The opening chapters of the book deal with the sense of inferiority to white people some black people have. Black people globally are discriminated against purely because of the color of their skin. Not because they are not good enough, not economically sound, not mentally capable … but because of the hue of their skin. Hearing the same thing over and over again and seeing it portrayed in the media almost makes it entrenched in your sub-conscious mind as the truth. It was until recently that I realized how much racist ideologies were even propagated through some movies I watched while growing up and even some cartoons. Growing up, in the sort of cartoons I used to watch, you would often find that whenever a white character was lost in a thick forest, cannibals whose faces were painted black would abduct the said character. You would find them boiling water (or soup) on fire in a big black pot, cutting carrots and other vegies into it and rolling their victim on a stake over the hot steaming water. While all this went on, the other tribesmen would be dancing around the fire in wait for their meal to cook. It was until recently that I realized that those cannibals being portrayed in the cartoons were a misrepresentation of black people as primitive, dangerous, almost animal-like etc. This is why I was particularly excited to see Otabil state that ‘the spirit of racism thrives on misinformation and stereotyping. Instead of portraying people in the likeness of God, it seeks to devalue the worth of people…’. The whole world needs to understand that different doesn’t mean inferior, neither does different always mean better. The unfortunate truth is that the very people bent on portraying black people as less than what God made us to be are the ones controlling the media globally. Hence, it presents a serious challenge for us in our bid to redeem our image.

The bible indeed says that ‘you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’. However, it is evident that Christians who are expected to know the truth by heart are also victims of lies told about the black race. This is a theme that is extensively treated throughout this book (and I will touch on it later on). One other fact I found intriguing about this book is that Dr. Otabil took time to address the issue of injustice vis-a-vis biblical justice. The topic of Biblical Justice is my newly found love hence it makes me excited to discover it being addressed in the book. Otabil said ‘whenever God comes to town he visits the oppressed to set them free’. He stated this in relation to what God did for the Israelites after they had been in captivity for over 400 years. He goes on to mention that it is an observable fact that kingdoms and nations are being shaken for whatever purpose God deems fit. Prophetically, Otabil declared that God is going to visit the black race to bring the people out of the state they are in (just like he did for the Israelites).

I often get questioned on Christianity’s involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the crusades and other heinous deeds of some Christians in past centuries who were convinced they were following the commands of God. I often feel ashamed when these topics come up. Dr. Otabil made it worse by stating that ‘it is just a shame to know that the pillars of apartheid were built on the teachings of the Dutch Reformed Church’. If you know a little about apartheid and the extent to which it destroyed lives in South Africa, then you would be as ashamed as I am that Christianity had a role to play in it. Otabil proposes a solution, he calls it the ‘anti-oppression serum’. He explains that it takes the preparation of an anti-snake-poison serum from a snake to fight snake poison. The same way Moses had to raise a bronze serpent in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it would be healed from the snake bite. So the author believes that if Christianity has been (ab)used in the past to oppress people and nations, we need to regard that as an abuse of the tenets of Christianity and come to the understanding that at the core of Christianity is the greatest freedom fighter of all time. Only he can deliver and truly set a man free.

The father of many nations

The greater part of the book deals with Abraham and his lineage. Otabil traces some African nations back to Abraham and this is very significant in understanding whether or not Africans are cursed. There are a lot of people who believe that – even including preachers. This assertion is drawn from the story of Noah and his 3 sons. It is a popular story. Noah got drank and he stripped himself naked, his son Ham chanced on him in that state and proceeded to tell his two brothers about it. Shem and Japheth, the brothers of Ham, decided to cover their father’s nakedness without looking at him, so they held a cloth at both ends and walked backwards to cover him up. It is often said that when Noah became sober afterwards he cursed Ham. Ham is believed to be the forefather of some African nations therefore many people think it means the black race is cursed.

First of all we need to understand that in Gen 9:1 God blessed Noah and his sons and told them to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. Which means all three sons including Noah were all blessed. After the incidence involving Ham and his father’s nakedness, Noah was angered and he decided to punish Ham. According to scripture, Noah didn’t curse Ham, he rather cursed Canaan, Ham’s son. Why? Because there was no way Noah’s curse could undo the blessings God had pronounced over Ham. Throughout the bible, we know who the Canaanites were. They weren’t from Africa (although some Africans ended up in Canaan with the Israelites). The blessings the Lord spoke over Ham and his two brothers still stands.

Back to Abraham. God promised him he would make him the father of many nations. He had two sons with Sarah and Hagai. Otabil said:

Between Isaac and Ishmael, Abraham fathered two nations which does not really impress me as many. If Abraham was the father of many nations, then there were other nations he fathered.

Abraham remarried after Sarah died. He married Keturah and had 6 children with her (Gen 25:2). It isn’t stated explicitly in scripture what race Keturah belonged to. But when we study her lineage, the truth can be uncovered. It turns out that she had a son called Jokshan and he had two sons Sheba and Dedan. In Gen 10:7, these two young men were referred to as the sons of Cush. Which means they were blacks, automatically meaning that their grandmother, Keturah, was black. This is significant information. The nations that God promised Abraham would father included some African nations. Which means, they were also blessed after the order of Abraham.

