A diasporan perspective

Do I start at the beginning? Do I start by asking for some clarification that we all understand what Diaspora means? I think I need to start there for after living and working for two years, yes, just two years in one of the leading African countries and fastest growing economies, it seems that this term cannot be taken for granted. After living and working where the Africans from all over the world come to meet, work and be, I still have to ask this question.

Gilroy (2009) states that the idea of blacks as a ‘national’ or proto-national group with its own hermetically enclosed culture plays a key role in this mystification, and through seldom overtly named, the misplaced idea of a ‘national interest’ gets invoked here as a means to silence dissent and censor political debate.

The term diasporan can be applied to any one of African descent. The term has been used for those who were not born in Africa but who are clearly of African descent i.e. black (though not exclusively). In some scenarios, it refers to those who, were not only not born in Africa but who have not yet traced their ancestors backed to Africa. I state this as I rarely find the term applied to forth or fifth generation children who know they are from Africa. This then brings about a whole new meaning to the term and to the connotations which go along with using such a term when we are considering the development and the ways in which Africa can move forward.

As a child of Jamaican parents who had responded to the call for labor from the UK for the ‘children’ of her ex-colonies, I was raised to understand that I was black and part of a big picture which ultimately included the people from all of the other islands, the whole of Africa and places like Brazil where the largest number of Yoruba speaking Africans, outside the continent, reside. I was part of a big picture that led to a complex and intricate place called Africa.

As a teenager, I grew up in South East London amongst black people from over the world and encountered a large number of Ghanaians in 1975 when many new and flamboyant young people came to join my local comprehensive school. They were well spoken, well dressed and many planned to be lawyers or doctors. Academically they were very confident and spoke of having to ‘leave when Rawlings came into power’. I did not understand fully what that meant until many years later.

As a child student at Sussex University in the 1970’s, I spent many hours sitting and learning from those who had worked with Nkrumah, Lumumba, Manley, Bishop and Nyerere. Their struggles became familiar to me and I began to learn how the struggles for African liberation were indeed knitted closely together. My university years were my introduction to the Pan African struggles.

I was recently asked what my ‘pan African credentials’ were: I laughed. I had never thought of my life experience in this way. However, in the twenty first century, it would seem that everything could be quantified including what role I did or did not play in the movement that I had felt so much a part of called ‘Pan Africanism’. In response to this question, I spoke of my attendance at ‘political’ ‘grassroots’ meetings. The places where libation was thrown and ancestors were called to guide and to protect us as we discussed the challenges of racism, sexism, and inequity. The days of long coach rides to places like Manchester and Sheffield to discuss ‘The Education of the black child’ and to listen to Dr Leonard Jeffries, Dr Tony Martin and Dr Patricia Newton. The workshops on the new curriculum and the need for positive black role models.

In my trips to recognize the Africans who had been taken and sold from Africa, I choose not to use the word suicide as it somehow doesn’t capture the decisions which some of the men and women who found themselves on this point, choose to make. The trips to Devon where we danced and swayed to rituals which we did not fully understand but in which we knew that we had work to do to somehow…somehow honor those who had made the journey and who made the existence of some of us…possible. It was African Remembrance Day.

The marches for Cherry Roach, Roland Adams, Steven Lawrence and the many other men and women who died at the hands of police who never valued our lives in the way that they value theirs. The marches that eventually felt useless to me. My role as the photographer who, even with baby on her back, turned up to record and to document the occasions which made our story the extra special element of the UK diaspora element.

Africa’s development is and remains in the hands of Africans. However, the role which the diasporans play will depend on their own awareness and recognition as being a part of this bigger picture and of those in Africa and the world, to accept the ones who they sent away and sold away.

Living in Ghana, I am learning so much. The families who sold their brothers and sisters tell me, that they were sworn to secrecy. They were told not to speak of this act, ever. For generations, there was only secrecy and tiptoeing around the decision that had been made to sell people for meaningless cloth, the bible and the religion that now rules their lives.

There are many people from the Caribbean and from the children of the Caribbean, who have decided to make Ghana their home. Many of them are well educated and are top professionals in their fields. There are lawyers, doctors, psychologists, teachers, bankers and consultants. They are attracted to Ghana’s growing economy and to the lifestyle that allows them to afford home helps, drivers, cooks and childcare at a ridiculous fraction of the cost of these providers in the UK and the US. These stories are already well documented. Some people have planned their return to Africa a long time ago as they understand the political or feel the spiritual connectedness of this move.

What is not so well documented is the challenge of living in a country where in most industries there is a total acceptance of corruption at a cost of good or very good quality. As a diasporan, I often meet with others like me who are eager to support Ghana on its’ path to development. We refuse to accept that Ghana will remain in a state of ‘developing’ with seemingly no clear goals to move beyond this state.

However, we are faced with the reality that ‘corruption’ rules over quality in too many cases. The idea of ‘buying’ what you want is very much a part of the day-to-day culture. So, the first time I found myself recognized by the driver of the VIP coach in Cape Coast, who then rushed me to the front to secure tickets for my son and I, I realized how quickly corruption could grow and become the order of the day! I was pleased for my son and I to be seated and on our way. Then, as I sat on the bus, being a reflective thinker, I pondered on the man at the bank who gets to buy dollars, when no one else can access this service; the parent who pays bribe money to get their child into a selective school or for exam questions; the lecturer who offers a ‘pass’ certificate to those who will pay double the course fees; the local MP who turns an eye to constructions which should not have been erected and so, when a Melcom supermarket collapses, no one is surprised. Finally, when a few bodies were found alive, but badly injured, a softly spoken woman said, they would be better off dead as they would not receive the healthcare that they would need for any quality of life!

The title of one of Alice walkers’ poetry books is ‘Hard Times Require Furious Dancing’ (2010). Living in Ghana is sometimes like living through ‘hard times and yes, the dance for ‘acceptance’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘trust’ is certainly furious. I think one of the challenges right now is how we ‘diasporans’ work with a system that favors the wealthy and encourages the poor to become corrupt.

* BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Please do not take Pambazuka for granted! Become a Friend of Pambazuka and make a donation NOW to help keep Pambazuka FREE and INDEPENDENT!

* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.