Memoirs of a Cipher | Africa | Art | Music | Poetry | True Stories

It was 1984, and in my infinite, youthful wisdom, I decided that I no longer wanted to continue with the bourgeoisie education I was receiving at a small New England liberal arts college.

Ever since my return from Africa several years earlier, I was supremely conflicted and torn psychologically about race, religion and culture. The basis of this struggle was in my 1960’s and 70’s upbringing in an environment of radical, African liberation theologists, where I was fed a steady diet of socialist ideals, designed to prepare us for a world-wide revolution.

It is truly amazing to me, how the more things change, the more they stay the same.  As one who remembers history, I like to use the analogy of the theatre: the backdrops have been switched out, new props installed, the old actors have transitioned their roles to understudies, and the show goes on.

Most recently it was Bush/Cheney and the Iraq war, but in my youth it was Kennedy/Johnson and the Vietnam War.  We had our “Tricky” Dick (President Richard M. Nixon), and this generation had its “Deadly” Dick (Vice President Dick Cheney); both equally ambitious men who overreached the mark.

Twenty-five years later, I doubt any of these radicals imagined that the revolution would come in a form that threatens the very existence of mankind. Through the Bush/Cheney regime, the politics of greed ruled supreme; and as avarice knows no bounds, instead of letting sleeping dogs lay, they decided to poke at the hornet’s nest, and stir a sleeping giant that in its irrational enmity now cannot rest.

Now, as then, the bodies of the innocent, also known euphemistically as “collateral damages”; pile up around the world, and we the populace, so consumed with day-to-day survival, continue to abdicate to global corporations what little personal freedoms are left to us.

This scratching and pecking on the floor beneath the table’s of would be kings and queens, leaves little for us to differentiate or elevate ourselves, other than through the illusions of race and creed.  And so we self-annihilate, while they eat cake.  For the plebeians have forgotten the guillotines, but these titans have remembered, and perfected the artifice of misdirection.

Michael Moore does a phenomenal job publicizing the inequities perpetrated by the haves against the have-nots, and though I would like to acknowledge his great contributions; it is not my intention to rehash what he has done par excellence.

What is most amazing to me is how little we heed these prophets who shout in the streets. One has only to remember history in order not to repeat it.  I ask you, what is the difference between the bodies lying in the street after the My Lai Massacre, and anything we see today?

In the 60’s and 70’s it was the “Guerrillas” who were stirring up trouble, today we have “Terrorists”.  That is not to say that there aren’t bad people; in fact, there are very bad people everywhere; but the euphemisms change to mask the same agenda.  Those who will not comply to subjugation, must be branded and eradicated.

And so, American soldiers fought and died in a country where the indigenous people did not want them.  Much like Iraq, the goals and objectives were unclear; for in the case of Saddam Hussein as with many other despots around the world, America first supported and protected him.

Look anywhere in the world today, and you can find a corrupt government that is covertly supported by Western corporations intent on raping the country of its natural resources.  A prime example is the continuing conflict and instability in the Congo.

Congo, formerly known as Zaire, is a country where incredibly egregious atrocities are perpetrated against its citizenry, and yet nothing is made of it.  A great website where you can view an interactive timeline and history of the conflict in the Congo is The Tragic History of Congo’s Plunder and Consumption.

Violence against women plays a prominent role in the war in Congo today.  It was not always the case. African culture, as do many indigenous cultures; revere women, children and the elderly.  However, with the utter and complete breakdown of that society, and in the absence of faith in a higher power, men have reverted to their basest natures.  As a woman who was offered as a girl for several cows to be the nubile bride of an octogenarian, and who was violently raped as a teenager; the shame and pain of those memories and the experiences of these Congolese women haunt me.

I was an almost woman/child looking for the love of a father. What I encountered was an older man who recognized and exploited this vulnerability in the most perverted way.  Since then, gender, gender relations, sexuality, and women’s issues, particularly, violence against women, is a theme that I explore, discuss and highlight.  In my short story, The End of the Glittery Reign (Part 2), I touched upon the issue of modern sexual slavery and the trafficking of women for sex, and featured a Frontline documentary video.

Much like the violence perpetrated against the women of the former Eastern block countries, who are easily victimized because of the breakdown of government and society; the manifestation of the atrocities in Congo today, are the systematic rape of girls as young as 1 year old to women as old as 80.  The three part video below is more powerful than anything I could write on this matter, so I encourage you to view them, before continuing to read the rest of the post.

I remember in the early 70’s, seeing graphic photos of fields of bloated bodies in Angola and Congo, and though slightly desensitized by the executions of thieves that I had witnessed in Nigeria, as well as the plethora of images that my father continuously exposed me to from the Angolan and Vietnam Wars; our proximity to the Congo and Angola made the conflict more palpable and frightening.  And yet, then, as now, we did not send our “children” to die trying to “liberate” them.