After Moses ran away from Egypt he was taken in by Jethro in the land of Midian, meaning Jethro was a Midianite. Midian was one of the sons Abraham had with Keturah, therefore, Jethro too was of Cushite descent or black. It is interesting how the bible describes him as a priest – presumably a priest of Jehovah. How can a Midianite become a priest unto Jehovah? The answer is in Gen 18:19 when God said ‘For I know him (Abraham), that he will command his children and his household after him and they will keep the way of the Lord…’. Abraham instilled the fear of the Lord in his descendants and this was probably why Jethro was a priest. And if you are familiar with the story of Moses in the wilderness, you would realize that it was Jethro who taught Moses the ways of God and gave him wise counsel (Exodus 18). Jethro was a black man. We are sure of this because Moses married Jethro’s daughter Zipporah and we are told explicitly that she was Ethiopian (Numbers 12:1). Black people were very much involved in the journey to the promise land and black people ended up in the promise land as well (Judges 1:16). It is important for us to understand the prominent feats achieved by some black people in the bible. Even in the New Testament as well, the deeds of some black people were mentioned and we see the general highlighting of the black race. Here are a few examples:

1. It was Simon of Cyrene(which is in modern day Lybia), who was charged to help Jesus carry his cross on the way to Calvary (Matthew 27:32)
2. Before the gospel could reach other Gentile nations, God used Philip to preach to the Ethiopian Eunuch.
3. In the church in Antioch, there were some prophets and teachers. They were the ones who laid hands on Paul and Barnabas and sent them out on their first mission trip. Amongst these prophets and teachers were two Africans: Simeon that was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene.

Beyond the Rivers of Ethiopia is an inspiring work of art that would enlighten black Christians and the entire body of Christ in general. It is very enlightening in the manner in which it reminds us of the prominent role some black people played centuries ago that had a global impact. This is how Dr. Otabil put it:

Whenever the world has been in a crisis, the black man has always appeared on the scene. After the flood, when the world needed a leader, He called Nimrod the son of Cush. When Moses was taken out of Pharaoh’s camp, it took a black man Jethro to teach him the ways of God. When the people of Israel were going to the Promised Land, it took a black man Hobab to direct them to the Promised Land.

 The stories above are but a fraction of the great and mighty things our forefathers did in times past. If they did it, we can too. I would like to urge everyone who reads this piece to try and get the book to read; it is for sale on Amazon and also at Altar Bookshop, Christ Temple, ICGC – Abossey Okai. It will do you a lot of good. In the end, we have to accept the fact that God made man in his image, male and female made him them. We are all valuable and precious to God. History is proof of this. Hence we need to treat each other with respect and honor in reverence to God.

‘It is their guilty conscience that keeps them away from Allah’s presence’

No, I do not agree with that! The cloths they loosely covered themselves with at night probably did a better job of pinning them to their beds and away from their maker’s presence than the guilt of their evil deeds – that is if there was even a hint of guilt in their hearts.

The heinousness of their actions was like a pungent smell attempting to choke you to death. So I feared the dawn and all the anticipation of daylight terror that it brought.  I was often either snapping out of a scary nightmare or in a limbo between sleep and consciousness, fighting gory images from the scenes I had seen the previous day and the stories I had heard told. Somewhere in between the fear of the known and the anticipation of unknown evil, I had made my bed. And that was how the dawn of every morning at Sambisa was like for me.

I remember vividly, the morning after our first night there, we were introduced to the ‘Boko Haram wives’. There were so many of them! Most of whom either had babies strapped to their backs or they carried them on one hip while slightly bending in the opposite direction. That was when I first saw her … Fatima. Fatima wore a long flowing hijab that almost touched her waist. The circle her hijab made on her face made her appear as one peeping at the whole world through a hole. Her facial skin resembled a stretched elastic material, the way it allowed pointy bones to protrude at the corners of her eyes and cheeks. Unlike the others, her countenance appeared heavy with concern and affection. Maybe we merely reminded her of herself. But you could almost feel the kindness radiating from her stare.

So when it was time for them to teach us how to wear the hijab, I walked straight to her. She told me her name was Fatima and I told her mine. We made a connection right there and then. Fatima didn’t bother teaching me how to put on the hijab … she just did it for me.

‘Stiffen your neck Ada, or else the hijab will slip off your head’. She said.

I held still and made sure my entire body was stiff. She nudged at my shoulders and upon noticing how stiff I was, she giggled. By that, what should have been a madam-servant relationship melted into a friendship. Formality dissolved into cordiality. I felt I could ask her anything. When she pressed her hand on top of my head to hold the cloth in position, I felt the weight of her palm. Not like a burdensome weight but as an act depicting ownership. I was hers from then on. The other girls were being knocked and smacked in the face for not following the exact instructions given them. But Fatima gently wrapped the cloth around my head and pinned it beneath my chin.

‘I want mine to be as long as yours’ I told her. She giggled again and said ‘Ok’.

Her friendship came in as a timely relief. Mariama and I had grown distant after we arrived at Sambisa. I often saw her emerging from one of the wooden structures close to the fence at the far end of the camp. And anytime she saw me looking at her, she’d quickly look away and feign ‘busybody’. Mariama wouldn’t maintain eye contact with me for more than 5 seconds. She sometimes worked with the rest of us but for some reason she was often excused from fetching water from the tank to the quarters of the General and his men. I couldn’t believe the rumors, but with the benefit of hindsight I can boldly say she was married off to one of the high-ranked militants in Boko Haram. According to Fatima, Boko Haram wives are forced to reduce contact with the other girls. The rest of us were just human bombs waiting to detonate at some market place or school at the command of General Abubakar. Girls like Mariama were married off to high-ranked militants. They were the hens destined to lay and brood over eggs that would hatch to reveal the much anticipated foul fowls: a new generation of Boko Haram terrorists. The rest were also sold to some human traffickers and rich herdsmen from neighboring countries. Fatima had been with the militants for 18 months and knew the ins and outs of the camp, so I believed her.

