Thursday, June 6, 2013

BEYOND COMMENTING ON HOMOSEXUALITY


Foreword
Key Words: homosexual, lesbian, marriage, partnership, philosophy, religion, God, politics, hermaphrodites, anthropology, procreation, economics, productivity, customs, persecution, sympathy ]


Homosexuality odd?
We will comment on the case of homosexuality by looking at some maverick biological cases we often come across that we cannot account for even with modern scientific wizardry at our disposal. Often times we would just examine and take no action as a whirlwind that would trigger panic in what we had considered as a buffered safe zone in our chorography. Alternatively our brainstorming to understand so as to decipher the oddity does not alter the situation that is not inherently our making. When the American natives, Indians, we now call the First Nation Peoples saw Christopher Columbus and his crew landed on their shores with huge ships and no oars, bemused, they simply call them birds of the sea. Though awe-stricken  they were frighteningly complacent. They could not engage them in any war for intruding or welcome them wholeheartedly without trepidation as they were aliens to each other.   In some parts of the tropics there occasionally appear from the wilderness, two headed puff adders or vipers. In  the past local artists captured them in works of arts since they had no photographic technology that proliferate Facebook and electronic media today. They employed what others presently see as primitive art mediums as records of their grandees and for grand events they neither recorded in their scripts nor phonographically. We now marvel these as works of art. However, they should not be viewed from the Western perception or aesthetic appreciation of art. They are Africans sacred records, some persons arrogantly or innocently call primitive works of art.  These are mavericks as the Siamese twins we unexpectedly get in our midst. No matter how grotesque and out of the ordinary they appear, we dare not destroy them. We give them ample space in our world we borrow from the Maker and do our entire maximum best to nourish and keep them alive....When you travel from the tropics where you have no cattle husbandry and abundance of milk to the temperate lands of the West, you get puzzled when you see children and the aged imbibe gallons of milk each day when that after weaning a child in the tropics that is the end of all that is called milk for him or her till the day they head to their Elysium. Knowing that our world is variegated we can now proceed to look at another case in our homes that some of us presently take now for granted yet it is still apparently a novelty in other traditions, the homosexuality and lesbianism.

Defining a  homosexual or a lesbian
In the human biological world, a homosexual is an individual that has feelings or sexual attraction to persons of the same sex. Contrariwise, a heterosexual is one who may have that sexual feeling to people of the opposite sex.  From my observation of homosexuals, men who have sex with men, (MSM), I have seen and heard from a distance, homosexuals’ voices and mannerisms are somewhat effeminate. If not of their male genitalia and physiognomies, one could mistake them from their voices for women. Nevertheless, that is not usually the case. Some have heavy male voices like some normal males. Here are some of the reasons that convinced me to be tempted to conclude that they were not normal persons or were just those that would be classified in the human biological hierarchy as missing-links. I conjectured further that they lacked some biological parts of their bodies that would make them fully human, that is like the heterosexuals. These could be in their brains that are psychological. Then the question was why there was a high concentration of them among the Caucasians or those with a strong Caucasian influence. Why there are not so many of them in S. E. Asia, Africa and among the First Nation Peoples of the Americas. I was tempted to ask if such behavior was related to the sort of diets, medicine or climate or the way society brought up their children or a combination of factors. It meant going to the complex field of research whose technical facilities I did not have. With my gullibility, I was examining them as when the first cousins of Africans looked at them when they met after living in separate climatic conditions for millenniums.  Some Caucasians even called the first Africans they saw noble savages and Africans in return called them sprites of once departed brothers and sisters.

As for women with this sort of biological inclination they are known as lesbians, WSWs. They behaved like men and emulate men in many ways and given opportunities they would even do away with all female parts of their bodies. They are haters of themselves for no reasons of theirs, for something they are born with that they themselves cannot explain. Again, from the biological perspective of procreation the whole gamut of mankind is akin to, the inability of an individual to tend to love but one of his kinds of the same sex is considered an abnormality.  Abnormal as an adjective is departing from what is normal.  Normal is general or customary. This may vary from region to region or society to society and there are several factors that may account for what is normal. Walking stack naked in some primitive communities may be normal but in most advanced societies, this may be interpreted as deviant or departing from the normal. People who are not normal may be considered as being mad and are further alienated in some normal communities. 

Politics, Deviance and forced conformity
Not long ago homosexuality was not overtly allowed. This is gradually changing particularly in the Western societies. Even then, there is still resistance from some conservative quarters and in some global churches. In some parts of the USA, some authorities endorse homosexuality and homosexual marriages just to engrave their names in the history of man as being sympathetic to their rights as individuals. http://www.dolifesitenews.com/news/1.4-million-march-against-gay-marriage-in-france-police-tear-gas-crowd-chil/ Others compromise this for money. For example, although being gay is not idiosyncratic of a town in Southern USA called New Orleans, when the organizers of gays and lesbians' parades offer handsome payments to the authorities of that city they are given green light to march on to satisfy curious crowds. It is true that a homosexual has feelings like anybody else, but the fact remains that they do not have coitus as average persons, hence limiting their procreation is that hard nut that many in the past and even hitherto have been unable to comprehend, crack or fathom. Many had in the past equated their lifestyle to sickness that could be cured. Many in that category of men are alleged to have been cured and that had been a sort of convincing evidence to many that it was a sickness that could be cured.

Sketches of Homosexuality in the Holy Bible and traditional Marriage
The Holy Scripture touches all sorts of sicknesses of man and animal and some yet to come but does not accept sodomy as a sickness, but as profanity, a sort of evil lifestyle. The following is what the Bishops of Cameroon Republic are saying that I will cite verbatim: 
"The identity of sexuality is deeply misunderstood, misused, perverted outside conjugal relationship of man and woman.  Therefore acts experienced in the context of homosexuality are not...; sexual …; but “relationships against nature” (Rom 1, 26).
Marriage is an institution that legalizes sex and parentage for the foundation of a new family.  It is the union of a man and woman who agree to start a family and live together in love.  The homosexual union is not a marriage, it distorts the meaning of marriage by reducing it to a link that is sterile, hedonistic and perverse, “the infamy of man to man” (Rom 1, 26)."
Jude 7 describes the dreaded Sodom and Gomorrah where prostitution, and MSM and women having sex with women (WSW) were common. In Corinthians 6: 9-11; Timothy 1:8-10; Romans 1: 18-32; Kings 23: 7; 15:24; 14:24 and Judge 19:16-24; and Leviticus 18: 22  homosexuality or lesbianism is equally discussed. We also have it discussed as early as in Genesis 19: 1-11. Punishment of death is dished out to people of the same sex who were caught having sex (Leviticus 20: 13.)" From my observation, a true homosexual is different person from the average man. We have not understood him or are not yet equipped with those technological facilities to explore and understand his inner thoughts, thus his deviant behavior.  Nevertheless, we have to accept him as a maverick in our midst but retrain from harming him or humiliating him as in the past. We have to sympathize with him but draw a line on the sand that he may not cross since his type of love relationship cannot be equated to that in heterosexuality unless by some miracle or some yet to be discovered medical props.The Bible acknowledges homosexuals and lesbians but does not accept their sexual activities. Therefore if a homosexual or lesbians were to be alone till he or she died, he was not to be prosecuted by the society or became a subject of the Devil but his or her procreation was to remain out of the equation. Of course, it would have been so as Jesus Christ came for all, pure men and evil ones. If all did not commit evil deeds, there would not have been any reasons of God sending His Son to save man from sin and hell fire. 