So, in 1984, halfway through an undergraduate degree, I decided to get radical and be more “black”.  Upon our return from Africa, and because of the trauma associated with our escape from my father, me and my siblings were understandably emotionally disturbed.  I acted out the most, and subsequently, my mother sent me to  Dr. Frances Cress Welsing for therapy.  Dr. Welsing is the author of “The Isis Papers”, and given our upbringing and history she was a logical choice.

At that time she practiced out of an office near Howard University, and once a week my mother would drive me there to talk about why I was so angry and confused.  Basically, it all boiled down to my confused identity, and that I needed to become more empowered as a “black” revolutionary.  Though the rhetoric was familiar, it was not comforting, nor did it assuage my dis’ease. I sought the answers to three basic questions: “where do I belong?”, “what is my culture?”, and “who are my people?”  None of these questions were answered in these sessions.

It would take me years to realize that my culture is African, and that my people are Africans, and that I belong with Africans.  But, between then and that realization and acceptance, were a lot of unnecessary and painful experiences.  One such experience was my foray into the lower, socioeconomic realm of Black America.  I had no road map or contextual compass, but I, like the rest of the world, watched what was pumped out in the media minute by minute, hour by hour, and day by day.  These were, I thought, real men, unafraid, and strong; a true testament to and portrait of “blackness”.

I don’t exactly remember how I met Daron.  At the time he was working in a barber shop on Rhode Island Avenue in Washington, DC, and I dropped by there for one reason or another.  He was big, imposing, muscular, dark skinned, bald headed; and he handled the scissors with a nimbleness that belied the thickness of his fingers and large hands.

I remember Daron most for his laugh.  It was full, throaty, and loud.  I laugh like that, and I was attracted to other people who enjoyed and expressed unrestrained moments of happiness. I subsequently learned he was a child of the Caribbean, which made him all the more attractive, because even then I was not particularly attracted to culture of Black American men.

I remember the first time our eyes caught each others, and the chemistry was there.  Strong and palpable, it pulled at my heart and loins.  It might have grown uninhibited had he not spoken.  Daron spoke in the particular linguistic style of inner city Black youths.  Not easily described, one can find it articulated in any number of music videos.  He had not finished high school, and was on parole, yet, I found myself returning to the shop the next day to find out his schedule.

The people at the shop; customers and stylists alike, were just as intrigued with me as I with them.  My clipped, educated, clearly enunciated linguistic style was alien to them, and one which often garnered me the moniker of “Oreo”.  However, Daron never made fun of me.  We soon became inseparable, but instead of us making a world for ourselves, I found myself being dragged down into his.

As part of the terms of his release, he lived with his mother in Cheverly, Maryland.  Though he drove a $60,000 car, the irony of this dichotomy did not phase him.  In the beginning, he kept his street life totally separate from me.  Then came the late night calls, and quick runs.  His mother would come into his room where he had left me to ask if I knew where he had gone.  I could see the heartbreak spread across her once beautiful face, now marred with worry and angst.

Of course, I didn’t know where he was or when he would be back, but her worry infected me like a sickness.  I knew instinctively that I did not want to feel like her or look like her, and both were surely promised had I remained with him.

To this day I don’t know if Daron ever broke parole, if he was returned to jail, or ended up dead.  But, it wasn’t too long before I realized that these men of the streets, though valiant warriors, were leaderless, doctrineless, and soulless.  The avarice of the American “dream”, had swept through their souls and gutted them clean; and all that was left was the mindless impulse to accumulate a paltry list of possessions which they could not take with them in death.

It was a good experience for me; a box checked.  I  realized that the answers I sought could not be found by rooting and rutting in the gutters of the bottom of American society.  This was not the meaning of “blackness”.  But what was?  The answer to that question rested in the mind of my father.  A brilliant man, a mathematician and physicist, who was constantly disappointed, but who had found aspects of “real African men”, in all the countries of the Continent in which he had ever lived and traveled.

Though he searched far and wide, he never encountered the mythical “Uber” Black Man. That which he could not find, he was not able to clearly define nor model for his daughters, and therefore we were cast adrift with no idea whom to marry or mate with.  In the end, after several more adventures, I returned to school the following fall, because I realized that the answers to the questions I sought, could only be discovered through learning and knowledge.

I also recognized and paid homage to my father, who was only human; but instinctively knew, that in order for us to succeed, we had to be anchored by the people of Africa, and grounded in the fecundity of its land.  Yes, Africa has problems, and the problems stem from humanities’ foibles.  But, Africa had to be our culture if we were to stand strong and see the unvarnished truth of living in this world as a person with brown pigmentation.

Education is tantamount to developing informed opinions, and inoculates against brainwashing by the media pacifiers. And so, I returned to the small, liberal arts college in New England, and I began to read.  I became a voracious reader, a habit that persists to this day.  I developed my own opinions, and identified my own heroes, such as Frantz Fanon; until one day I realized, that the fertile seeds planted in youth had blossomed into a brilliant flower.  A flower called daughter, and I am a proud product of my father’s revolution.

Frantz Fanon