‘I am a widow’

She told me once. Her husband died in kano. He was one of the militants. Fatima still spoke of him with such fondness that you would imagine they had a fairy-tale kind of marriage. They didn’t. She chuckled sarcastically when she said:

‘Alidu was only there to ward off the other militants who attempted to rape and physically abuse me so he alone could do that to me’

Fatima was confident in her guts. She believed Alidu was scared that night before he went to Kano. General Abubakar summoned all the jihadists the night before they left the camp. When Alidu came back to their wooden shed, he couldn’t look at her or their son. His last words to Fatima were, ‘… take care of your son’. There was a surge of mixed feelings that ran through my heart when she spoke about how the trucks came back to the camp the following day with fewer men than they left with. At the gathering where the militants were telling their stories and various experiences at Kano, she looked everywhere for him but couldn’t find him. I imagined the scene was just like the day we came: too chaotic for anybody to care to tell her the whereabouts of Alidu. The surviving militants took turns in mentioning names of those who had passed on to paradise. That was when Fatima heard Alidu’s name mentioned. The mixed feelings that must have hit her: news of the death of her husband and abuser. From that moment on, her life changed for the worse.

She was raped almost every night since then by different men.

‘Sometimes two. Sometimes three. Sometimes I didn’t know how many, because I passed out in the middle of all the torture only to wake up in a tent full of stinking snoring men’.

When she said this I could feel the tears sting at my eyes. Then she told me she sometimes even woke up in a different tent from the one she remembered being taken to. At this point I lost the fight to my tears; warm tears came streaming down my cheeks. I was scared. In my fear I yearned to comfort her, but words failed me.  What do you tell such a person? That it was going to be alright? In hell? I couldn’t lie to her even if I tried. I wish I could uplift her spirit but mine was quickly sinking into an abyss of despair and in need of urgent rescue too.

‘You have been through hell’. I finally said.

‘Yes I have.’ She heaved a long sigh.

‘It may be your turn soon. When they come for you remember to keep your legs wide apart, eh?’ She pulled at her left earlobe with her left hand while saying this. ‘And close your eyes till they are done’.

That was it? That was the drill? How was that supposed to make it any bearable? All the time I spent with Fatima revealed one thing: though she never mentioned it, she had no desire to escape. She never called Sambisa home, but she pretty much was at home there. And I felt she was walking me down that road too. I didn’t like it.

As our custom was, before we went to sleep, one of us would share her experience with the rest. Often sad stories. Often stories of rape and abuse. That was one way we bonded as fellow Boko haram slaves. One night Hawa narrated her ordeal at the hands of one of the militants to us; it was the saddest story I had heard told. Whispering to nobody in particular, she narrated her story knowing that she already had our ears without asking. Hawa’s made us all scared. Fear hanged in the room. The fear was so tangible, you could touch it. She recalled being hit from behind with the butt of a gun by one of General’s men. The heavy knock rendered her comatose for hours. The very moment her eyes were opened, she felt a sharp pain at the back of her head and the militant’s heavy arm resting on her bare back. Hawa turned around and saw the heaving hairy chest of the beast next to her. She panicked, but mastered the courage to get up. Finally she covered her nakedness with a cloth, stepped out and took slow painful steps to our tent in the dark.

Hawa had always attracted so much attention from the militants because she had a fine body. For obvious reasons, she was always sent for to run some errand or clean their wooden sheds. She couldn’t find the words to describe the torture but we perfectly understood her cries and cried with her. When she said her head still hurt, three girls drew closer to comfort her.  With a soaked rug, one of them massaged her head where it hurt. As if rehearsed, she dabbed at the back of Hawa’s head after each sentence she whispered. The incident inspired more than sympathy in us  – we were all petrified! I thought it was a case of paranoia at first when she said she suspected the Boko Haram wives had a hand in it.  But she went on to tell us how she had always been harassed by them.

‘You want to come and steal our husbands abi? We shall see…’

One of them had said this to Hawa a day before her bitter experience.

And as she walked through the dark after the rape, a bunch of them saw her and immediately started scoffing at her.

For this reason and many more, I was always grateful for Fatima. Her love and affection kept me sane. Sometimes I felt she went through all the pain for my sake, that I wouldn’t have to taste much of it. She taught me when to feign period cramps to avoid being whisked away in the night. Her predictions were so accurate, it was as if she knew the times the libido of the militants peaked. Yet, she still assured me that a time was coming when that trick wouldn’t work anymore. A harsh reality I had to face. But who am I to complain? In the middle of a God-forsaken forest, I found a sister and for that I was very grateful to God.

We must first establish the fact that the issue of slavery is quite complex. The characteristics of slavery is so complicated that it is almost impossible (and largely erroneous) to provide a generalized definition of the term. That makes perfect sense considering the fact that child labor, indentured service, chattel slavery, forced labour, sex trafficking, apprenticeship-internship etc. were all commonly referred to as ‘slavery’ during biblical times. Since the mention of slavery brings to the table several forms of servitude, this discussion will employ terminologies to help identify the form of servitude being spoken of at each point in time.

It is very sad that people blame the New World chattel slavery (slaves were treated as actual property, had no legal protection and no means to attain liberty) on Christianity when the traditional leaders of the land exchanged their own people for manufactured goods, weapons, sugar, mirrors,whiskey etc. How do you bypass this fact to blame the Transatlantic Slave trade on the supposed ‘tool’ the oppressor used? Slavery is against the human rights of human beings. The world has come a long way in the fight for human rights. Is it not ironic that Christianity played a major role in the abolishment of the New World chattel slavery especially in the U.S? Even long after the New World chattel slavery was abolished, the black civil rights movement was also spearheaded by people like Dr. Martin Luther King. And although many forget this fact, he was a reverend minister. A house divided against itself shall not stand. If the bible indeed promotes such form of brutality, how come Christians made major contributions to its abolishment all over the world?