Additionally, abnormality is not only confined to men, creatures but to actions of men. Let us look at how one case is handled in Nso ethnic group in the former British Cameroons, Western Africa. Most of you are from societies where dexterous or ambidextrous were frown at and even shunned. It is still the case in some isolated primitive societies in the 21st century. In some societies, abnormal persons, lefthanders were coerced to be normal and you and I know that it was psychologically wrong. Some were damaged for life. Today, we all know the harm we did to those who were left handed. Today we have our Head of State, President Barack Obama of the most powerful nation on earth, USA who is a lefthander. The author of this write-up is ambidextrous. He was born a right handed person. That was what you will call the normal. Then after a ghastly accident in which he lost all his right fingers, he had no choice as a child but used his left hand for all activities. It took a long time for the right hand to heal that in the end he was so comfortable with his left hand. Then lefthanders as homosexuals were not accepted in his society as is still the case. The elders restrained him from using his left hand by tying on it heavy weights that he dared not extricate himself from. It was like being in a pillory and onlookers mocking at him for sins that he did not commit.  If rocks and heavy woods were not tied on his wrist to restrain him from using his left hand, they used solarium, vilun (Lamnso). If he insisted on using that his despicable left hand, he was smacked. At his semi preparatory school he was handed a pencil to write and dare him wrote with his left. He was smacked on the head, back and palms when it was bitingly cold in the mornings. The pains still rankle in his heart till today. He would try to cheat by handling the pencil with both my hands. Of course, that made him to write at a snail rate.  The teacher kept a good eye on him when it was writing and sport periods. He was beaten each time he made that  mistake of using his left hand. At last corporal punishment converted him. Today he writes with both hands but his left hand is still stronger and more flexible than his right hand. That is what his society did to for hin in order to accept him as a normal person. Is that what we want to with the homosexuals and lesbians in order to accept them in our midst? 

Man had passed through several phrases of his peregrination in what we call life on earth. He has gone through the thick and thin to be accepted and to accept himself. I remember when the black man was not accepted in some parts of the world because he was different from the rest. I remember when the Black and Arab Africans had to be schooled in in a special way in order to attain what was known as the French  or Portuguese or Spanish citizenship in the colonial days. In America, it was not long when the Black man was allowed to vote and share the same public bus and hotel with the White man. Up till 1994, peoples were racially segregated in the Republic of South Africa and even before in what used to be known as the North and South Rhodesia. Let me end at that as we will be tempted t write another treatise on segregation that pops up each day in our media. Today we look back and wonder if we ever had normal  brains.  We are now of a different paradigm of life. As a believer, I fervently opine that we have had some association with the Holy Ghost that has enlightened us. The crucial question is if It has it enlightened us to accept homosexuals as normal persons?  

Many we now call MSMs were persecuted and many were even killed for what they were born with if my interpretation is right! We are talking of more than 100 000. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hsx/ . This may be a conservative figure from Hitler's Germany alone. What of in Italy, and Vichy France during the Second World War? One day we will look at our foot prints in the history of man and ask if we were really the reasoning homo sapiens or just animals masquerading as civilized men. If we can scientifically prove that homosexuality is really extant,  it should be instilled in all normal persons that some men and women are born that way as I have been trying to day in my words. [I will end this section as Dr. Franz Fanon in 1952 in his work The Wretched of the Earth, p. 254: “The pretext of catching up must not be used to push man around, to tear him away from himself or from his privacy, to break and kill him.” The man in this context is the homosexual and his opposite, the lesbian.]

If the majority do not frown at right-handedness, it is because they have been used to since birth. In England many are puzzled that tropical persons  cannot even eat Cheddar cheese many take as a delicacy. When people from the Torrid Zone visit Africa on official visits they are seen wearing suits where Africans are comfortable going downright naked or scantily clad. We will look at an imaginary character called Mr. Chin Nshancarmfery. He visited Turkey and discovered that there were some men who wore gowns and blouses just like women in his country.  When he went to Scotland he found men wearing multicolored tartan skirts. He did not know if they were women masquerading as men or if they were just having fun. It was not just once but some wore these diurnally and went to work with it. When he went to America for the first time, he saw women wearing jeans trousers just like men. He had grown up used to men wearing nothing but gowns and skirts that extended below their knees. His head ran wild with comparison of what was innately his in his home town as in  Tin Tin in Congo by Herge. His discovery of heterogeneity did not end here. America   did bring to a close his peregrinations  He left the Democratic Republic of Congo to the abutting nation in the south called Zambia. He found men whose feet were like their hands. The toes were so long as their fingers and they were able to use them to handle comfortably liter size and even magnum size bottles full of a local brew they call shibuku. Such men could move well in the canopies of primeval rain forests. The irony was that they looked like him and were accepted in their locales. Then Chin went to the Middle East and  found out that people wrote copious literature on slates that they would wash the ink with water and drank so as to digest what they had read. "Strange idiosyncrasies," he concluded. When he visited the coast of West Africa he found out that women were going around semi-clad and they only had public hair covers over their genitalia. He could not take up his head to look at them for he was an exceptionally coy man. No one could conjecture what he was pondering but he has seen differences of persons.

He looked at both men and animals. He remained quiet for he was complaisant that if animals did not wear clothes, but had hair or firs and it was nature's way of clothing them for they could not reason as man to weave clothes to cover and themselves warm and be decent.  One commonality was coming out between man and other creatures. Men who were also a species of animals could not wear clothes as animals too . With this reasoning that man could not bother about clothes, he became normal when he visited Berlin for that matter and found men and women playing volley games in a specially allocated central park as they were born, called the nudists' park. Their penises were dangling and women’s kinks and buttons could be seen without inhibition. He inquired about the strange behavior. He gleaned that they were in their birthday suits and that what inhibited man from doing that always was their inclement, eerie and chilly weather. He was surprised that men did not have erection when they braced their penises on exceptionally beautiful women who were also playing in that park. On further inquiry, he was told that there were so many other parks of that nature dotted around the globe and that what used to be Christian countries were accepting the fact  of  going about naked. Well, he concluded that nudity was as old as man. The first man and woman on earth had no clothes and went around in their birthday suits as what other derogatorily call primitive communities in the Ituri Forest, Papua New Guinea, and the Amazon Forest in South America today.

The first siblings of the first man and woman in the world who were Africans intermarried. That is what we call inward breading, consanguinity. That relationship was incestuous and not accepted in most decent communities today. In certain part of India cousins intermarried. the effect on children of such intermarrying is left for you to explore. In certain West African communities, or ethnic groups it is strictly prohibited and defaulters are cleansed in a bizarre way and humiliatingly separated in the public bazaars.  The belief is that off springs of such a union are weak and cannot defend the groups in case of alien attacks.   Those who do it do not care so long as such marriage preserve the wealth of their families. 

In some communities it is normal for men to eat monkeys, horses, and all sorts of animals, others call bush meat in Bantu Africa. Some specialize in eating dogs, others cats, and a host of what we call in the West as pets. Some Chinese do this too. Those who relish these creatures do not have the word pet in their vocabulary as all animals are groomed to be eaten.

The anticlockwise climbers
Still on idiosyncrasies,  there are some climbers that would climb clockwise and that is the accepted and known ways for most agronomists and botanists. Then it has been discovered that there are some tropical root crops, yams that climb anti-clockwise. From a distance, they are the same as our normal and odd men and women, albeit, there are differences. They are unusual as our homosexuals yet they produce fat rooted yams that are in high demand for their nutritional values. They are protected as well as those that climb clockwise. The traits of gays and lesbians are that their fluids and eggs for procreation are wasted unlike these unusual yams.  Is this commensurate with the growth of population check by vice as once and other means advanced by Thomas Robert Malthus the theorist on population growth?

