Everybody now seems to agree that yes indeed slavery and colonialism happened, yes indeed the white man has treated the black as subhuman and that now it’s time to forgive forget and move on, as Wangari Maathai rightly put it in regard to colonialism. I tend to accept that too. But every time I am almost forgetting, then I come across another story, either carried by the world media, or featured by Wikipedia, or even sometimes by accident in my usual Googling, that yet reminds me that back then it was as horrible.
This time, it was a story carried by BBC reminding everybody about Ota Benga, the unfortunate boy from Congo of pygmy origin who was very unlucky to be captured by an American hobbyist and taken to America to show the rest of the white world his missing link between apes and them. He was also apparently mistaken for a cannibal because his teeth were filed sharp in a ritual ceremony, which was then very common in Africa.
Because of that Ota Benga was caged with an Orangutan since it was his closest match for any living creature. You would think that was like millennia ago, and you would be wrong. In fact that is in the beginning of the past century, and still a man had to endure that.
I like to allude to the bad things which have occurred to those who came before us in order that I may actually understand what is happening to me or us today. Some notions of White superiority, I must agree, persist even among the black community whether you are talking of Africa or outside. When a black man fights with another, it’s a savage war, when a white man fights another, it’s for God and country as if we have no God or country.
If you want to understand the gravity of the matter, you could tune in to CNN or Fox news anytime, where Africa is synonymous to war and hunger, or Black is almost always associated with being violent especially in the US.
Probably with age and time I have come to be biased against America because of consuming too much of its entertainment, but I’d guess the situation is no different in Europe and Asia. Somehow, black is made to look foolish, incapable and savage, while everybody knows its predicament has arisen from the treatment he has gotten from the rest of the world throughout history. Our esteem is headed to the right direction and I can only wish I was born when I was in order to witness the change in sentiment and status
quo.
Ota Benga btw died a slave still serving his master faithfully in circuses and shows with the title of the only cannibal in America. Ruth Chileshe on Facebook from Zambia however finds the story of Ota Benga quite not deserving for newa. She says she also cages a white woman with pigs, and nobody found that deserving to be news.She was lucky not to be caught by Zambias Wildlife Service keeping this unlikely pet. Funny, isnt it?
God bless the black people!
Ndegwa believes he is the greatest black African to ever live after Patrice Lumumba. In fact even outside Africa, only Malcolm X could be greater than him!
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