nobody like one’s own mother. Nobody! Ahmed’s mother loved him. Of all her kids Ahmed had been the brightest and her favorite. Now she spoke not a word. There were no doubts in her mind. Without question she did exactly what her son asked. His words were her command.

It was winter when the recordings arrived from Africa. Ahmed was surprised and reassured. His mother was alive and well in Africa. She had understood and responded to his deepest longing for a piece of Africa that was also a piece of his past. She knew how much her son loved to be by that little stream. God knows what he used to see there.

Now he made himself comfortable and settled down and played back that precious piece of Africa he had longed for all these years. And it was like magic. In the midst of a bitter North Carolina winter, his apartment bubbled with the cheer and the warmth of Africa. He was transported back millenniums to a long ago epoch when the world was new, when his great grandparents were kids in Africa. Through his boundless joy he heard the voice of the immortal Ray Charles speak to him in a song from long ago. Those happy hours that we once knew, they still make me blue. I can’t stop loving you.  Yes he still remembered that girl.

Today there is a huge African Diaspora. Millions of Africans now live, study and work in Europe, North America, China, Japan, India, Malaysia and many other places right across the Globe. Many Diaspora Africans are proud citizens of their new countries. Some were born there and are second or third generation overseas Africans. Many like Ahmed are in the professions and in the business world and have done well. A few are in politics. Some are struggling.

For most Diaspora Africans the old Continent in all its magnificence and tragedies and contradictions acts like a powerful magnet. The longing for Africa and things African is deep. Overseas Africans search for African recipes and indulge in African cuisine, a taste of Africa. They attend many get-togethers where the talk invariably turns to Africa. They watch African movies and listen to African music. Everyday their women rediscover Africa and adorn extravagant African hairstyles and colorful African costumes. In their games and play their children, from scraps of information they cleverly put together, reenact scenarios from the old Continent.

Yearly, a growing number of Diaspora Africans make the pilgrimage back to Africa. Like the tourists they have become they sample and enjoy the pleasures of the continent and return to their new countries elated and renewed by the experience. Younger men sometimes arrive back from Africa accompanied by elegant new brides they met on the trip. Nowadays an increasing number of Africans take the final plunge. After years and decades of living abroad in foreign lands they return home to Africa for good.

For the returnees, the journey back to Africa can be a richly rewarding experience. After hours of flight the jet plane lands in Accra, in Lagos, at Entebbe, Lilongwe, Ouagadougou or Lubumbashi; name it. Our man or woman often in jeans and trek boots steps out into the warm African sun. Like magic they are reconnected to all that they once knew and for years could only dream about. Emotions overflow. They are children again playing the same old games they use to play.

But in the real world the return to Africa can at times be fraught with dangers. There are sharks out there. In a series of short pieces that we will run specifically for you on the pages of Nile Journal in the next few months, we hope to enlighten and delight you with the adventures of the returnee, who after years in the Diaspora, now picks his bags and journeys back to Africa to stay.

We entered the small northern town in the heat of noon. We were surprised at the heavy smog cover even here. We thought we had left all that behind, in the sprawling capital city to the south with its teaming millions where un-serviced used cars from Japan clog the streets and where unregulated factories pollute the air.  

Our five hour journey in a crowded and speeding bus where a preacher man delivered the message of Christendom and blessed us had been mercifully uneventful. Delightful sceneries of green hills, forests and marshland   relieved the boredom. In this country even here hundreds of kilometers away from the higher altitude of the south the land was still green. Now we were in the gently undulating landscape typical of the north. In this town they call the bicycle capital of the world young and sinewy bicycle men pressed in upon us demanding to convey us at once to our destinations. Bicycles and motorbikes are the taxis in this town. Everyone rides them.

We opted for the motorbikes and now once in motion again, cool winds assailed us, cancelling the effect of the heat, as we rode the 5 kilometer stretch to our destination. We loved the experience and decided to return to town the next day just for the fun of it. We carried our cameras and we took some pictures, plenty of it.  They show people as they commuted and transported goods on bicycles, on motorbikes, on trucks and some on their head as they trekked. Here are kids too doing the things kids love to do. We thought you would be interested and made a selection from our huge album especially for you. It wasn’t easy; we had to leave out plenty of good stuff. Take a look: (photo by James & John)

For the returning Diaspora African the choice of a house is like the choice of a spouse and can be crucial. Face it. After years of absence abroad the man or woman is now a total stranger. Only within the four walls of their own home could the returnee Diaspora Africans hope to find solace. They owe it to themselves to create within their new domain the most ideal condition they can.