Where do we pigeonhole the Sexless by choice
What we have been examining is generally known as oddities. Do people who do not conform to the norm or who look different fall under oddities?  If they do, shall we consider homosexuals and lesbians under these categories? What of persons who grow up and are normal and have sexual drives but decide not for  religious reasons who stay single till they die? We also call them celibates. Most of you know of many. We have applied all sorts of terms in our arsenals of words to describe them. Others may not have that libido to carry out normal dalliance and may be helped by Viagra and related drugs that dominate CNN, NBC, and Bells' commercials for the sexless. Others chose this life style after having had their children and are under the pressure of work, work to pay bills as you will understand that most inhabitants in the West are debtors. For that reason wives and husband who cannot be satisfied this way at home go to the internet to be chummed up with people of their kinds who are out for ephemeral love without strings. In the past a woman who was exceptionally randy or kinky was not welcomed but that is normal today. Such satyrs are applauded today for living their lives so well. They do all they can to have sex. They dress provocatively to attract and have more partners than you will imagine. Men in return work so hard to the point of dying so that they can have more money to woo more women into their cells. Will a MSM do the same as normal persons? We will  attempt to answer this below.

Some Reviews of exceptional cases
When we look at homosexuality, heterosexuality or bestiality or abstinence, we are looking at men or living creatures from procreative perspective. We also look at differences in man's activities. A normal man always has feeling of procreating. You will see that most of what normal persons do is related to that procreation aptly handled by psychologists C.Jung and Sigmund Freud, http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_mental_health.html ). At conception we develop or evolve or assume innately that sexuality. If my understanding is right, a true homosexual is born and not bred. Then there are cases in areas frequented by some deviants where normal children or men are cajoled to take part in sodomy that in the past was punishable by death or imprisonment. These children as the case of the river port of Duala in Cameroon, Mumbasa in Kenya and Matadi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) take part in sexual activities with homosexual seamen just to get good money to survive on. This is prostitution. These boys are not inherently homosexuals. They are heterosexuals but are cajole by money. They eventually find themselves having feelings for other men when their seasonal sailors or sex tourists have departed. They turn round to pay their other friends for such act. In this regard, they are not true homosexuals (MSM) but are coerced to be by circumstances we cannot safely say beyond their control. That is where the society gets agitated and wants to punish the initiators and their partners. That is why in most of traditional Africa there is a feeling that homosexuality was never there and that it is a new way of life that could be stamped out. Consequently, the type as we have just seen should be discouraged by the Church and even punished by the state. This may be the reason why some churches, particularly in Africa would issue out statements outlining their position concerning homosexuality that is being discussed in most African states.

Why Fear Homosexuality
Living things have to spread their seeds to maintain their existence even if they were to die at any time.  Those that were stronger or fitter dominated in the spread of their seeds were eventually dominant in any society or communities. We learn this from the survival of the fittest doctrine of Charles Darwin of normal men or the fittest strive to spread their seeds of procreation. To Darwin, the homosexuals or lesbians will eventually die out as per this explanation underlined by Nathar Tabor some of us are likely to concur:

Under Darwin's process of natural selection, all "beings" — as opposed to the outmoded religious idea of "creatures" — are continually adapting to their natural environment in order to have a better chance of surviving. The weakest and most poorly adapted die off, while the strongest and most improved survive long enough to mate. Their offspring inherit their genes, and thus the species improves from one generation to the next. Darwin "noted that successful species produce more offspring in each generation than are needed to replace the adults who die . . . The species would thus have changed or evolved to favor traits that favor survival and reproduction," ..This means that not only must these beings be able to reproduce sexually; they must actually do so, for evolution to work as posited. Under evolution, then, successful reproduction is the key. Homosexuals would cease to exist because their sexual practices are such that they do not produce natural offspring.” www.reewamerica.com/columns/tabor/050908.



In the human biological set up the females are fashioned to receive and take part in the fertility of their eggs. Under normal circumstances, an average or normal woman had that inherent urge to have and bring up children. Similarly, normal men had that enthusiasm to see their own kinds produced and would do all even to the extent of giving up their lives to protect their offspring. It is for this reason that none-procreative men were punished or even destroyed in some societies in the past and look on contemptuously in the present. As     said a good number of African states are still not in favor of homosexuality or lesbianism irrespective of any reasoning for their deviant sexual activities advanced by some authorities particularly in the West. In most societies, be they developed or primitive, homosexuality is not entertained as there is ever that feeling that the society would be increased in number for the mutual benefit of all. This was essential in the past and even hitherto as when it came to communal activities, defense of the state, agriculture, communal hunting,  gathering of food, etc., a society that was numerous stood a better chance of succeeding or staying alive. The man and woman who were fertile were welcome in any society as it was considered a blessing from God or what people of those days worshiped.  Therefore, men or women who were not in favor of procreation were not wanted in those societies. Some were even destroyed. We are getting out of that paradigm. 

Why Abnormality is disdained
With this background, it was considered an abnormality or danger to that society if women and men were not productive to the extent that since time immemorial those considered as patients of homosexuality were being treated www.bmj.com/content/328/7437/427.  It was for this reason that infertile men and women or patients, for whatever reasons were not even wanted in the society and their activities had to go underground as bootlegging in the old days in North America.  In some distance pass, they were sold into slavery or sold to be used for sacrifices or royal burials. For reasons we have seen, in most African societies nowadays, marriage may only be approved when the couple have proven that they were fertile. To be crown as a king in most ethnic communities in Africa, one of one's characteristics or criterion is for one to be fertile, fit, and where possible wealthy.  In the Western set up, one may just marriage for the sake of marriage, that is to have a life-long partner and the idea of procreation will not be the main reason why people marry. In that case, some true irreligious westerners will not see any reason why they should stand on the way of homosexuals who want to get marry whereas other will thwart this endeavor. Even then, it was a tabooed thing and still resented irrespective of the fact that some persons capitalize on this to have deviants' vote them in their election campaign http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/07/12/anti-gay-group-decides-slave-children-werent-really-better-off/

In the same vein, if it were discovered that the men and women were homosexuals, they were considered as outcast. Having sexual orientation to people of one's sex was therefore a hidden secret no one ever heard of it till those person died. Having said this, it was rumored that in the Hausa society, having homosexual activities were accepted for ritualistic purposes. This was exacerbated by the Sharia laws where men and women were not supposed to be together in the public and young girls had to be given to marriage. When it came to public transport women were supposed to take separate buses from men. In this ethnic group it was erroneously alleged that homosexual act made men to be rich. It was similar to the belief in some primitive societies in Southern Africa that having dalliance with a virgin or infants cured persons who were HIV positive. 

Fear of Parturition may create Lesbians. 
Where it was the case of the woman being homosexual, lesbian in the Nso ethnic society of the former British Cameroons, the woman was given a husband and elders supervised him having dalliance with his new wife. It was to ascertain that the act of procreation took place appropriately. Also, there were apprehensions that some women would not have contact with men for fear of parturition. So, there are isolated cases where women remained single, sexless and never had children for fear of childbirth pains. Similarly, if a man was suspected or discovered to be a homophile, he was similarly given a wife and the elders sat on vigil by the matrimonial bedside to ascertain that coitus was correctly performed and they made a child (vide: my old Shadows of Fire) that was written to store Nso fast-dying custom as a continuous narrative. At this juncture, it should be made clear that there were no pornographic videos, obscene films or pictures in those days that could be used to teach would-be parents who had not passed through the Western sort of education as today. Today, gathering information on sexual activities and dissemination of such information  among unprotected youths where texting and exchange of pornographic materials is relatively not prohibited or cannot be controlled have made sex education easier than before. Commercials on CNN and other North American media teach children obscenity as soon as they are able to under stand commercial language. They figure out what "Cialis or Viagra are for when the moment is ripe." But do these prevent or encourage MSMs and WSWs?