The Old Testament alone contains many alarming instances of slavery that open our eyes to how widespread and lucrative it was in those days. Remember the story of Elisha and the wife of the prophet… the prophet who left his wife at the mercy of his creditor when he died? One of the things the creditor told her was that, either she paid up all the money her husband owed him before his death or risk having her sons sold into slavery. This compelled the widow to contact the prophet Elisha for help. Again, this scenario tells us that slavery was very widespread and lucrative then. It appears one could easily have contact with slavers. I made this inference from the manner in which Joseph’s brothers sold him to slave-merchants who later sold him into slavery in Egypt. Speaking of Egypt, it is obvious that Egypt was probably one of the ancient hubs of the slave trade. Remember how the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel for about 430 years? The unfortunate thing is, many people tend to disassociate Egypt from Africa. No, Egypt is very much an African country. And historical accounts show that some other African countries had slaves from other continents too.

Indeed some of the most heinous crimes ever reported in human history are said to have been motivated by supposed approval culprits discovered in the bible. This includes the New World chattel slavery. It is very alarming, considering the level of damage the Slave Trade has done to Africa as a continent. But none of it is true. The bible doesn’t tell Christians to go about enslaving anybody they can overpower.

Enslaving defeated foes was almost like the winning prize of a war. Considering the number of wars in the bible, I believe that gives you a fair idea of how many instances of slavery there are in the bible.

Slavery was a form of punishment in the bible too. Anytime the Israelites rebelled against God or reverted to idol worship, God allowed their enemies to defeat them in a war and capture them. This scenario recurs so many times in the Old Testament that one would wonder if the Israelites didn’t ever learn from their past mistakes and that of their forefathers.

Obviously the Israelites must have had slaves too. As stated already, slaves are amongst the ‘spoils’ soldiers brought back home from wars. The issue here is what the bible says about how the children of God should treat slaves. One of Paul’s unconventional epistles in the bible is the book of Philemon. We see Paul use a more soft and apologetic tone in this epistle. This is even more stunning considering the fact that Paul was talking to someone he had authority over. He states it clearly that he could compel Philemon to do as he says, but out of love he would rather appeal to his conscience to do the right thing. All this was in connection with Philemon’s slave,Onesimus. Onesimus had wronged Philemon and had left to be with Paul. It appears his departure is what caused the rift between him and his master. Paul worked closely with Onesimus and had great love for him. The former slave was now a staunch Christian. Paul was sending him back to his former master and required Philemon to treat him like a brother in Christ and not a slave. He could have imposed this initiative on Philemon but chose to make an appeal out of love. Here, we see Paul making a great contribution to the liberation of a slave.

In the New Testament, Christian ‘slave masters’ are admonished to treat their slaves like brothers and Christian slaves are admonished to honour their masters no matter how mean they are to them. This is where the contention is. It appears by admonishing slave masters to deal with their slaves kindly, the issue of slavery hasn’t been dealt with at its roots. As stated earlier, several forms of slavery did occur in biblical times. In Timothy 6 for instance, Paul made reference to economic-based slavery (known as ‘indentured service’) where people offered themselves as slaves to work for other families in order to survive or pay off a debt. God regulated this form of servitude by establishing a set of strict laws to protect men and women (be it Hebrew or Gentile) from any form of cruel treatment by their masters. Below are some of the laws God used to regulate this kind of slavery:

• Forbade masters from running big interest charges on servant’s loans (Leviticus 25:35-38)
• Provided marriage rights (Exodus 21:4,10-11)
• Physical protection rights ( Deuteronomy 10:19; 24:14, Leviticus 19:34, Exodus 21:26-27, Leviticus 25:39-41)
• Provided freedom rights (Deuteronomy 15:1;12, 23:15)

NB: Most of the laws of the Ancient Near East gave room for chattel slavery as the laws provided very little or no protection at all for the slaves. God’s Law on the other hand offered protection for slaves in Israel at that time amidst harsh conditions faced by their counterparts elsewhere.  

 

It’s no surprise then that some slaves rather preferred to stay behind looking at the great benefits that came along with working in their master’s home. Most of them for instance had access to formal education and also had the opportunity to learn a trade like carpentry and medicine. There was the sense of belonging to a family unlike chattel slavery that equated one to nothing more than a piece of furniture. ‘To fire a bullet into a slave was like firing a bullet into a pumpkin, not like firing a bullet into a human.’, as one researcher described the plight of chattel slaves. It’s sad that many feel God’s Law made provisions for chattel slavery when in the actual fact, God’s laws prohibited any form of servant mistreatment (check scriptural references above). In the Bible, kidnapping people and making them slaves against their will was clearly a crime punishable by death! (Exodus 21:16). Paul actually emphasized God’s disapproval of this kind of slave trading in his letter here. What Paul is doing over here is harking to Old Testament ethic and condemning chattel slavery alongside heinous acts like lying, murder and sodomy. Several forms of master-servant relationship existed under God’s Law BUT nowhere in scripture did He ever endorse a dehumanizing relationship such as New World chattel slavery. Yet skeptics will somehow manage to read a portion of scripture and criticize it for supporting such brutality while the entire Bible, in its rightful context, makes plain God’s disapproval of any deplorable acts of cruelty and injustice.

Anyway, with respect to warning Christian slave masters to treat their slaves kindly, there’s a potential problem we need to bring to light over here. There’s almost always the tendency for one to abuse his or her newfound freedom. This is nothing new. Just as many of the women at that time misunderstood their newfound freedom in Christ (referring to gender equality), it was very likely some slaves had also began to overstep their boundaries by disobeying their masters. Some probably got complacent, seeing no need to either work hard  or show respect to their masters–someone they were now equal with because of Christianity. Well, too bad because Christianity came not to extinguish social positions BUT rather to make them completely irrelevant to accepting the new life in Christ. This is how Christianity differed from the Greco-Roman culture: the latter placed much emphasis on one’s status based on one’s family or wealth. In God’s family, both the Jew and Greek, Circumcised and Uncircumcised, Male and Female, Barbarian and Scythian, as well as the slave and free are all in a common relationship with Christ Jesus. One group has absolutely no basis to undervalue another group because there’s no such thing as superiority/inferiority. The slave master in this case isn’t better than his servant because he himself is also a slave to the True Master in Heaven! This is why Slave masters were being admonished to treat their servants with utmost respect and dignity as a means to exemplify the approved relationship between those who were in a similar position. After all, each servant bore the image of Christ and as such deserved to be treated as God’s beloved.