Such a house cannot be bought on the market. Houses on offer won’t meet their taste no matter how elegant the offering. To have lived abroad for any length of time is to have become in one’s own land a foreigner for good.

In Nigeria they call the man or woman who returns home after a long absence, the-been-to. The-been-to attracts attention because of the air of newness that surrounds him or her the moment they set foot on home soil. He or she may cut a cute figure and may even acquire some popularity with ordinary folks, but in reality they will be detested and excluded. There will be lots of social happenings going on around them but no invitations will come their way. It is the fate of the been-to, to be both admired and resented.

In the real world the-been-tos will have no choice but to build their new house themselves? It is an opportunity they must grab because it presents them with an open slate. Imagine that you lived in a house all yours by conception and design. A house in which you will have determined every detail that went into the planning and the construction including the landscaping. The Diaspora man or woman who returns home has this choice and he or she can create a paradise. A few have done that.

Most have not.  The journey to a dream house can be long and painful. Having pondered every detail and finalized with the architect, the obvious thing to do is to hand over your specifications to a construct0r, and order him to get on with the job, while you turn your attention to the pleasures and the novelty of being home again.

The constructor or builder will eagerly accept all the conditions you specify. Tread carefully. To him you are just a bagful of dollars to be mercilessly exploited. Of course there are exceptions. But the average constructor will always swindle you or attempt to. He will make sure to procure the cheapest materials and in the least quantity possible. He will assemble the least skilled workers whom he will pay as little as possible.

If you are lucky your house may progress beyond foundation and reach completion.  You will move in and people will flock to congratulate you and will urge you to throw a party to launch it. Local custom demands it. You will refuse the demand. Well and good but you will be reminded.

So now you live in a dream house. You are the envy of neighbors. But in no time your dream house will be no more. The floors beneath your feet will turn to dust because it is made of nothing but sand. From the torrential downpour the ceilings will show ugly signs of leakage. The formerly neat paints of the walls will peel. Windows and doors will malfunction because of the poor workmanship and low quality materials. The plumbing will come undone. Your house will flood.  You will have no choice but to call in the workmen again. They will be expecting your call.

One Diaspora African we know had to re-build her present house two times over, each time using a different set of builders, before the house became habitable. You don’t want to suffer her fate. So what should you do?

In the past some Diaspora Africans lacking time and short on resources thought they found a way to save on both. They sent what little money they could save home to trusted relatives and friends and trusted them to supervise the work of building their dream homes.  

The relatives and friends had to file regular reports of progress and they did. The reports included photo images and displayed stages of progress and were convincing. The would-be dream home owners were reassured and encouraged and pumped more money home to complete the project. 

When the house was reported complete the proud new owners flew home to inspect and take possession. A big disappointment awaited them. They were not the only one. Many others have fallen in the same trap. At the end of the day some discovered building projects that were little advanced beyond foundation level. Others were confronted with completed but shoddy structures. The worst hit were the ones who after months of sending money home found nothing at all in place. The money meant to do the job had been swindled. The progress reports that so inspired them were fakes.

For Diaspora Africans in the quest to own and to live in a dream house, there is only one sure answer to the question: what should a man or woman do to own a dream house? They must build the house themselves. Each will himself or herself design the house to suit their unique tastes. To fine tune the job they will consult with architects. Then it is time to recruit a builder who must work under close supervision and must proceed according to plan or not at all. If the returnee is a woman things become even more complex. It is a man's world.

The builder may employ the services of other workers or skilled people to help him do the job but the Diaspora man or woman must remain at all times his or her own project manager and site supervisor. In this capacity he or she must tightly control the purse and do all the purchasing.  Regardless of what you do cheating will still occur but you will have cut your loss..

In the last decade or so, the debate about homosexuality has been raging in Africa. The idea of homosexuality conjures up all kinds of images in the minds of many Africans. To arouse negative sentiments against homosexuals, special words such as unnatural, sinful, unproductive people, sexual mercenaries, prostitutes and un-African are carefully employed to describe them. The debate has since morphed into anti-homosexuality laws in Nigeria and Uganda, allegedly based on scientific, cultural and religious grounds. Such laws have left many Africans cheering almost in the same way Romans used to cheer gladiators engaged in mortal combat at the coliseum. They also left many people, particularly in Western countries, gasping in disbelief. Between these two extremes are people who are simply confused about the validity of the scientific basis.

To address the question of why both sides of the debate are frothing at the mouth, it will be helpful to first try to understand the basics of the biology of gender beyond isolated buzz words carefully crafted to extract maximum positive publicity on the proponent side and negative on the opponent side. Such knowledge should enable a better understanding of the issue.