Ignorance
With the some societal negative views of homosexuality, one grew up to die in some African communities without coming across a homosexual or heard it being discussed. The nearest thing one heard being discussed in biology classes were hermaphrodites.  Anthropologists from the West who came to Africa to find out this deviant sexual activities gathered no information or witnessed nothing to their dismay. They would not come come across homosexuality but heterosexuality. I read Nigel Barley's book, The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes for a Mud Hut, 1983, British Museum Publication, a best-seller in which he was inquiring from youths in Northern Cameroon when a bull was trying to mount a bull for the children’s reaction. He was not far to use the animistic examples as some males animals used this to settle scores such as some dwarf chimpanzees, lions, dolphins, and so on http://www.news-medical.net/news/2006/10/23/20718.. He was trying to elicit from them if there was such a thing in their society, Dowayos. He had to concluded that Africans were not used to homosexuality. His conclusion was drawn from a very small sample and his findings could have been taken with a pinch of salt.

Homosexuality and Economic Ramification
Furthermore, the society saw people or siblings as money. We still see them today as wealth. The economic graph for this may be different if quality is taken into consideration. The higher the population of a nation state, the higher its demand for goods and services, therefore the more wealth such an economy generated. On the quality of population, what may be considered as one poor family of four's economic consumption in Canada or North America may be equated to thirty families in some parts of Africa and S. E. Asian.  Apart from looking at it from the strength of consumption of commodities, if one were to invest in China or India the most populous nations on earth, one was likely to get good returns than say one where the population was scanty. If there were to be war or famine or any pandemic or epidemic diseases where millions were dying, the chances were that Chinese were to survive and would still  wax on unlike say Botswana that was only up to 2 098,018 (July 2012 est.) inhabitants.  If say there were pandemic diseases in the later, the entire population was likely to be wiped out and that would have been a sad day for that nation state. [This is just hypothetical and I should not be cited as a blogger wishing this to happen. This state is a good example where the income per capital is perhaps one of the highest in Africa owing to it production of diamonds (leading producer in the world) and it is a success story].In that case, if the people were not sexually productive, it was the concern of a caring society. 

Big family equals big demand plus productivity
Furthermore, if one was to have more children, one was to be spurred to work hard to bring them up the right way without leaving them to strain themselves. In some primitive societies, the grand size of your family became your wealth and consequently that of you society. Well, Westerners have to consider having a large family or scaling it down and having more money in their pockets for their homes or jalopies. The consequence has been a drastic shortage of labor in countries like Canada, Germany, and Switzerland to name just a few. They had to make up for this by exporting their industrial activities abroad or importing provisional or permanent labor forces from developing countries. The defect of importing ephemeral labor is that the workers tend not to invest in their new countries.  Secondly, they caused brain drainage and that could in the long run lead to more and more leaving their countries of origin to emigrate to Europe and North America. This attitude of getting foreign workers and consequences were demonstrated in Uganda where the British Colonial government brought in East Indians to work in the construction of the then British East African railways and work in fields. They eventually settled and did not wholehearted considered their host countries as theirs after some third or so generations. They were repatriating their wealth to their original mother country India and called themselves British Indians. In consequence the infamous General Idi Amin Dada (1971-1979), President of Uganda took drastic measures to repatriate Asians, particularly Indians and Pakistanis to leave in 90 days’ time to their original homes and that caused hardship and bitter feelings. Many of those expelled ended up in Canada and Great Britain but they still feel or saw Uganda as their home irrespective of having homes in Canada, UK, Australia and USA. Some eventually returned to Uganda with the coming of a democratic government of a level-headed President Yoweri Museveni.

Canada subtly solves its shortage of skill labor by importing semiskilled laborers from India and Pakistan and this is causing a stir in some service industries as banking and catering. The locals are deliberately kept out of jobs and foreigners who are paid a pittance are employed. The author knows of a Canadian trained PhD specialist in heat-seeking missiles who had been unemployed for donkey years. Bringing in semi skilled aliens to take up Canadian jobs is not taken lightly by the unemployed Canadian citizens. In the case of the USA, jobs are exported abroad as it is cheaper to pay foreign workers than to employ the locals. Also, locals can afford to stay unemployed for long as the one family-two-children-unannounced policy meant that the siblings could rely on the income of the parents for long and could also dictate to the employers the sort of jobs they want and even salaries. In the long run that will not be good for the Canadian economy that had to be competitive.    ....If it was defense, economic productivity, and demand for labor and so on, you were to provide positively.  Therefore, the society approved of what you were doing. On the contrary, if you were a homosexual, the society felt that you were not to be productive as they saw no motivation from the familial part of your life. You were considered like gypsies who roamed around and were not productive to higher capacity as the society expected them. For a homosexual or lesbian, the society would observed that after you, that is if you died from whatever causes, there was the end of your world and no one to succeed. It became a ridiculous situation where selfish individuals dedicated their wills to their pets and most critical societies did not take that kindly.  

Would homosexuals and lesbians be exonerated if they adopt heterosexual children?
Even if you adopted children, there was that feeling that you will not give in wholeheartedly to their upbringing as if they were your biological children. Serious studies have not been carried out on this and it is still at the state of wait-and-see before conclusions are drawn.  I am seeing many readers objecting to this as they may have successful cases lining up. They are telling me that we need to redefine the family as known naturally. Indeed, there were successes of pseudo-families, as there will be of homosexuals bringing up children or their pets but successes measured in terms of a true family made up of father, mother and children will not be there. If they are there, they are artificial and some sort of strain is left in the hearts and minds of the children who are unfortunately brought up by such a pseudo-families of MSM or WSW.  

It had been observed that some adopted children did not perform well in schools and often had the feeling is some cases that they were being mistreated because they were adopted or considered as not being biological children. They had seen that few or no homosexuals would die for such children. Often, where such children had the means, the quit such families when they had the slightest opportunity. I know of a case in London, UK where the adopted would not even attend the funeral of one of his adopted parents for reasons that they were too hawkish towards him.  Some children would not address their adopted parents as PAPA in the case of MSMs and mama in the case of WSWs as in a normal case, the moment they discovered that they had natural parents somewhere. Also, the children under their care did not feel that attachment as in their biological parents. 

Deviance
Additionally, the society felt that homosexual were selfish even though they advance the so-called scientific feelings that they were born the way they were. As said as recently as in 1992 there were still some physicians who believed that homosexuals were deviant patients and all sorts of psychological means were used to try to cure them.  Another intrigue was their lifestyle that was not conforming to what the society from a normal or a decent person. The society observes them and found out that they did not have a single partner they anchor to with whom they stayed for long till they die. They were promiscuous and changed partners at random and such behaviors put them on harm's way. Where children were entrusted in their care, even after knowing that those children were heterosexuals, they still tried hard to wore them into what others call sodomy. This was and is still true of teachers who are homosexuals or lesbians. This was not taken lightly and it is for this reasons that the debate over mixing normal and homosexual boys and girls guides in the USA is causing a stir. 
Putting all cards on the the table to be accepted and scouting
The patients or homosexuals are doing all they can to be accepted in the community of normal persons and would do anything out of desperation to be accepted. Should they work hard for this if they are naturally born the way they are? They may be given green light as is apparently the case. Does it imply that they were not to be tempted not to woo normal children into their net for sexual gratifications? This type of pervert is called a child molester. Would you give him room to lead your boy guides because you sympathize with the way he was "born"? He fully knows that the children or men he wants to woo are normal yet he goes on.  Will he be fair or shall we sit by and witch because we want to get him into the realm of normal persons? That is another point of contention that must be debated. It is for this reason that parents must ensure that normal persons are in scouting camps and jamborees and not to be hoodwinked. It should be mentioned here that some persons may join the scouting movement as their way of getting more gay friends. Nothing wrong in this but that will negate the purpose of scouting and scout movement. It is not a forum designed for like sexes to chum up. It is not a bar or ballroom dance where songsters ululate beguines and people looking for sexual gratifications congregate. In the modern set up when it concerned sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) homosexuals, men having sex with men, (MSM) were seen to harbor or distribute more of these than heterosexual men and women http://www.bilerico.com/2010/03/us_gay_mens_astonishing_hivstd_rates.php. That triggered the question why if the children entrusted in their hands will not copy what they were doing and similarly become promiscuous. 