Though the Bible is against practices that abuse and dehumanize a human being, many still feel the New Testament writers should have outlawed all forms of slavery altogether. If you’ve been following closely, you’ll agree that annulling the morally permissible, economic-based slavery would’ve done more harm than good to impoverished families. In the sense that this was the only means by which they could fend for themselves. Moreover, about 40% of the Roman population comprised slaves; most of which were young children but some were adults. Paul really understood the times he was living in knowing very well the social catastrophe he would have caused had he managed to persuade the Roman government to free all slaves. This is not to say that Paul had no future plans of instructing the church to move away from the general slave system. We already know that Paul opposed slave-trading (1 Timothy 1:9-10) and in addition to that, advised people to pursue freedom (1 Corinthians 7:21-23). Until a much better social welfare program had been established, tearing down the only ‘welfare program’ that existed at that time would have exposed many to the harsh environment out there.

Written by Elvis Sampson and Elikplim Sabblah

References: 1 Timothy 6, Exodus 21, Leviticus 25, Deuteronomy 15, Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Colossians 3:11, Philemon, Does God Approve of slavery according to the bible?, The Atlantic slave trade: what few textbooks told you – Anthony Hazard, Does God condone slavery in the Bible? – Glenn Miller.

Do white people also come to terms with their whiteness when they come to Africa? I can’t tell. But even if they do, I guess the reality of who they are isn’t shoved down their throats in the most callous way. White people are adored by Africans. Black people are not respected as much as white people are on this continent. Black lives don’t matter here. You can tell that black lives don’t matter here by the way black deaths don’t matter.

People pretend at funerals. There are people who could barely stand the presence of another person even if he/she was 3 borders away and yet show up at their funerals crying Boti falls. I am just saying that people can even feign concern when the dead person was an arch-enemy. So I wonder what it takes to actually show no concern for the living and none at all after they die. 147 students were killed at Garissa in kenya and it isn’t given much attention by the media and African leaders. I don’t even want to put myself in the shoes of the parents of the dead, yet I can still feel the pain here. I was a university student not too long ago, so I can really relate to the plot. We must show concern. We are not too busy to show concern. Especially when our leaders flew all the way to France to join in a march against terrorism after the Charlie Hebdo attack. 11 African leaders went all the way to join world leaders of white nations to march against global terrorism. But when terrorism hits hard on the continent, they appear numb and indifferent to the plight of their very own. Black lives must matter on this continent.

 (Venezuelan students showing solidarity)

In America, it appears the easiest crime one can get away with is shooting a black man and claiming he was armed – even if he wasn’t. I watched the video of the white police man who shot  an older black man whose back was turned against him. It didn’t even seem real – that was how unbelievable the plot was. I watched the life literally squeezed out of Eric Garner by a white police man. Do you know what it means to see a man take his last breath? –More so when he wasn’t prepared? Black lives really don’t matter. Black lives have never mattered since the slave trade. They always make it seem the worst tragedy ever recorded was the killing of 6million Jews by Hitler in the holocaust. It turns out the death toll of the slave trade makes the holocaust look like an under-patronized slaughter house. Black lives have been under attack before we could even spell ‘attack’. I find it rather comforting to see a few white people join in the protests against ‘police brutalities against black people in America’. It only goes a long way to show that it isn’t an “us vs them” fight. But rather humanity versus injustice, humanity versus institutional racism. That is one sure way we can win the fight – when we realize the enemies of black people are of different colors (even black), religion and social standing.

I really feel sorry for my brothers and sisters in Kenya. These are hard times for them. Nevertheless, it will all be over soon – no situation is permanent. There is nothing more painful than to live in a world where nobody else thinks you matter and then your own brother kills you just to justify that fact. Those Aalshabab militants were black people. Black lives don’t matter to them. Boko Haram is made up of black people too. Black girls’ lives don’t matter to them. The members of ISIS in Egypt killed 21 of their kind. Black Christian lives don’t matter to them. Black lives matter, everybody else is probably blind to this fact. Till eyes are opened, those of us who see must rise up and show concern for black lives and about black deaths. Let love rain and reign in Africa.

These are just spiders anyway; hence they do not have to grapple with gender issues like humans. If this were to happen amongst humans, it would be a media sensation. Heads would roll and laws would spring up involuntarily from the depths of legal archives to put the perpetrators away for good. Maybe we would also start our own movement. We might just call it MALELISM: a movement for the brothers. But no, in the real world, it is the other way round. Women are being treated badly. Sometimes it is not even the actions against women that worry me the most, it is the sort of condescending opinions and prejudices people hold. Those really appall me because it means deeply seated within their hearts are these perceptions which will inform every action in their dealings with women. This gave rise to Feminism. A worthy cause; and like all worthy causes, it will not stand or be successful without the active participation of both sexes. I repeat, Feminism will not stand without the active participation of both sexes; because patriarchy wouldn’t have been this successful without the active involvement of both sexes. Over the years the image of the movement has been tainted. Most men would want to have nothing to do with it or to be associated with it. It may be due to several other reasons, but I believe that paramount amongst those reasons is the attitude of feminists. The belligerence and the venom in their speech totally deter men from participating in anything related to Feminism. How do you fight negativity with negativity?