Evidence shows that the biology of sex, gender or gender identity of living things is amazingly complex. Some organisms lack sex or gender whereas others do. The basic purpose of sex is to generate diversity among living things, necessary for survival under adverse conditions. Yet most simple unicellular organisms like bacteria have no sex. Instead, they use rapid multiplication to increase the probability of variation. Resistance to antibiotics is an example of one of such variation.

In contrast, complex living things usually have sex and gender, but with exquisite variations. If one is befuddled by the notion of homosexuality, think of the whiptail lizards of Mexico which exist exclusively as females and they reproduce themselves wonderfully well without males. Some of them have been observed to mount each other, but it is not clear whether that is an act of homosexuality.

Another type of sexual variation is found in both plants as well as worms in which individuals have both sex organs. In corn or maize, kernels develop from the egg and pollen is equivalent to sperms. They do both self- and cross-pollination. Similarly, earthworm contains both sex organs. However, they mate with other individuals. In contrast, those who grow papaya well know that male trees do not produce fruits because papaya plants exist strictly as male or female and they practice heterosexual reproduction. Males produce pollen used to fertilize eggs produced by females. Finally, most animals, birds, fish and reptiles develop into distinct males or females.

If variation in sex and gender types does not present enough complexity, think of the variation in the systems of sex determination. If you were an alligator or turtle, your sex would be determined merely by the temperature at which you are incubated while developing in the egg. If you were a type of snail, you would all be born male until later on when some of you become females. In some fish, gender can be switched depending on social status. In their community, the dominant individual is the female whereas in another type of fish the opposite is true. How about physical contact between a baby marine worm and a female worm which seals its fate as a male?

Although we are accustomed to associating bacterial infection with diseases, in the world of some insects, gender determination depends on infection by certain bacteria. In others, sex determination may depend on diet during development or what role individuals play in insects with cast systems. Sometimes the sex of individuals can be switched depending on the need of the social colony.

In mammals, the male trait is determined by the presence of the Y chromosome. However, that fact is now being questioned because evidence suggests that the X chromosome may after all play a necessary role in sex determination. For example an embryo with just one or more Y sex chromosomes is non-viable.

These are by no means the only systems of sex determination and there is still a lot more to be learned about human sexual determination and preferences. Presently no single gene is known to be responsible for homosexual or heterosexual preferences. Any claim that gender determination is simple and written in stone is simply false.

Since the discovery of the science of heredity by the Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel, the inheritance of traits is now known to be influenced by the exquisitely complex and dynamic interaction between genes, hormones and environment. Such interactions include the mixing and reshuffling of existing traits and induction of changes in the hereditary material. Induced changes may or may not show up as observable traits. Those which are manifested as traits may have good, bad or no consequence at all. That is why other than identical twins, no two individuals are alike.

Sex and gender specification require more than just inheriting chromosomes; an appropriate environment is necessary for the process to occur normally. Apart from changes in the hereditary material, physical and chemical factors in the environment may affect the functions of traits specified by genes. Such changes are usually not transmitted from generation to generation. However, scientists are more and more convinced that functions of some genes can be altered without changing the hereditary material and that the alterations can be transmitted through several generations, a phenomenon known as epigenetics.

Regardless of whether a trait is inherited genetically or epigenetically, occasionally, the process goes wrong, thus producing rare and unusual chemical, physical and behavioral traits such as sickle cell anemia, Down syndrome, cleft pallet, deformed limbs etc. Evidence also shows that it is within these complex patterns of inheritance that mistakes involving sex and gender determination occur.

In humans, normal females are determined by XX sex chromosomes whereas males have XY chromosomes. If the sex chromosomes do not divide and separate properly during the formation of eggs and sperms, they end up making babies with unusual chromosome numbers. Females with Turner’s syndrome have XO sex chromosome. Males with Kleinfelter’s syndrome have XYY chromosomes. There are many others.

Besides abnormalities in chromosome numbers, individuals may also show unusual behavior. It is not uncommon for parents to be concerned over children who are physically of one gender but behave as if they are of the opposite sex. In the English language such girls are described as tomboys and girlyboys or sissies. Apparently such trans-sexual behavior occurs naturally and often in spite of the objection of the parents. Although parents and society may succeed in suppressing the external display of such behavior, it is not clear what such people think or feel on the inside about their gender or sexual identity.

Given this brief background on the science of heredity and the biology of sex, gender and sexual identity determination, it is pertinent to ask whether Africans, like other humans, are subject to the same principles of heredity and sexual determination. The answer is yes in principle and fact. Otherwise, to say no would be to assert that Africans have a unique biological system distinct from all other living organisms in general and modern humans in particular. There is simply no evidence for that.

