Richard Dowden, author of 'Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles', tells of a continent that is heaven and hell on earth.

Africa has a reputation: poverty, disease, war. Few go there, writes Richard Dowden, The Economist Africa Editor, in “AFRICA. Altered States, Ordinary Miracles”. But, he says, when outsiders do go they are often surprised by Africa’s welcome. Visitors are welcomed and cared for….. you will find most Africans friendly, gentle and infinitely polite. You will be humbled by their generosity. Africans meet, greet and talk, look you in the eye and empathize, share and accept from others without twitchy self-consciousness.

Africa is huge, and dazzlingly beautiful. Outsiders lose inhibitions, feel more alive, more themselves, and begin to understand why until then they have only half lived. In Africa the essentials –light, water, food, birth, family, love, death- are more immediate, more intense.

These are some of his impressions in the first page of his book. The remaining 550 expand upon them, as Dowden, first teacher, then journalist with the London Times, skips all over the continent reporting from some of the more newsworthy African states, collecting sharp observations and wisdom, in the manner of Ryszard Kapuscinski in “The Shadow of the Sun.”

Hell, he says, has seized parts of the continent in recent years: Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi, Angola, Sierra Leone, Uganda, DR Congo, and Kenya last year. But, he claims, in most of Africa, the Churches have delivered more real development to people than all the governments, the World Bank and aid agencies combined. When states collapsed, the self-sufficient parishes used their moral authority to provide protection. Like the monasteries in Europe during the Dark Ages, they kept civilization going.

His first stop was in south-west Uganda as a teacher in a rural high school in May 1971.. Idi Amin had taken over power shortly before and his charm hadn’t worn off. The country was set for good times: perfect climate, rich soil and a population focused on improving themselves. But it was not to last, as he discovered the following year when he had to make a quick getaway.

First and lasting impressions were of Africa’s spontaneous social interaction. The self-made man does not exist in Africa. Whereas Europe’s motto is individualism; Africa’s could be communalism. Not “I think, therefore I am”, but “I relate, therefore I am.” The Zulus say “One is a person through others.” Conversation and laughter are the threads running through African life; the background music in any African street or alleyway. Whenever I ask my African friends why they smile and laugh so much, they tell me it is their way of coping with suffering and hardship, their constant companions. Besides, they say, you can’t appear in public with a long face; people will avoid you, suspect you.
What, Dowden asks, has Africa to offer the rest of the world? His answer: Patience, hope, civility - and music. If music were wealth Africa would be rich. Love life, life is good, their music shouts. Africa is ruled more by its music than its misery; by dance more than disaster. The music catches a spirit and creates a spirit: a talent for living, enjoying the good times and surviving the bad. Tragedies produce huge strength; grief enhances joy, death invigorates life.

Yet death, disease and physical suffering are always at hand, never swept under the carpet. At funerals the coffin is open; at the market animals are slaughtered and the blood runs into the gutter; the beggar with amputated legs or affected by polio smiles, and blesses you as you pass. You hear terrible true stories every day, if you care to listen. A tiny misunderstanding that lands an innocent person in jail for ten years; the theft of years of hard-earned savings and a family out on the street; a sharp storm that destroyed home and crops; death of a breadwinner caused by an unknown sickness.

As music, dance and laughter are fundamental to Africa, so is the sense of the spiritual. The mainstream churches flourish, as do the “do-it-yourself” brands, perhaps each with a tiny band of followers, in every village and urban slum. They claim to offer hope in this life –and some even wealth-, and certainty of salvation in the next. Despite, or because of, everything that has happened in Africa, the sense of the spiritual is very alive. Life in Africa is one, and includes the divine, the mystical and the physical world. Body and soul are one, and the soul lives on.

Steve Biko, the South African activist, wrote that in Africa religion was not a specialized function observed one day a week in a special building. Rather, “it featured in our wars, our beer drinking, our dances and customs in general.” Homer and Shakespeare, says the Nigerian novelist Ben Okri, would have been very much at home in Africa, with its spirits and mystical powers

Is Africa caught in a time warp, unable or unwilling to go ahead and join the rest of the world? Dowden thinks not and that three motors are driving change in Africa: the mobile phone, China and the emergence of a new middle class, none of which was predicted. Add Internet too.

The mobile phone has created solidarity, opened up political space, market possibilities, and fuelled war: the LRA rebellion in Central Africa is kept going because Joseph Kony, according to the author, had his mobile phone bills paid by the British government. In Kenya’s violence last year gangs of killers on both sides used mobiles to spread hate messages and co-ordinate their attacks.

China has come into Africa in a big way lately. China needs oil reserves and minerals, no questions asked about democracy, governance and human rights. The Chinese come, build their “Friendship” roads, sports stadia, railways and ports. They arrive, quietly perform, and go away. Paradoxically Communist China sees Africa as a business opportunity; while the capitalist Western powers think of Africa as a continent only in need of aid.

A rising middle class means stability and local investment. A generation of impressive young professionals is already making its mark, and it these who will, hopefully, give African solutions to African problems, and gradually change the Western way of thinking about Africa and dealing with Africa. The continent is a power-house of energy, creativity and vitality. With years of peace it will show its potential. With his smooth flow, personal anecdotes and breadth of vision, Dowden captures all this very well.

Martyn Drakard is a writer who is based in Uganda and Kenya.

Source: Energypublisher.com

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