Gender equality is a myth. I wonder why I never thought about it until recently. If this remains at the core of Feminism, I would like to state emphatically that it will end up empowering men rather than women. What is the yardstick that indicates equality with men; same number of men and women in parliament? To be a man is not that pleasant anyway so I wonder why equality with men seems to be deemed so highly. Women must fight for what is theirs. We have no idea what a fair society looks like: a fair society being one that gives what women deserve to them. We may never see it if the goal of our women is to have what we have as men and neglect what is due them. For all you know, what is due women could possibly outweigh that which society seems to have given to men. Society is made up of male and female members. I see society as a giant 2-pieced jig-saw puzzle. What people do not realize is that the call for Gender Equality is like shaping the edges of the two pieces of the puzzle the same way – making them identical pieces. That seems like a fair action, but it is highly unreasonable (that is, if piecing the pieces together is our motive). When you shape the edges the same way, they won’t fit. But this is what Gender Equality is seeking to achieve. How I wish women would understand their place and value. How I wish they would realize how blessed they are and embrace their uniqueness. Men and women are equal and different. The right and left arms belong to one individual but they are different because of their location. This is it. So for the left arm to start a movement to achieve equality with the right is rather absurd, because it is already an arm too. Nevertheless, if the left realizes that it is being treated badly, it has every right to speak out and with the assistance of the right hand justice will be served. I am not the only one who holds this assertion. The bible also makes it clear that women and men are both equal and different. In 1Peter 3:7, it says:

‘Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as THE WEAKER VESSEL, SINCE THEY ARE HEIRS WITH YOU of the grace of life…’

The verse above indicates the difference between men and women by the phrase ‘…the weaker vessel’. Simply put, compared to men, women are weaker (physically) and must be treated as such. The verse states the equality of both sexes by saying ‘… since they are heirs with you…’. Meaning, in the sight of God we are equal. Paul put it better when he said ‘in Christ there is neither MALE nor FEMALE’. From this we can infer that God looks down and sees a sexless humanity. No wait, God looks down and sees a sexless humanity, except that a section is advocating equality that is already glaring in the sight of God. Gender Equity (it might not make semantic sense) would rather be appropriate. Where we understand our sameness and uniqueness hence we give each person his or her due. Especially the basics of this life: choices, good education, health, respect, fair representation at gatherings etc.

We teach little girls to be better than their male counterparts. We hide this message in the cliché ‘what a man can do a woman do better’. It is unfortunate that there are people who hold this assertion. Who said being better than the men around you is equal to success? Right away we are implying that little girls would have to fight to do better than their male counterparts in order to feel fulfilled. What if she is surrounded by poor performing male counterparts? Does she attain success in life by merely being better than them? This is the height of insecurity. We should let little girls know that being good is good enough. They need not feel like they are in a competition with boys. We should let them know the only competition is their previous performance; hence they must move heaven and earth to beat that. We live in a right-handed society. Our aim is to make it ambidextrous. Ambidexterity will not be achieved by demeaning the right hand; it can only be achieved by empowering the left hand to be strong and improve. Right-handed people can get away with things like writing and eating but when it comes to bathing or cleaning themselves they cannot do it properly without the aid of the left hand. Similarly, when it comes to washing or ridding our society of irksome patriarchy, we need both hands to play a major role. How do these two come to work together in harmony when the left is hurling abusive words in the direction of the right?

I believe feminism is a worthy cause that men need to play an active role in. Gender Equality on the other hand stems from insecurity. There is no need to be equal when you are uniquely designed to fit together. Society is a giant 2-pieced jig-saw puzzle; society is supposed to be ambidextrous; one hand down-playing the importance of the other will do it no good.

Greedy leadership has been the bane of Africa since time immemorial. Colonialism obviously, has had a toll on the development of our continent. When a thief enters your house, it’s wise to let him know he isn’t welcome. It is absurd to go into a contract with him and agree on certain terms of payment after you have assisted him to plunder your property. It seems outrageous for one to  be involved  in such a self-destructive act, yet our chiefs did it with a smile on their face. They exchanged their own subjects for insignificant items such as mirrors, sugar and whisky. That is the value they placed on human life. I believe I would be pained for the rest of my life knowing somebody valued me at the price of a mirror. We have no justification blaming our current state on the white man. Sometimes, when you think about it, you would realize that neither democracy nor autocracy has been helpful to us. For in practicing both ideologies, we seem to cleverly find a way to be greedy and satisfy our selfish desires.

When I started my National Service 8 months ago, the fare from the Kwame Nkrumah circle to Dansoman was 90 pesewas. As at last month, one had to cough up blood and 1.50 Cedis as a commuter from Circle to Dansoman. We are in hard times. We are really in hard times. The government’s hands are deep in my pocket. The little money you make is taken from you. It hurts and I find it rather disturbing that at this point in time, Ghana is still  battling with enemies some countries conquered many years ago. We are at war with filth. We are in a hand-to-hand combat with diseases like cholera. And we are standing face to face with corruption in a bout, only to realize we are actually standing in front of a mirror staring at our own image. Hence, that enemy of corruption we are supposed to be boxing is ourselves; no wonder we have made little progress in that fight. Just stick out your index finger in the direction of the nearest person around you, and voila! – you just pointed a finger at someone. It is that easy. It requires no training at all, my friend. Pointing a finger at others, blaming them for your woes is the easiest way to become a world class lazy person. Nevertheless, taking up the responsibility to become a better person by fighting the ills of society in front of the mirror is a thing we rarely practice in this country. How about battling corruption in front of the mirror? No! The average Ghanaian prefers pointing fingers at politicians. Well of course we have had (and still have) very corrupt politicians. In statistics, the ‘theory of Sampling’ implies that a considerable section of a large group reflects characteristics of the entire group. With this in mind, then it is ok to assume that the problem is more widespread than we think. This government has been a very poor one so far. I say this without any prejudice or malice against any personality. In my bid to call a spade a spade and not Daavi’s ladle, I just had to say that. Some time ago in Nigeria, the government signed a deal with the Abacha family to return some of the money Sani Abacha is known to have accumulated wrongfully. The family returned $750 million dollars. Not long after that the government could not account for $705 million of that money. Isn’t this amazing and appalling? My point is, usually the people pointing fingers at corrupt officials are twice as corrupt. There is the need to bring corrupt government officials to book and also to deal with corruption in the private sector and in our individual lives.