In many Africa countries, homosexuals are demonized by such words as unnatural, sinful, unproductive, sexual deviants, sexual mercenaries, sex-starved people, prostitutes, un-African, etc. In Nigeria and Uganda, such words were carefully crafted to prepare the public for the passing of laws to criminalize homosexual acts. While most Africans cheered the signing of such laws, many Western countries were appalled by these laws which they consider to be draconian. Thus their response was furious and accompanied by threats or actual withholding of or more accurately shifting of aid from direct support of government to non-governmental organizations.

Western response to the anti-gay legislations stands in stark contrast to convenient tolerance of violent government repression of minority political opposition parties. So long as such governments are willing to serve their interests, they will turn a blind eye to the government's use of intimidation, election rigging and corruption. Such glaring contradiction has led many people to ask what is so unique about the violation of the rights of the homosexual minority in Africa.

The anti-homosexuality laws are based on three main considerations. First, proponents of the laws claim that homosexuality is foreign to African cultures. A careful examination shows that this argument is flawed, smacks of over generalization and ignorance of the diversity of African cultures. In contemporary Africa, at least one African country, South Africa, not only recognizes the existence of homosexuality but also recognizes same sex marriage. Anthropological and ethnographic studies have documented as many as fifty different ethnic groups in traditional Africa which practice diverse forms of homosexual relationship including woman-woman marriage, boy-wife marriage and cross-gender identity or roles.

Historical evidence also shows that homosexuality existed in certain African countries long before colonialism. Otherwise, one has to explain why the colonialists enacted anti-sodomy laws. Even more telling, if it did not exist, why do many African societies prohibit it? It does not make sense to prohibit what does not exist.

Nevertheless, there is a valid rationale for Africans who claim that homosexuality is foreign to African cultures. People who live in very small communities with low frequency of homosexuality or those who value heterosexuality due to high infant mortality and short life span may not know about homosexuality. Besides, in communities where they are strictly forbidden, homosexuals would be forced to adapt to a life of pretense and hide in the proverbial closet. Consequently, many Africans who live under these conditions may be right in claiming that homosexuality is foreign to Africa because of their own limited knowledge about the wide diversity of African cultures. Once they become aware of the phenomenon, they have to go through a period of denial and an eventual acceptance that while homosexuality may be foreign to their own cultures, it exists in others.

The idea of criminalizing homosexuality because it is supposedly foreign also fails to acknowledge that foreignness per se is not enough reason for rejecting something. There are countless aspects of foreign cultures which Africans have adopted including clothing, language, educational system, food, music, religion, etc., typical of what happens when two or more cultures interact. All cultural practices regardless of their origin must be rejected if they infringe on people’s rights, especially those who are most vulnerable.

Furthermore, Africans who reject homosexuality allegedly for being foreign are hypocritical because they have no problem accepting foreign money and religious ideas from their American evangelist collaborators. Similarly, government officials who accuse Western countries of interference in their internal affairs have no problem accepting military, financial, intelligence, logistic and much other foreign assistance, often using it for the purpose of repressing the very Africans who are to be protected by the anti-gay laws. Furthermore, it is disingenuous for some African leaders to accuse Western countries of giving aid with strings attached when they could simply turn down such aid if they do not like the strings attached. Unfortunately, to do so would hurt those who need help and not those who don’t.

From a religious point of view, no matter how homosexuals come to be, they are just as much children of God as crippled, insane or normal persons are. In the eyes of God, they are created equal. Besides, many religious beliefs dictate that the faithful must love their neighbors as they love themselves. In this instance, homosexuals are figuratively or in fact neighbors of heterosexuals. Thus, they should have equal right to live under equal protection of the law. It is hypocritical for God fearing people to reject or even think of killing homosexuals in mob action just because they do not like them.

If homosexuality has been there long before colonialism, why is it that it is just in recent times that it has come to be such a hot topic in countries like Uganda and Nigeria? To make sense, one has to first acknowledge that this is the struggle for freedom and acceptance regardless of whether we like homosexuals or not. Then the question has to be approached from a historical perspective. As humans, homosexuals are not unique compared to other humans except that they are attracted to people of the same gender. They are also not different from other minorities who struggled in the past against slavery, colonialism, racism, women’s oppression, female genital mutilation, etc., each of which emerged under unique circumstances. Similarly, the struggle against homophobia in developed countries in the last 40 years followed the success of the civil rights campaign in the preceding period, particularly in the United States. With the exception of South Africa, this issue is just now catching up with the rest of Africa.

