A Necessary Dose of Affirmation

I recently returned from a glorious two weeks in my mother’s land – Tanzania. The good-feeling that filled me began as a drop in a petri dish – slowly but determinedly it expanded to meet the full circumference of my being.

I cannot think of a place where I have felt so much love – both from those who “should” as well as the mutual recognition, with absolute strangers, of a common divinity. How else do you explain Dunga, the trader at the fish market in Dar es Salaam, who insisted on devoting over an hour of his day to show my friend and I all the fascinating fruits of the sea? The skeptic in me kept wondering how many shillings he’d demand in return but I realized my own deplorable (in my own opinion) capitalist configuration: when offered, he declined. The abundance of true brothersisterhood is something that warmed me yet worried me too for its conspicuous presence, in my perception, alerted me of its absence in my everyday life in the UK.

“If your granny’s your nanny, should she get paid?” the presenters on a TV breakfast show asked the other day. I thought back to childhood Decembers spent in Tanzania. The children of all my 6 aunts and uncles in my grandparents home – playing in the crisp clear stream at the bottom of the farm. The smells of fresh manure toasted in the generous sunshine mixing with the floating aroma of mangoes, oranges and passion fruit. Like a band of soldiers we’d take off on adventures through maizefields and forest, with neighbours offering us supplies on the way, in the form of fruit. After dinner – which often we made collaboratively, when our parents went on strike – we’d make up songs and dance and entertain the grown-ups with our laughter and energy. It sounds so idyllic now I often wonder if it was real and I lament the likely discontinuation of an experience that my children might never know.

All of us grandchildren, at some point in our younger days, were sent to live with our grandparents – for weeks or even months! There were varied reasons for our stays and our grandparents never saw it as an inconvenience but rather as a joyful opportunity. The bonds we formed are incomparable. Our grandparents shared their stories, wisdom and discipline, instilling in us a sense of pride and a grounding that cannot be matched. And a closeness that bolsters through and through, the meaning of family. Monetary exchange, between our parents and grandparents, was merely an issue of logistics – extra money to feed the extra mouths. Yet, as this TV show would suggest, people in today’s UK, view spending time with their grandchildren as work demanding a wage!

These are different times and this is a different place. In a country that is so expensive to live in and in the context of a system that leaves less and less opportunity for the fostering of close familial relationships (particularly those beyond the primary family unit), I can understand the roots of a demand that in many other parts of the world would be unheard of! Would be insulting to the grandparents in fact!

And yet, this the society a vast majority of us in those same distant parts of the world aspire to, often without appreciating the full social implications of this economic machine. Meanwhile a growing minority of people in the West are now seeking to ‘downgrade’ their lifestyle and move ‘back’ towards a simpler way of living that is more in tune with the environment and community – privileged by having already experienced an affluence that those outside the window can only dream. And who is to deny another of dreaming?

Today I was completely disgusted by a comment that someone made to an online newspaper article: “the only thing africa exports is bullshit moaners and Nigerian e-mail scams… africa is a pimple on the wests backside and is a bottomless pit for its aid money.”

I cannot help but take it personally when people attack the things I love. Especially when they fail to appreciate the majesty, complexity, texture, wonder, energy, beauty… of a continent. And I am affirmed by something Alice Walker once insisted:

“Please remember, especially in these times of group-think and right-on chorus, that no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labour so to bring into the world.”
In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens

I think this reminder is very useful in the context of the global community and especially in a decade where catchy slogans (Make Poverty History) and pop-stars are singing these choruses that seem to mirror the longevity of a sub-standard seasonal radio hit. All continents, countries, nations, people have a right to respect – and understanding is a prerequisite to that respect. Imagine what can happen with not only open, but engaged eyes and minds…