There is a Twi adage I find very interesting, it goes like this *transliterating* ‘when you see that your neighbor’s beard is on fire, keep a bucket of water by your side’. This is wisdom. In the light of this wise saying one would expect the biggest opposition party in the country to be putting things together to present themselves as a better alternative. No! Members are too busy in petty squabbles. Already, the party seems to be split along tribal lines and personality-factions. We keep hearing about groups within the party like the ‘Kuffour faction’ and the ‘Akuffo Addo faction’. Just this week, there was chaos at the headquarters of the party. Irate members of the party went to the headquarters wielding cutlasses and what not, and engaged themselves in a bloody fight for reasons best known to them. Clearly, whatever their differences were, those members of the party seemed to cherish them over gaining power. I believe even if things change for the better in this government and the NPP presents a more unified party come 2016, they might win the elections hands down. But then again, their desire to win it should be reflected in how they deal with internal party issues. Who would like to vote for a candidate who cannot unify his own party? If he can’t do that, will he be able to maintain peace and stability in the entire country?

I believe there is hope for this country and the continent as a whole. There is hope. I loathe it when people let out tirades from their lips that are so drenched in hopelessness. Yes, things are bad, and if you really think they are that bad, then there is a need to hope for a positive change – a positive change, either in the present government or in the next. I see light at the end of the tunnel. I care less if you don’t see it. Dr. Ravi Zacharias said ‘Show me a man in whom there is the death of hope, and I will show you a man in whom there is nothing left but the hope of death’. There is the need to hope for the best, my dear friends.

Mrs. Abakah had a very unique style of lecturing. She was always seated. In fact it didn’t feel like an academic exercise at all. She was often caught up in a world of her own, as if her spirit wasn’t present in the class. The ceiling, I imagined, was a screen on which she saw clearly outlined information concerning literary pieces under discussion. She would suddenly look up, seemingly lost for words, and then eventually spew the shrewdest opinion. I was always amazed by her technique. Her message *you do realize I am calling it a message instead of a lesson right?*, was simple, ‘humanity hasn’t been fair to women’. No, I didn’t say ‘MAN-ity’ but ‘humanity’ which comprises both male and female. These very thoughts were captured in the poetry and novels of prominent Female African writers. The likes of Mariama Ba and Abena Busia wrote straight from their hearts. They beautifully invented scenarios and came up with allusions from the bible to drive home their points. And I found that very fascinating. These things are all around us. We see them every day. We hear them in comments – loose comments that slip out of the mouth of both men and women. However how they are whispered softly or said jokingly, they scream loudly the fact that we  live in a patriarchal society. We like to call it a ‘man’s world’. The term, if not gender-specific, makes perfect sense and is very apt. We all know what we mean when we say it – ‘a man’s world’- it means it is a world where men wield undue power. As much expected, it is a total power trip. This gave rise to feminists: people who desire to fight for the rights of women. But over the years, the term ‘feminist’ has degenerated into a horrible adjective. The belligerence, the bitterness, the visible out-pouring of messages stemming from past hurts all contributed to this degeneration. I personally hated the word – ‘feminist’, yuck! I always pictured a woman who just came out of an abusive relationship and hates the world so much she goes on a ranting spree. Most of her rants targeted at members of the opposite sex. Basically, a loose cannon, ranting and raving about how bad men are, with every word heavily soaked in bitterness and resentment towards one man. That one man who probably hurt her feelings. This was the picture that came to mind anytime I heard the word.

Then came along Mrs. Abakah. Then quite recently, came along Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I finished reading Chimamanda’s novel ‘Americanah‘,  yesterday and I must say it was a sweet experience. This is what I call a pure literary pleasure. To me it isn’t just a novel *and this isn’t a book review either*. It is a 477 paged newspaper. It is a 477 paged diary. It is a 477 paged novel dipped in a concoction of allegory and humor like no other. It is very good that I watched her speech on TED talks before reading her book, because I kept sensing traces of some of the issues she raised during that speech. And such occurrences go a long way to tell you that these are things she is genuinely passionate about. After reading a blog she wrote about homosexuality, though our views on the issue are polar-opposites, I enjoyed every bit of the write-up. I nearly posted on facebook that she is one of the writers I really look up to. But I didn’t. I didn’t dare write that. Why? For some funny reason, the imp in my head told me it was rather too feminine to have a female role-model as a guy. But do we think it is too masculine for a girl to have Komla Dumour, of blessed memory, as a role-model? Is it? It is these little things that go a long way to expose the sort of society we live in.

I recently overheard a woman say to a male shop-attendant from whom she was buying stuff ‘y3 nt3m na wo y3 barima’, which means, ‘be smart because you are a man’. Take 30 seconds to think about it and let it sink in. So to her being smart in dispensing services is a quality peculiar to men, so she expected it of him naturally. This is amazing. These petty comments make the most indelible imprints on the minds of people. And they also display our views on the issue of gender. We have so much reduced women to a lot of demeaning things, there is nothing left  of them anymore for us to reduce. In our video clips and movies, they are sex toys, and the most sickening aspect is they don’t even know it. They assume it is stardom or a ploy to make them famous. In marriage, we have reduced women to a biological apparatus of child birth *the very words of Mrs. Abakah*. Meaning, they are only there to give birth or to engage in activities that aim at producing children. This is equally sickening. Women are totally worth more than that. It is time men changed their minds and women did same too.