What makes homosexuality a hot topic in Africa and elsewhere in the world is a convergence of three forces. The anti-homosexuality force is financed and driven by wealthy conservative evangelists, mainly from the USA. Just like missionaries of old, they feel that developing countries still regard sex as nothing but an exclusive tool for reproduction unlike developed countries where there are other options for having children including surrogate pregnancy, adoption, artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization. It is for the same reason of protecting reproduction that many Africans oppose birth control practices. Ironically, the same Africans who rail against foreign cultures have no problem embracing the anti-gay message espoused by foreign evangelists. In fact it was the old missionaries working together with colonial governments who enacted the anti-sodomy laws in many of the African countries.

The second force is represented by the international Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) organization whose mission is to win their freedom and acceptance. Like the evangelists, members of the LGBT organization passionately support their own in countries where they are persecuted. The threat to boycott the last winter Olympics in Russia because of the Russian anti-gay law is an example of that.

Contrary to the mistaken notion that homosexuals are unproductive, they are a rising power in various sectors of society including education, finance, entertainment, fashion, technology, politics, communication, the military etc. Building on their growing success in winning acceptance in the developed countries, they passionately leverage their political, technological and financial power to pressure their governments to oppose such draconian laws.

Finally, the third force is represented by political leaders who opportunistically take advantage of national anti-homosexual sentiment to consolidate their political power. They hype up the gay issue for two reasons. They use it to divert people’s attention from more pressing problems people face daily. Additionally, they use it to endear themselves to the people who may be politically alienated by government’s failure to serve the people’s needs.

Collectively, the evidence of homosexuality in many traditional Africa societies is not only consistent with the biology of sex, gender and gender identity determination, but also with the various forms of human gender relationships observed in many parts of the world. Therefore, the claim that the anti-homosexuality laws recently enacted in Africa are rooted in the uniqueness of the biology or the culture of Africans is simply false. Such false claim is nothing but a poor attempt to make gender bigotry respectable when it is not.

Early this year with great fanfare President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law an anti-gay bill that stipulated the following:

• 14 years imprisonment for anyone entering same-sex marriage
• 10 years for any organization or people supporting gay rights
• 10 years for anyone displaying same-sex affection in public

These draconian measures made Nigeria the 36^th country in Africa to openly persecute gays.

Within weeks Uganda followed with its own equally strident anti gay law. These developments are perturbing especially as they give crowds and mobs in these countries the license to assault and abuse homosexuals or anyone perceived to be gay. The laws validate the homophobic stance of religious and cultural beliefs that homosexuality is unnatural, un-African and immoral.  What was and is at stake is the very real threat against human security these laws represent.

It is germane to reflect on the Nigerian anti gay law in the context of peace and conflict through the lens of human security. This is because the current discourse while it captures the human rights paradigm it leaves out human security aspects.

The emerging paradigm of human security was stated in the Human Rights Report of the UNDP in 1994. The imperative components of Human Security as encapsulated there are: freedom from fear and want, and the guarantee for individual fulfillments. While the human security is similar to the idea of human rights, human security bears far more reaching implications as concerns peace and conflict. The difference is in the approaches of these two concepts.

Human security focuses on human crises that need practical interventions without which there will continue to be obstacles to human development. The practical components of human security include the individual protection from internal and external threats, access to food, health care, education, environmental security, personal safety, human rights, effective governance and absence of violent conflicts. This makes it pertinent to look at the anti gay law in the contemporary discourse from the human security perspective.

 The case of homosexuality in Africa

The claim that homosexuality is un-African is now largely discredited. Colonization came with draconian anti homosexuality rules amongst other things. This was itself a reflection of beliefs and practices in Europe where homosexuals were discriminated against and homosexuality considered unnatural and un-Godly.

Contrary to widespread beliefs studies now show that homosexuality existed in African societies long before contact with the West. African societies at the time simply took the matter in its stride and embraced diversity and tolerance. Amnesty International in its report on criminalization of same sex conduct in sub Saharan Africa notes that it was colonialism that first criminalized homosexual practices in Africa.

Colonialism imported homophobia, and not homosexuality to Africa. The position that homosexual practices in Africa predated contact with the West is well supported by such examples such as Sango, the effeminate Yoruba deity, the Azande warriors of the Congo who sometimes married other warriors, and the Hausa Yan Daudu men in Northern Nigeria who were recognized as individuals whose gender expressions are effeminate. Pre colonial African societies accommodated these individuals and practices without discrimination.