Some MSM marriages are morganatic and a travesty of marriage as found in the New Testament
This is a strong statement that me underline my that I am not a proponent irrespective of some sympathy demonstrated. It was also considered that MSM relentless fight to have legality of their wedding approved was simply for economic partnership and not in the real matrimonial sense we have in most heterosexual relationship. Some still continued having partners outside their wedding domain. It was therefore in consequential to equate their marriage to that of normal persons or heterosexuals. To be on the safe side and for our record, we will call it economic cum sexual union of MSMs or WSWs.  ....When pushing hard on this question of homosexuality particularly when it comes to lesbianism, some persons argue that most women are lesbians and that prior to getting married they would have lesbian affairs with other girls. In the society that may be considered as primitive, it had been observed by the grandees that some women were shy or feared men and the only way to do away with pusillanimity was to give away their girls in marriage at an earlier age. This is the case in some African and Islamized societies. Also, where there is bride price, the parents want to ascertain that they get some money for having raised their girls. In that case it was to their advantage to get the girls chum up with the right male suitors they wanted that were eligible financially.  It means someone who was to pay for their bride price. A woman suitor was not likely to pay this sort of money. In societies under consideration, women were not generally rich. You will not have rich women in any primitive Islamic society as one, they do not allow their women to venture engaged in some trade or education that will liberate them. Therefore, there was no question of getting women to pay for bride price so as to marry other women. In that case lesbianism, if at all it existed was only confined in the harems and not outside. 

End word
These issues were similarly examined in the past and it was concluded that homosexuality was not good for the society and their future was relatively guaranteed.  When it came to defense, men and women fought gallantly to defend their children, and hence their society. If there were no children people were fighting to leave their tradition with, there was lack or no incentive in fighting and they ended up being in the jaws of their enemy. If there were children to inherit property, the owners worked harder with the belief that in the end, the children were not to leave their wealth and start from scratch or go about begging. They were further motivated to put in their best performances. These attitudes were good for the economy in which they lived and the world at large. You are now seeing what motivated the NAZI party in Hitler’s Germany to go on the rampage of homosexuals and other ne'er-do-wells in their societies. [Once more dear readers, by making this statement, I am not suggesting that it should be the case in the modern society of the 21st century. It is for us to understand what might have spurred the killing and hatred of the homosexuals in some societies so that such should never ever happen]. 

Having made these statements, most Western Churches that follow the Holy Bible on which most of the Western laws are pivoted, did not and still grudgingly do not approve of homosexual activities. Some states  will even imprison those promoting homosexual propaganda as in Russia today http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/06/2013611155323341978.html. Nevertheless, they may be  accepted as sort of mavericks. The wedding of two healthy men (MSM) in France a couple of days ago to the chagrin of many was considered as anathema. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c1a1cde-c877-11e2-8cb7-00144feab7de.html#axzz2UyZZVy3D.  Finally, there are certain things man will be forced  or inveigled to accept but deep within him, he is convinced that they are all wrong and he will stand stoically by his convictions till he is called to heaven. Still to many, homosexuality is one of them. Modern states, vogue, some religions, or philosophies, or inveiglers may advocate euthanasia, homosexuality and abortion, and may use their persuasive skills as some persons in jurisprudence do, vice, force or buy reasoning peoples to side with them and their apparent contradictory views, nevertheless, the naked truth is that deep in their hearts, minds and prayers, they will never be in favor of their action or equate their union with holy matrimony as sanctified by God. It will never be wholehearted voted for even when it even comes to rotten boroughs. I will join those who refuse to join this queue of the modern savants irrespective of all persuasions, threats, cajoles, and worldly sympathies that are detached from God who loves the examined, believers, none-believers and sinners. As persons proven to be born that way beyond reasonable doubts and scientifically proven, I will stand by them.  When it comes to marriage sacrament as in the true church instituted by Jesus Christ, I will love them as my brothers and sisters and never their perverse sexual activities. 

Viban Viban Ngo, PhD.
vibanngo@hotmail.com
[PS: As this is still a drafted treatise, readers citing or reviewing it may have to acknowledge or seek the consent of the author.]



Monday, May 27, 2013

WHY ARE SOME BLACKS AFRAID OF BEING BLACK

WHY ARE SOME BLACKS AFRAID OF BEING BLACK?

The caption is derived from a title of a write-up to be precise a long treatise by Kim Gordon (www.capitalcitycourier.org) whose theme I am familiar with and have dwelt upon in the past and in an article featuring in my blog posted not long ago.  It should be crystal clear that you do not tell your maker, God or whoever you conceive Him to be, to make you of any color or gender and so on and so forth. So to be worried about color in the 21st century tells me that something is awry some where in the history of man on earth. Having said this, there are still pockets of fears by black peoples. It should be the goal of all peace-loving persons to destroy this fear as briefly outlined below.

What I see being miss-defined as color is the economic status of some individuals. To tell me that a rich African-American football player will be worried by color is far-fetched. When it comes to love or love partnership, call it marriage, he can marry anyone he wants of any nationality, color or gender as it is in vogue today. What may influence his choice may be cultural.  There are no color barriers as before 1967 in the USA and South Africa. Therefore, I am going to reiterate what I have said and my feelings as per this sticking subject matter. 

First of all, I would implore you to be kind enough to direct  the author and interested persons to read my book, WHO IS AFRICAN AMERICAN: CROSSING RACIAL BARRIERS. I have answered this burning question posed by the author of the Undercover Brother whose review is cited below besides discussing in some fair amount of detail what the psychiatrist Dr. Franz Fanon (1967), the writer of BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS has discussed way back in 1952. Fanon cited Aime Cesaire (page 124) his contemporary in this poem:

...But those without whom the earth would not be
the earth
Tumescence all the more fruitful
than
the empty land
still more the land
Storehouse to guard and ripen all
on earth that is most earth
My blackness is not stone, its deafness
hurled against the clamor of the day
My blackness is drop of lifeless water
on the dead eye of the world
My blackness is neither a tower nor a cathedral
It thrusts into the red flesh of the sun
It thrust into the burning flesh of the sky
It hollows through the dense dismay of its own
 pillar of patience.

I have come to the conclusion that the origin of human color pigmentation in biological studies  should be taught in all schools, colleges and other institutes of higher learning. Furthermore, It should be stressed that the blacks were the first to people the earth (not of their making) and any other person on earth is connected to the BLACK PERSON.
WHICH COLOR IS SUPERIOR IN THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM?  FROM WHICH ARM OOZES LIQUID GOLD INSTEAD OF BLOOD WHEN CUT? WHICH ARM WAS BORN TO HEW WOOD AND WATER FOR OTHERS? WHICH ARM WILL LIVE INDEFINITELY ON EARTH BECAUSE OF ITS COLOR? WHICH ARM IS NOT WATERED WHEN IT RAINS BECAUSE IT HAS A WRONG COLOR? WHICH ARM WAS NOT MADE BY GOD AND SHOULD NOT RUB SHOULDERS WITH YOU? ET CETERA.