I remember Mrs. Abakah drawing our attention to the fact that in every patriarchal society, women are  mostly the agents of patriarchy. In the sense that, women are often used against each other to establish the ‘rulership’ of men. One shiny example is the fact that the older women in some communities were responsible for executing the mutilation of the genitals of young girls. And it is sad that women would take part in an act that would reduce sexual pleasure in other women to avoid infidelity on the part of those women in marriage – as though they were the only people expected to be faithful. Whenever you hear a woman complaining about her husband sleeping around, it is with another woman he sleeps. This is where I disagree with Chimamanda. *To those who have read the book* In the book, we find Obinze leaving his matrimonial home because Ifemelu was back in his life. No matter how unhappy Obinze was, he brought the misery upon himself by marrying because he could, and not because he loved his wife. Hence, his wife Kosi, shouldn’t be left to suffer the consequences of his actions especially as it is precipitated by the resurfacing of his ex-lover. This is my opinion, fidelity shouldn’t be expected of women alone, but men also. In one of our classes, Mrs. Abakah explicated the nursery  rhyme ‘twinkle twinkle little stars’. I was amazed by how deep the poem I had recited many times ,as a child, was. Then I wished I possessed the ability to explicate literary pieces as well as she did. One of  Chimamanda’s comments on racism, through a blog Ifemelu wrote in the book was ‘Racism isn’t biology, it is sociology’. Amazing. I thought to myself “why didn’t  this thought  come to me first?“. Her ability to say a lot in a  few words and still manage to write a 477 paged novel is remarkable. Yes, I am a young fledgling male writer, and I admire these two women and hope to possess these qualities mentioned above.

According to him, a dog’s heart may stop beating yet it will continue to live for a while (I don’t know how true this is). Hence our dog started to stink like a dead dog yet very much alive, compelling us to end it all by burying it. After digging the hole and putting it in, we  scooped  sand and  threw it into the pit. When the pit became uncomfortable for the dog it tried to crawl out, suddenly a heavy knock from the shovel my brother was holding landed on its head and it finally fell in, dead! No words can express how we felt that very moment, our actions spoke volumes that day because when we went back into the house none of us ate. We had just lost a member of our family. This experience often causes me to wonder what runs through the minds of killers. I call them ‘human beings who are not being human’. I am very curious to know what runs through the heads of the most notorious serial killers. Do they find peace after killing others? For even the effect of killing a dog changed my mood that day though  this was even as a result of medical advice given us by the veterinary officer. I am just saying there is no reason that will  justify the actions of a man who took the life of his fellow man – whether political, religious, or even personal, none at all!! Yet what do we see around us?

And what is more sickening is how numb most of us have become to the plight of the many who suffer injustice in this world. Until it happens to our very own or someone we know, we totally remain indifferent to it. So nowadays evil is only visible when it is close to us but not when it is far from where we live. As a matter of fact, evil should not be visible or seen with the eyes, it should be felt. Felt by any and every one walking on this planet no matter where it is done. What happened  in Kenya over the weekend, is proof of this phenomenon in my own life. I usually take to the social media networks to rant about some of these things or simply to share my thoughts on them. I heard about the siege in the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, I decided to share my thoughts on the issue on twitter. I totally forgot and certainly went on to tweet about irrelevant things. Early Sunday morning, when I heard of the death of Prof. Kofi Awoonor (a Ghanaian), that is when I decided to join in the train of sympathetic people on twitter, who were registering their displeasure at the terrorist attacks. This is certainly a wakeup call for me, and I believe for you as well. Though we live in a world where we all have varying foot sizes and shoe sizes yet I believe the solution to this problem is to fit our feet into the shoes of any and every one going through a hard time. Just fix your feet in their shoes, if you find it extremely uncomfortable and painful then you know they need love and a lot of sympathy.

To those who sit and plot evil, I have nothing to say to you. All I can deduce from their actions is, they are  people who have been starved of love from  infancy. It takes one who has been loved to know how to love. A hunger for love is one of the things that robs an individual of his humanity. This is the kind of hunger that all the rice in China  cannot quench. It is inhumanity that will cause a man to walk into a mall and shoot down as many people as possible  just to send a message to someone. It is inhumanity that will cause an individual to look at a child or an elderly person, so defenceless and yet go on to end their lives. It is simply amazing, that a human being will be so robbed of his very essence. Do I think it is political issue? Certainly not. I think it is an issue of personal worth and the value one places on his own life. For how much I value my life determines how much I will value that of others. And for me as an individual, I don’t derive a sense of personal worth from anything physical or anything I own. I simply derive value from God. Firstly because he made me in his own image and likeness, meaning he has placed his value on me and on every other human being. Therefore if  I have any reverence for God at all, it is determined by how I treat my fellow human beings; God’s master pieces too. Secondly, I derive personal worth from the fact that God himself came down in the form of man to die for me. Is there a better way to prove that God thinks I am to die for? This alone puts a smile on my face every time and helps me to respect others because I know God thinks they are  to die for too. I live by these two philosophies in life and my main goal is to get as many people to think like this in the world. This is the true solution to the evil we see around us. Love always conquers evil and the ultimate love is what Jesus Christ demonstrated on the cross.

The main target of terrorist the world over, is not the dead people, it’s actually those who are alive. In the sense that, their  greatest aim is to leave the living terrified and filled with fear, anxiety and uncertainty. Hence Ghana receives the news of the death of Prof. Awoonor with so much displeasure, rage and uncertainty as to what the future holds for us as a nation. The news is still too heavy for me. His poems have been on my lips since my Senior High School days and I will never forget them. In the opening lines of his poem ‘Songs of Sorrow’, he says,’ Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus’. Well that ‘Dzogbese Lisa’ of a terrorist group has robbed Ghana and the whole world of a pure gem. May his soul rest in eternal peace.