Today new waves of western missionaries have built on colonial homophobic rhetoric and have strengthened the climate of homophobia in Africa. Given the less well understood pre colonial history and culture of Africa, many Africans today genuinely believe that homosexuality is a Western invention.

Human rights group and enlightened people have made what efforts they can to demonstrate that the phenomenon of homosexuality is a universal human reality that occurs in cultures worldwide.

The alliance of Western Evangelical fundamentalist with State power in Africa has aggravated the problem of homophobia in Africa and in Nigeria in particular. Today pro gay pressures from the West, emboldens anti gay and religious fundamentalists in Africa. The growth of Christian and Islamic fundamentalism in Nigeria contributes greatly to the criminalization of sexual minorities in the country and is the main force behind the draconian anti gay law enacted in Nigeria.

The resulting threats to security

By passing the anti-gay law in Nigeria, the Nigerian government has strengthened the penal codes that exist in Northern Nigeria, to jail punish or even execute anyone considered homosexual. This has helped widen the scourge of discrimination that Nigerian sexual minorities already endure.

For a long time there existed in Nigeria a culture of discrimination and hatred against sexual minorities in the country. What the new anti gay law signed into force by Goodluck Jonathan does is to legitimize this culture. As a result, there are continuous incidents of gays, or people perceived to be gay, being evicted illegally from their homes, stripped naked on the streets, tortured and even killed. A recent example is the reported case of five gay people that were stripped, beaten and paraded naked on the streets of the eastern city of Warri this last March.

The Nigerian police, notorious for its brutality and abuse of power now have an open license to go after gay people or people perceived as such and do whatever it likes with them.

Throughout Nigeria NGOs and other bodies that render support to sexual minorities are now under threats because of the clause in the anti-gay law that spells out 10 years for any organizations caught supporting the group. Organizations working for the defense of LGBT rights now fear recriminations. The law has forced into silence many organizations that have in the past rendered good service to sexual minorities.  Given this clamped down, cases of exploitation and persecution of homosexuals or perceived homosexuals in the country can only rise.

With this new law, homosexuals living with HIV/AIDS are likely to go underground for fear of prosecution. The likelihood of increased spread of HIV/AIDS is real. The health hazard implication for the country as a whole is frightening.

Fuelling more threats both internally and externally is the media. Even as the media fights for gay rights, the same media has also been used for promoting anti gay hate and discrimination. On the other hand the effect of tabloid sensation of the gay rights issue is counterproductive. Negative reporting on gays has also hurt. Some media outlets in Nigeria have shamelessly and falsely sought to link homosexual practices with incest and pedophilia.

I was filled with so much anticipation when I booked the tickets. It was slowly dawning on me that this was real. I was going back to the country of my birth, to the place that my mother and father was born, and their mother and father before them, and so on.

Everything leading up to my trip was drama. I had to apply for a visa for Congo, permission to enter the country in which I was born. This made me really consider how identity and politics must have left so many of the Congolese Diaspora in exile, unable to return. Me being able to go to the west was a privilege, and being able to go back home was a sort of privilege as well.

Initially, they accepted my visa application. The embassy said I should return on Friday, two days before I fly out, and collect my visa. I received a phone call on Thursday afternoon saying that my visa application had been suspended.

I could not put into words my level of rage, and panic. I was told that I needed to send a few documents, and it should be okay. The following morning, I waited anxiously as my brother went to collect my visa. He called me and said, in his most consolatory voice, ‘mate they’re not giving you a visa’.

I told him not to leave that building no matter what, even if it burns down, you are not leaving that building without a visa. This was at 9am.

After a whole day of making angry phone calls to embassy officials, the visa was finally given to my brother at 15:30pm.  I took this as a test, they wanted to see if I really meant to go home.

The flight was long, Brussels, Luanda, and finally Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. I left at 6 hours and arrived in Kinshasa at 20 hours UTC. As we were landing, the first thing I noticed was that the city was not that well lit. I wondered about the problem electricity supply.

When the plane finally landed, and the doors opened, a wave of hot air came rushing through the plane. It embraced me like an old lover whom I should never have left. It felt warm and I took off my cardigan.

As I walked down the steps of the plane, I let out a big sigh of relief.

A soldier in blue beret, AK47 in hand, walks towards me. I had my headphones on listening to Lokua Kanza Nakozonga, to those familiar with the song this was for me a special moment.

The soldier pointed in my direction, calling someone to come over. I assumed he must be calling someone else. Why would this soldier, armed with a gun, be calling me? I carried on.

The soldier then said you, demulayi ( translate: you, the tall one). I stopped; my legs were trunks rooted in the ground. I point to myself, me! He nodded, and said there are people here waiting for you.