I see many naive readers who may dine with Adolf Hitler frowning at this proven statement. By virtue of age of blacks on earth, ideally, all persons should emulate the BLACKS and not the other way round. Do not rush to draw conclusions from the above statement but read on. Then the colonial Caucasians with their colonialism, doctrine of the the survival of the fittest fanned by Charles Darwin (read On the Origin of Species (1859) and other schools of thoughts,  slavery and superiority in the economic and industrial fields, appear to make aspiring to be BLACK like making a wrong choice. I will be wrong to lead any person to follow blacks or whites or yellows the three prototypes of man on earth. No one should aspire to take anyone as a prototype as all are equal be they of any color, height, gender, religious or philosophical inclinations.  
Charles Darwin as in 1859. He was one of the proponents of the 'survival of the fittest doctrine.' Did he know that some persons would take his doctrine literary and fan colonialism, slavery and slave trade?

However, it should be known that you cannot grow under cold climates without shading some of your black color and eventually losing it all together. I am not insinuating that you use chemicals as some low class persons  do this, as your skin will do this inadvertently and eventually your genes will take over that determinism.  Similarly, a Caucasian cannot come to live in the tropics without building dark tan. That for millions of years will fashion his genes to produce a dark skinned Caucasian, hence we have East Indians, Fulani, Ethiopian types, many living in S. E. Asia and others looking the way they do today. In the same vein, dark skinned turned pinkish as its way to adapt to the cold climates. It is not a one day process but millennial. 

Let me underline, that there is no difference between persons of any color on earth. Or do not assume that because you are homo sapient you are biologically better than a dog or a rat.   Even when you are born black you should be happy as chances of you having cancer of the skin as some Caucasians are slim. Under this, when it concerns  health in certain cases, I rather be dark skinned than being others. That is a wishful thinking as we do not get up to say to our parents to chum up with persons A or B so that we will be born looking like persons C. We may one day do this with the wizardry of biological mechanics I have discussed elsewhere in work yet to be published. So to look down or up any persons because of their colors is rather myopic and moronic. So I am pleading with you not to deny him job because he is white, black, yellow, mixed but consider if he or she is competent to execute the task you expect to be carried out.  We should be happy and not throw our siblings in the bins because they are not as what we wanted them to be. We should not abort them because we have done scanning and seen that they will be girls and girls are not wanted as say in China and some African states. Others in the past got rid of them because they were albinos or malformed. They are all equal and should have a place on earth or Mars or any other planet we will people in the future.

What we may discuss as a separate topic is plastic surgery done by persons of any color to get themselves accepted or loved.  I see this stirred by nervousness and the clientele is dominated by women as a way of trying to rejuvenate themselves and fool onlookers.  It should be known that we cannot rejuvenate the genes, reduce or increase our ages to look what we are not naturally. For those who yearn to change their color to be accepted for fear of rejection by the dominant white color, as in this citation by Gordon, (ibidem),

Besides the obvious rewards that 
are offered to those who deny their 
Blackness, another thing that causes 
some to not want to be Black is fear. 
Fear of ridicule, fear of being singled 
out, fear of being rejected. And the 
fear sometimes cripples a person to 
the point of wanting to disappear 
into the outer society through either 
“conscious” passing or “unconscious” passing. “Conscious” 
passing occurs when a light-skinned 
Black person consciously erases all 
traces of Blackness by straightening the hair, lightening the skin, 
etc. and pretends to be White in 
order to blend in with White society. 
“Unconscious” passing occurs when 
a Black person of any shade attempts 
to blend in by taking on all of the 
outer characteristics and trappings 
of White society. They dress White, 
talk White, marry White, and in all 
ways completely ignore any signs 
that they might be Black. Eventually, the “unconscious” passers even 
begin to talk negatively about Blacks, 
totally forgetting the fact that they 
are, themselves, Black. They write 
books and host radio shows spouting off every negative stereotype they 
can think of about us. There are several who make it into the public eye, 
mainly because they’re the ones the 
mainstream media and the politicians 
like to trot out whenever they want a 
“Black” opinion...and a good laugh..."


I have this to say to you: For those having plastic surgery or enhancement of pigmentation, externally they may change, look youthful and handsome or beautiful but their ages are still the same internally. We are in this case like a ptarmigan that looks grey in spring and white in winter but still the same bird under different colored feathers. This changes of color is a survival strategy that manifests on man but takes thousands of years as above explained.  African Americans feel that they are being discriminated or are being discriminated because most of them are not as economically stable as their Caucasians brothers and sisters. What happens if the reverse were true? Would Caucasians and others feel that they were being discriminated against by Africans or peoples of African descent? What I will encourage is to imitate  scientific knowledge that brings progress of whoever you like of any color and even outdistance them in whatever they have or have had. That is the stuff that will make our world grow to a better perspective. We should all be happy with the color we have, accommodate all that live on earth and even those we aspire to bring from Mars and any other extraterrestrial sphere irrespective of how they look, reason or the amount of wealth they have. 
WHY SHOULD AFRICANS IN THIS PICTURE BE AFRAID OF BEING BLACK WHEN  A CAUCASIAN POLICE MAN PASSES BY? WHY SHOULD HE BE SHOT AT BY WHITE POLICE BECAUSE HE IS BLACK? WHY IS THERE RACIAL PROFILING IN THE 21ST CENTURY? SHOULD WE ALLOW ANYONE TO FEAR OTHERS BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN, GENDER, SIZE, CONDITION OF HEALTH, ET CETERA?

Finally, by keeping on exhuming the color superiority or inferiority or the preferred color of all earthlings by gullible persons, an aspect I feel not as being pivoted on economics, we are not looking ahead but bringing uncalled-for mayhem on earth. Have we forgotten why we had that civil war in the USA? We are smarter than that. 





  


Saturday, May 11, 2013

ORIGINS OF AFRICA PLACE NAMES (A newly published book)



ORIGINS OF AFRICAN PLACE NAMES (a newly published book)

ORIGINS OF AFRICAN PLACE NAMES: AN INTRODUCTION TO TOPONYMYS IN CARTOGRAPHY AND POLITICS IN AFRICA by Viban Ngo, PhD, (London)
699 pages (just published)
Published (2009) by;
Baico Publishing
294 Albert Street, Suite 103,
Ottawa, Ontario KIP 6E6, Canada
Tel: + (613) 829-5141
E-mail: baico@...
www.baico.ca
ISBN 978-1-897449-86-8

Price: $ 69.95 Canadian FUNDS
$ 69.95 US FUNDS OUTSIDE CANADA

Summary: Origin of Africa Place Names: An Introduction to Toponyms in Cartography and Politics in Africa

This is a profusely illustrated introductory book that reviews various types of place names, their origins, written forms, changes, and reasons for their changes within the political, psychological and socio-historical contexts with particular reference to those in Africa. Concrete examples are also drawn from other continents. Therefore, this document is not only encyclopedic but useful for its global coverage. It is useful to all students of international relations, environmentalists, military personnel, diplomats, UN field workers, journalists, geographers, GIS specialists, cartographers, linguists or any one concerned with spatial studies, search and rescue operations, history and politics with particular reference to Africa.

Each time an African state changes its place name or names of features within its territory, every map of Africa becomes obsolete. ...A map in this context is a graphic representation with a scale of some part of the world or celestial body, varying in sizes, often portrayed on a plane surface or digitally. Also considered, are effects of place names in the field of cartographic communication that was neglected in the past by spatial scientists, historiography, geography and geopolitical settings. On its pedagogical objectives, emphases are placed on the relevance of place name studies in cartography, ‘cartolinguistics,’ related disciplines, and sensitivity to their intrinsic values that are the concern of individual users and various governments. Cartography in this framework is a science of preparing all categories of maps, charts annotated Landsat imagery with every operation from original survey to final printing of their analogue or digital formats.

The cardinal observation is that political changes that have plagued Africa since the 1500s often lead to the introduction, replacement and modifications of some existing place names of features its predecessors had laid down in their languages or styles to suit their philosophies and practices. That is the assertion of the authorities of the ruling governments. States’ names intended to be provisional, ended up being ingrained and those considered eternal are replaced with the emergence of modern African statehood and the achievement of self-government since the 1960s. These changes will go on indefinitely with the economic, political, educational and social dynamism of the continent with external influences further accelerated by cyber space and modern media of communication.

