AFRICA YO AFRICA YO YO YO

Ki dir, as they greet in Seychelles Creole. I am searching for one Africa,heir of the vision of Queen Nziga Mbande. I hear you now hold the horizons that she saw as she fought against the beasts that scrambled and pierced our virgin lands. I hear that her greatest treasure was her people,hidden in plain sight of racists as they mined for gold, diamonds and whatever name they have concorted for our minerals. The tongue she is named after, is it Vai or Ethiopic? This Africa is a new one,they tell me. She teems vibrantly beyond the borders carelessly used to wrench her children from each other. This Africa reaches her hand out for friends, to forgive and forge on.

Idhi nade,as East African Luo would ask you how the going is. Would you preen your ears for the knowledge that flowed from Timbuktu? Would you rejuvenate the fountain of literacy like the medu neter hieroglyphics of Egypt, the proto-Saharan of Nubia,the Dogon rock art,the Tamazight tifinagh or the pictorial Nsibidi? These gems might be lost to many of my kinsmen but to the future we aim; our heritage of literacy is the arrowhead adventure and a curator of our past in the future.

Naka nga def,as they say in Gambia. Could I borrow your sight to envision the Pan-Africanist banquet of Nyerere, Nkrumah, Machel,Mandela,Mboya, Sankara and Gaddaffi?That the blood of the pioneers before them may gush through  AU,SADC,EAC,ECOWAS,CENSAD,COMESA or IGAD. May it gush more exuberantly and perpetually than the Nile or Volta,clean the rivers of blood desired by some evil regents. Let her children inherit the vision built on their kinship.

Lumela? U kae? I pass the greetings of Sesotho. Touch the exquisite grain of the rich mural that is woven by our culture. Culture is too daft a word to encompass your dance. Culture is too shallow a term to comprehend the rhythm of your anthems and too bare to cover the breadth of our existence. Dance to the tune of the nyatiti,balafon,makhoyane,daghumma and tbal. 

Wet your palates for the best from Africa's kitchen and grazing fields. Her children have ben toiling in the fields and are eager to entice your tase buds. Shall we state with Feijoada (pork and bean stew) from Sao Tome? Or perhaps sweet Makroudh and Baklava from Tunisia? Please sit for Djibouti's Injera ,Harira or Niter Kibbeh. Snack on the Gajak and Mazavaroo.

Waft the sweat of success, because that is all Africa is about.We may fail but we will make our way through the jungle of life. The scents and stenches are part of our journey so we should not fear. Our noses can never fall off track as we know what we want. Dream and it shall be. Africa is ripe for the winning.