With all the shock and surprise in my bones, I walked towards him. People waiting for me? What people?

I walked hesitantly towards the two figures lurking in the shadow. They  turned out to be my uncles, one of who works as airport security; another huge sigh of relief.

Their names were familiar; they bounced around the walls of our childhood home from my parents’ lips. Their faces were new; the years had changed their appearance recognition. Still, I felt comfortable in their presence.

I walked with the soldier. He escorted me past the security points with such a swiftness that left the other passengers wondering who this person in chuck tailoring, beige chinos and a blue button up shirt, with the cap, really was. My two uncles waited on the other side. I realized that in Kinshasa, much like anywhere else, it’s who you know that matters.

We left the airport and walked to the car park where most of my family was waiting for me. More childhood names that I had grown up with, and became familiar with over the phone suddenly came to life and were real people. My aunties in whose faces I saw my mother, my cousins, who I would have been my companions had I not gone abroad. I felt connected in a deeper way than ever before.

Congo was no longer a mirage or a distant dream that I spoke about elusively hoping one day to get to know and not knowing if I ever will. It was real; it breathed its air into my lungs and gave me life once again. Its moonlight kissed my skin. That night our heartbeats were one.

I was staying at my Uncle’s house in Bandal. Bandal is notoriously popular in Kinshasa, everyone knows Bandal. It is where all the parties happen, where people stay up all night, and all day, living life to the full, letting go of all the woes of the day. There are a lot of woes to let go of.

I spent most of my time visiting different places with my cousin, who was my age but he was far more extravagant and showy than I am. He was sorely disappointed with my daily attire of t-shirt and chinos.

Come on man, you’re from Europe. You have to sap! (To sap, is now a verb, taken from the word sapeur, which would translate as tun up).

I would remind him that I am not from Europe, I am African. I was raised in Europe. Then we would enter an argument about our different viewpoints of the world.

In Kinshasa, the divide between the rich and poor is very apparent. There are those who travel in their air-conditioned 4×4, past trucks with peasant workers who have just scrambled for a daily wage hanging on from the sides. If you have a conscience, the opulence and wealth of the rich will leave you with downcast. It occurred to me that Kinshasa like the rest of the country isn’t poor at all. It is mismanaged. At that moment we drove past a poster of the President Joseph Kabila, which said Judge me not by my words instead judge me by my actions. The irony was too much.

JJ Bola, based in London, born in the DRC, is blogger, writer, poet and basketball coach

Africa was home and Ahmed recently returned but encountering multiple difficulties was determined he would not be a foreigner in Africa. He was tired of the tag of foreigner that abroad trailed him like an evil shadow.

It was true that twenty years of study and work in America had made of him an American and a stranger to Africa. At the arrival hall officials could and did mark him out as one who was in their own words an alien. Intelligence agents began at once shadowing him. Who is this guy and why is he here?

Customs and Immigration officials checked him more thoroughly than they did others but all his things were in order and they let him go. A pair of young agents followed him but they kept their distance. One of them was the woman he had fallen in love with the moment he landed and set eyes on her. She was the most perfectly endowed piece of womanhood he had ever seen, he thought, but now he let her be. In a new city where you were already under suspicion there was no need courting trouble.

The arrival hall was packed with folks expecting friends and relatives, although some he suspected were merely government agents simply lost for what to do and looking out how they score points with the boss. In this type of none descript democracy that abounds in Africa there were always busy bodies. Little men with huge ambition and ruthless in its pursuits. 

The airport was one of the busiest in Africa. Planes came in from all over the world. Every brief interval a plane was landing or leaving. It was by no means on that same scale but it reminded him of Kennedy airport.

Since he left Africa 20 years ago his country had changed out of all proportion. Highways crisscross the land, bridges span the rivers, new cities had emerged where none existed and there was even a brand new capital. In the USA, media reports were wildly off the mark. In the Western imagination Africa was still the land of the Tarzan, bush country, where the white man was king.

But here in Africa his plane had touched down in one of the largest cities in the world at a brand new airport that could have been anywhere else in the world. Officials were all Black so were most of the passengers. Ahmed was glad to observe that. There were a fair number of European, American, Japanese, Chinese and Indian travelers. It is a global world.

Ahmed had slipped into the country unannounced at exactly midnight local time and checked in at one of the middle income hotels that abound in the city. Wasn’t bad, was clean, service good, the girls attractive and friendly.  His timing was no accident; he could have arrived in broad daylight if he chose to. As it turned out he had made a big mistake, doing the right thing in Africa can be tricky.