There was a time when Western Africa was known as the Sudan, Ethiopia, then Nigritia, Upper Guinea and presently it is known as West Africa. The Atlantic Ocean was known as Ethiopian Ocean (Black Ocean) for ‘Ethiopia’ was the term used in antiquities to stand for Black. This was eventually replaced by Atlantic Ocean. A good number of African national names simply mean ‘black’; such are Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Guinea, and Egypt. This general introductory document traces the history of such changes. These are tackled by looking at their origins and reasons for their changes. By attempting to answer a barrage of questions as what religion, voodoo, politics, apartheid, slavery and slave trade, colonization, political independence, emigration, authenticity and many more have got to do with place names, the author writing as a continuous narrative, has covered all African nation states with several striking revelations dug from original sources and field works. With appended comprehensive references, coordinates of major survey and place name/ geographic information centers of Africa and those in other parts of the world concerned with the studies of place names, toponymy, this works is unique as a reference book for anyone interested in Africa and place name studies in general. It is hoped that it will stir scientific place names studies with the adoption of e-toponymy that is relatively advanced in North America, Europe and some Asian regions.

Reviews:


“This is a highly interesting document from my point of view, as a non specialist in toponymy but rather as a linguist.”
Mr. Alain Landry is the General Director of Fondation Baxter and Alma
Ricard, Ottawa and former Deputy Minister of Multiculturalism and
Citizenship Canada.

“Perhaps if men like President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe peruse this work, no foreign toponym will be left on the African soil.” Mr. J. MacKay, Emeritus Scientist and Senior Scholar at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa.

“A well illustrated, researched and beneficial encyclopedic work ...for academic establishments and general readers.” Helen Kerfoot, Vice Chair of United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), Ministry of Mines, Ottawa, Canada.

“A bold step in African studies. An excellent eye opener and a must-read for anyone who has anything to do with African history, politics, place names, intelligence, military, search and rescue; emergency preparedness, topographic surveys, geographic information system (GIS) and their relationship with the rest of the world. I thoroughly enjoy reading it.” (anon). 


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Monday, April 29, 2013

Place Name or Geographical Nomenclature: Changing the Macrotoponym AFRICA


Place Name or Geographical Nomenclature: Changing the Macrotoponym AFRICA: And why Cote d’Ivoire /Ivory Coast should be translated as Côte d’Esclave / Slave Coast.



There is a retailing clothing corporation in Europe called the United Colors of Benetton operating in some 120 countries. If they are advertising their products they shock to the core their clients or would-be clients. I cannot conjecture if their sales increase in consequence. Once, they posted on bill boards in Western Europe and North America a picture of a dark skin African breastfeeding a rosy (white) child as a way of advertising their sweater. http://beibysrabbithole.blogspot.com/2010/10/united-colors-of-benetton.html



That advert invoked days of slavery where Negro (African American) nurses would not suckled their babies first but would those children of their ‘rose’ (white) mistresses. That was a modicum of slavery in the days of slavery in deep south USA. What do you call such happening today and being documented for you? I heard some readers talk of barefaced exploitation and provocation of dark complexioned Africans or peoples. Is it modern day slavery or are we still reminded of the exploitation of one of our kinds in the 21st century?

I am not writing on geographical nomenclature of Africa to shock or provoke my readers beyond words as the United Colors of Benetton but to inform base on philosophical and scientific reasoning. I would want my readers to rationalize, ratiocinate and not to react out of sentiments as I have done so to put this in black and white before reacting. The reason is what we all articulate could be documented for posterity.

I would also appreciate it if kind readers would translate this particular treatise into French, Hausa, Russian, Portuguese, Kiswahili, West African English (Creole) and Spanish for all and sundry to decipher. My rationale is that I do not want us to swing to and fro as a pendulum as some interlocutors / debaters want us to do without making headway. We tend to insinuate from comments made that we are still thousands of years away from being made into a book learned continent. Many of you could compare our advances in literacy with those of India. I see that India is a lot developed and what is dragging it behind is lack of rigid family planning akin to their next door neighbor, China. The veracity is they have the audacity to invest in Africa. I do not know of any Nigerian apart from South African companies setting up businesses in India and China. The least they do is to supply raw materials. Ask why not finished commodities?

Africa is last in most scientific advancement due to no fault of theirs and that is no excuse that they cannot advance and even outdistance those who had been thousands of miles before them in the trail of industrialization if at all there is anything like that. If Africans are apparently not economically and industrially advanced, it may be because they are complacent with their present status quo and their perception of advancement is completely different from those of their onlookers from other continents. It may be because Africans still build or aspire to build their heaven, Elysium in some extraterrestrial zone in the life after this whereas others believe that their heaven is on earth. Malcolm X in his book (1965) The Autobiography of Malcolm X with the Asssistance of Alex Haley, London: Penguin Books, 512 p highlighted this point. If others are way ahead, it is because they have perfected what they took from their mother continent, Africa and not that they make different superlative commodities than Africans. I will go straight to our topic for today, a quest for the change of macrochoronym AFRICA to what some persons might like to call authentic place names.

Before we proceed we would like to clarify certain jargon. A specialist in place name studies is a toponymist. He specializes in the scientific study of place names, choronymy or onamastics or what are known in some quarters as cartolinguistics or geolinguistics. . When we are interested in nomenclature of smaller areas we call this microtoponymy as opposed to macrotoponymy that studies regionyms, names of countries, large geographical regions and continents. In our case, we are interested in the macrotoponymy of Africa. That has been covered by me in my work I am citing for the third time in this forum, Origins of African Place names: An Introduction to toponyms in Cartography and Politics in Africa, Ottawa: Biaco Publishing Inc. I wish the person who suggested the change of African place name, what may sound like an academic gymnastics or jingoism would have perused me work particularly chapters xix and xxii. It is true that if there are certain changes, as one writer pointed out, such as unification of Africa as a single country that might call for a new name. If this work has been read, plenty of hassles and perchance waste of time would have been saved. Our attention would not have been diverted from the urgent task of development we must handle if we do not want to be re-colonized for a second time by aliens.

One theme that I have treated among many others is the choice and applications of geographic place names. I have emphasized on the vital need for a name chosen to be the outcome of a common consensus. Leaders in these fields are the UNGEGN (Unesco) who attempt to ensure that geographic nomenclature are standardized, in whatever language they are rendered for easy communication. In the case of Africa in toto, it is suggested that the African Union committee of place names look into this matter if it is not to be dogmatic. If one is not been formed, it should as it is needed now and will be in the future. If changes of geographical nomenclatures are to be accepted without grudge, they have to be done by democratically elected, equally represented and level-headed members of a place name committees who are experts in the field of onamastics.

The UNGEGN organization had come across cases where majority communities tended to dominate minorities to the extent that their languages and hence their geographic place names are suppressed or completely annihilated. This happens when two nations or communities come together and their cultures are sort of clashed. The dominating one tends to suppress the minority ones without taking into consideration their feelings and historical or psychological affiliations to their names that are being wiped out or adulterated. They are part and parcel of their culture and the moment they are wiped out, they interpret that as their language and core of their culture being erased. Even when the new community that had newly joined the smaller one had got points as the names they want to get rid of being shift names or mistaken names, the minority communities still feel bitter and often interpret those actions as assimilation or blatant domination.

A bunch of politicians do not have the right to stand up and erase the names that have been in one region of the country because they feel that it is their duty to do so. This is interpreted as dictatorship and that does not augur well in a civilized and democratic world. It is for this reason that Cameroon Republic that annexed Southern Cameroons, or West Cameroon State and changed the name Victoria to Limburgh or Limbe is not taken kindly by the annexed state of Southern Cameroons, aka Ambazonia.

