The boy who gave me my first kiss emerged from a seven-year
absence mandated by his fiancé. Like any satisfyingly formulaic romantic comedy,
he found my parents’ phone number (after his divorce) at the bottom of his
dresser drawer in his childhood room at his parents’ house. Following a series
of improbable coincidences and quirks of fate, he contacted me. More extraordinary
and movie-like, he flew 2000 miles west for a visit.
His visit was a splendid suspension of reality, a novel romp
through nostalgia dusted memories. I knew we were looking fondly at an aged and
staged photograph with the bad- maybe not bad, simply the reality bits that
intrude on fairy tales- cropped out. He didn’t seem to realize that. His conversations
held tightly to “us” as fated.
He spoke of an “us” that at its best was 10 years old and at
its worst, 15. He spoke of a togetherness and marriage and babies. He spoke of
second chances without ever wondering, let alone asking, what-if any- chances I
wanted.
“I don’t want babies,” I countered his assumption of our
hypothetical life together. He seemed not to hear me. Truth was inconvenient to
his daydreams of me at home with two or three kids. It was less about me and
more about a narrative he was intent on playing out. He wouldn’t hear me. And although
I trusted that he wanted to love me...he made it painfully obvious that he didn’t
see me; wouldn’t learn me. How can you love what you don’t know?
In his world I was forever my 12-year-old self. Unchanged and
uncomplicated.
Africa is loved in a similar way. People love Africa as a
blank slate to project hopes and dreams- and sometimes nightmares- on.
People beatify the entire continent, paint it in benevolent victim-hood, fly Kente cloth flags, beat random rhythms on djembes and call it
love. Africa – vast and diverse as it is- becomes faultless perfection. It is
the 12-year-old girl frightened of her first kiss. It is teenage affection with
no brokenhearted baggage. Africa is forced into a one-dimensional depiction of itself
because anything more is complicated.
At conferences and festivals targeting the American section
of the African diaspora, people pour out libations to an ancestral abstraction
or “ashe” every statement of the appointed elder of the group, and I feel a
protective hostility. Maybe it is unfair but a small rage blazes in me and I sit
mute to music, call and response and the other curated depictions of the “Africa
experience”.
It is shallow love. It is love at first sight before reality
knocks and conversations about religion and money and careers and chores and
snoring and every nit-picky thing that tests love every day.
This love of an “African ideal” is a summer fling, passionate
and urgent with no time (or inclination) to love deeply-to learn.
but you say i'm foolish
of course you love me
but being loved of course
is not the same as being loved because
or being loved despite
or being loved
I have a complicated relationship with Africa- at least with
the 16 countries I’ve lived in or visited and a handful of others that are significant
to me for one reason or another. The complexity of the continent and my
experiences with/in/on prevent me from feeling comfortable with sweeping statements
about my affection – or lack of it. Prevents me from “loving the culture
(without an “s” on the end)”, deifying the people, “they are so noble and kind”.
Some people, some things, suck. Africa is not exempt.
To love is not to feign perfection, it is to understand that
imperfections are a part of the deal.
I won’t write a love letter to Africa. Africa is too vast,
too varied, too complex, to contradictory. Africa is both changed and
constantly changing. To gloss over the crannies and nooks, to pretend there are
only brave survivors and no crooks, is as limiting and simplistic as seeing
only corruption and famine. Africa – continent, not country, may contradict
itself; it is large, it contains multitudes.
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