The Africa I knew

I remember, a time when I was young and innocent of worry. (I hope that statement makes it clear enough that worry can defile you.) I cared about nothing, enjoying each moments as it came. I remember when I had time to admire Mother Nature, and rather than nursing time, I found that, time was a nurse to me. I remember like a distant memory, so definite and yet so uncertain. Though the memory has faded, it is not completely foreign that before I came of age, I knew nothing of the sexes and gender and that it would mean something to me one day. Yes I never wore a skirt but I saw no difference but in the abstract between myself and the ones that wore one. Its length mattered not in the slightest neither its fixtures. In my naivety I lacked a sense of moral importance; it was neither my place nor my portion to define to another they have done, or who they were trying to be was not right. So who erected that barrier and when was it erected.

I have perhaps said it so many times that I am not a feminist, in this day and age it seems impossible to find a man who is one. Perhaps it’s a stark reflection of the aggression men are continually facing, the battle between misogyny and Misandry.

“Her brand of feminism is just poorly disguised misandry”, so say the men that stand before her, since she wields a dagger, not to cut off the shackle of patriarchy but simply because she aims to behead them all. So its no longer a battle for freedom , it’s a war, a war turned massacre since her attackers turned tail and fled the moment she raised her head, and she pursued them like a dog , nipping at their heels, rabid in desire to let none escape alive. She placed on them the shackles they placed on her.

Yes, I know I am poking an eye or two, I’m sure the reader has glanced back at the articles title to really confirm what I am writing about. Yes, I am writing about the Africa I knew. Nothing has changed much now. From the first time I came of age, till now, shackles simply change hands. The colonizers fled but we shackled ourselves with foreign ideas, looked to them for the panacea to heal it all.

“I just admitted that there was a patriarchal tyranny, but her focus will not be on the solution I propose but on the fact that I pointed a finger at her again, yes, they know her as the radical. To her, it was no longer that men and women are equal but that women are better than being men. My finger is like a bee sting in her eye, because it has forced her to face the mirror and look at the demon she has become, the very demon she has so fervently fought.”
The Africa before the one I knew is apparently the cradle of mankind, where man found himself at one with nature. His innovation was autochthonous, suited for himself and his environment, not a carbon copy of his neighbor. A multitude of cultures and languages that had no translated equivalent for “Mine”, stood provokingly, laughing at the world for thinking them savage.

I do not miss the Africa I knew, I long for the Africa that was. An Africa at peace with itself, an Africa confident, and Africa jealous enough to push back intruder who come to greedily scramble for her wealth, and welcome those who peaceably present themselves before her majesty. I long for an Africa that knows that she is at the top to begin with, not the one who has to heed a call to arise like she has fallen.