The next morning when he called Omotala, his dear sister, and told her he had spent the night in town and would soon be home, he expected her to jump with excitement. By nature Omotola was a loud and exuberant girl but now on the line she was muted and sounded disappointed. Was something wrong?

It turned out Ahmed had by his action denied his family, especially his mother, the chance to advertize themselves. Among African elites self promotion is a big thing. You see it all the time on television. When Ahmed emailed his family to tell them he was coming home for good, the family was elated and planned for a fitting welcome ceremony at the airport. Everything would be on camera, later a local station would be persuaded to air it for a fee.

After the ceremony the company would drive in a convoy through town to the suburb at the other end of town where the family had a home. Never mind traffic jams, a notorious aspect of city life here. Again everything would be filmed. But now Ahmed had stolen himself into town. He had come home like a thief in the night?

But his generous family soon forgot and forgave him. The family spent the next three days feasting and reveling in his honor.  There was music and dancing, each evening a large banquet was laid out on the huge balcony overlooking the city’s football stadium. The scene resembled that of the Return of King Odysseus. Ahmed was amazed but he enjoyed the food though he detested the extravagance which he knew his people could ill afford.

Visitors came and went in robs, fineries and jewelries. It was open house. It was clear the family meant to recover lost grounds. Ahmed was prepared to let it be. No need to fight every fight.

He was not yet three weeks old but he was getting tired and bored to death. He longed for moments of quite reflections alone by himself, such as he had enjoyed on the small American campus where he taught. Here nearly all his waking hours he was surrounded by people. He could not take it anymore and he told his mother so. But she rebuked him. Omotola took him aside and urged him: bro take things easy.

The next day at the bank Omotola was dismayed again. It was a hot day; they had been on the queue for a while, now mercifully it was their turn. A man, all pomp and ceremony with a train of followers, walks in and demands to be served.  He was obviously what they refer to in Nigeria as a local champ. The cashier moves to serve him. Ahmed kicks the counter, overturns assorted customer forms, and shatters the flower pot. His sister who detested controversies was horrified.

“Woman what do you think you are doing?”  Ahmed shoved his and his sister’s papers through the slit and demanded his rights as the next on the line.

The cashier woman opened her mouth wide enough to swallow a small hut but no words came. Other customers mutely stared. The manager came out to see what was happening. The local champ, obviously stunned, offered to explain.

“I thought they were just standing there” the man said.

Ahmed ignored him. He ignored the manager for failing to promote at his bank the basic rules of decency. Right now his quarrel was with the cashier. How dare her! The awkward moment passed. Omotola who like many others of her countrymen, prefers to bury her head in the sand, could now breathe again.

How could democracy hope to take root in a country like this when people will not stand on their rights? Those dumb customers! Ahmed was disgusted. He repented the day he returned to Africa. As always with him at such moments the words of the poet came back to him.

^{Mother oh Mother why was I born Black?}

Ahmed got to learn that in Africa the principle of first come first served may count for little. It was the mighty and the powerful that got their way. You see this on the road every day. Official cars, with lights flashing and sirens blaring, shove off other vehicles from the road. People calmly and quietly surrender as his sister and the others at the bank had wanted him to do.

A few days later Ahmed attended a public lecture at the university.  Professor Sinbad Kalule would address the hot subject of youth unemployment in the country. Massive youth unemployment was crippling the economy.

Ahmed made it a point to attend. Though a Muslim Ahmed knew about the story of the Pharisees, now to his surprise here in this lecture hall was a Pharisee.

I am no ordinary professor, Kalule’s very first words as the lecture began. In my days I was not like you the youth of today, was Kalule’s next sentence. His red eyes combed the auditorium filled with students. The rest of the lecture went something like this.

^{In my days I attended the best school in this country. I passed my exams with flying colors and went to Oxford. I earned the PhD. As an eminent intellectual and a renowned scholar I have traveled and lectured around the world. I am the proud owner of a flat in central London and a string of properties in this country. Madam Chairperson, may I present my humble self, as an example to the youths of this great Country.}

Question time came. Madam Chairperson smiled and pointed at the raised hand in the front rows. The student thanked the speaker for a lecture rich in information about the speaker. But how, he asked, may this help us to resolve the very real problem of youth unemployment that confronts us.

The chairperson was like a man stung by bees. Before the speaker could respond she was on her feet. This will be last question, she announced. Students rose as a body and left the auditorium. It brought the evening unceremoniously to a close.

As Ahmed drove home he pondered the evening. He came to the thought that there was some hope. No he will not return to America, yes he will stay in Africa.