“The revolutionary political process in 1981 led to the historic Port Twn of Victoria founded by Rev. Alfred Saker, the focus of national and international attention in 1958 on the occasion of its centenary celebrations being quietly renamed ‘Limbe’, when comparable Francophone monuments names after French colonial heroes have remained untouched. Southern (West) Cameroonians had not quiet recovered from the shock caused by this act, when by Law No. L84,001 of 14/02/84 the United Republic of Cameroon was again quietly replaced with ‘Republic of Cameroon,’ the name French Cameroon assumed at independence in 1960.”[Anthony Ndi, 2005: page 312- in his book Mill Hill Missionaries in (West) Southern Cameroons. Nairobi: Paulines Publication Africa.]

The reaction here was acrimonious as the recent change of appellation Provinces to 'Regions' in the very country whose senior officials are considered in Ambazonia as proconsuls who are there of their accord and not as wished by Southern Cameroonians. They can afford to do what they are doing as they are considered as undemocrated colonial forces.

Let me reiterate, changes of names could be done by anyone but that is not allowed in a truly democratic nation state. It is because such place names have been recorded in many documents (maps, gazetteers, atlases, charts, and personal documents) and a mere change of them has to take into consideration several factors. They have to think of the cost of changes to the government and individuals, the map makers not only of the region concerned but in all the establishments of the world, jurisprudence and the psychological effect of the people in that locality. The mere change of Cameroon Republic’s appellation Provinces to Regions made all atlases that incorporate this country obsolete. Alterations of certain names are taken by some communities as removing their ancestral homes and throwing them away. When names are changed without a common consensus they are interpreted by the changing authorities as being arrogant, undemocratic and looking down o the communities they once designated and such do cause bitter feelings and war in some cases. There is not way you could go to change Istanbul to Constantinople and bullets will not fly. The reasons are that the Turks were defeated by the Christians before Constantinople was imposed and now that they are no longer under the Christians from Rome, they see no reason why they would have to live under imperialistic names. They have all the rights to change the names. Similarly, given opportunity, Limbe or Limburgh could revert to Victoria thereby the moment Southern Cameroons independence would be restored.

The name Victoria has historical underpinning and tells the world that historical and even present links that Southern Cameroons once had or still have with Great Britain. If Cameroon Republic that had its independence from France on January 1st 1960 still maintain French names of their streets, monuments, why do they feel that they can change English names in Southern Cameroons aka Ambazonia without tangible reasons other than assimilating Ambazonians in their governance that they do not want to be a part of it. If there is any reason to contradict my statement, let there be a referendum now in the Southern Cameroons whether they would want to have their lost political independence they achieved on October 11, 1961 from Great Britain. The vote for immediate independence would be overwhelming as what we recently saw in the Southern Sudan. There is no way or any block that could have halted the Southern Sudan from being with North Sudan or Sudan Republic where in the past they were being treated as second class citizens. Citizens of the former British Cameroons are being treated as second hand citizens in their country because of the alliance with Cameroon Republic that has never gone well. If you doubt what I am saying since the independence of Sudan from Her Majesty’s Government of the UK, how many Southern Sudanese (Equatorians?) ever became head of State of Sudan? Not a single one of them. Similarly, there is not a single Southern Cameroonian who had ever and will ever be the president of Cameroon Republic. The reason is obvious; they are considered as moronic second class citizens with a different culture as testified by outbursts recorded in media in this country. Where the French and the English speaking Africans of this region meet there are ever  cultural clashes they inherited from their different colonial masters. Many will climb the pulpit and point fingers but what I am stating is the naked truth that is made from close observation, participation and past documentations. If they were sharing the natural resources from the former British Cameroons at least it would be understandable. But they get oil, gold, and other natural resources revenues and develop their sphere and leave the former British as derelict. What used to be main highways are impassable. Driving from Mamfe to Kumba after 52 years of so-called alliance with Cameroon Republic is like  going through hell on earth. Articulated traillers bringing goods from Nigeria or ferrying food stuffs are bugged down on mud for weeks. That is a way that took half a day  in the good days of the West Cameroons state when there was that  loose federation with Cameroon Republic.  That is not indicative of a country producing oil since 1972. The international airport at Tiko that served British Cameroons was closed for spurious economic reasons.  It transpires that all these are calculated strategies to cripple British Cameroons economically and politically. If the rest of Canada were to do that to the Province of Quebec, that will signal an automatic cut off by that region from the rest of the English-speaking Canada. Let me not over sideline. 

Exceptional burlesque Cases and beyond names

Having brought the above illustrations, there are certain place names in Africa that are considered derogatory and anachronistic and might have lived hitherto owing to the naivety of the peoples they designate. This will lead me to draw another example from West Africa, namely IVORY COAST or COTE D’IVOIRE. Let me reiterate, I have in the past stated that its translation was and is still standing for "SLAVE COAST" and that is preposterous in the 21st century. If the term NEGRO is being suppressed in updated version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  by Mark Twain for they annoy decent African-Americans and even Caucasians who want to be in good terms with their African American neighbors what more of Ivory Coast? I am not sure why that name is still maintained. My interpretation is that since this forum is exclusively in English, citizens of that region in West Africa still called SLAVE COAST or rightly Côte d’Esclave has not been able to read debates in the forums or have been distracted by their internecine war of presidential ascendancy. Those nomenclatures that shock are burlesques. There is no society without any of these. In the Cameroon we still have a name of a village Bangonngwana which stands for a country of slaves. In France, we have a funny name like Condom. For many of us who associate this term with French letters, rubber to be worn to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, we are appalled why such a name designates a town in S.E. of France today. We forget that such a name predated our present condom that should imperatively be the first vocabulary of` a sexually active teenager. The name of this town is therefore not anachronistic. No matter how appalling it may sound to some readers, it may be there to stay unless the denizens of this town by a common consensus decide to change it. This goes for the name Ivory Coast or Coast of Slaves I have suggested to be changed to Songhai for reasons I have advanced in my work and in forums.

Similarly Africa cannot just be changed because a firebrand scholar is feeling that the continent of Africa had to be changed by Africans as others were of the opinion that the Indians of America (First Nation Peoples) ought to give the name they would want their continents to be known. I once heard some Francophiles crying that the English language was suppressing their language. My reply to the head of Francophonie was that one does not learn a new language for the sake of learning but for the remuneration such knowledge would bring one. How does the change of Africa that had been known since time immemorial ameliorate the economic state of Africans today? As above stated, it could come to fruition if fragmented African states decide to amalgamate to form a single country. That might necessitate a new macrotoponym. That is the practical essence.

Many of you bear European, Judeo-Christian and Arabic names because of your religious beliefs, and the unproven belief that when you assume such names your inferiority complex would be positively changed and you would be accepted by those who once upon a time looked down upon you as inferior sub humans. Furthermore, what you believe awaits you because of such beliefs and assumption of alien names is the life after this one on earth. Have those who once upon a time downtrodden you accepted you as equals? Are you better off economically because you are called Mohammed, Isa and not Kwesi or Okonkwo or Wirba or Swane, or Diop that was in your tribes or kingdom millennia before the Arabs and Europeans returned with their imperialism in your continent? Again do you see your past reasoning strong enough for you to dump your authentic, meaningful and beautiful African names? Do you know that three quarters of Africans bear foreign names? Are they aware of the fact that they are killing African languages and cultures softly but surely? When people call your Hausa name, and not the apparently enforced Arabic names some passionately defend to death, they are sidelining Hausa and promoting Arabic. Fanatics will not sympathize with this as it is bunkum to them.  It should be clear that if God did not love native speakers, He shouild not have given them their language some persons derogatorily call dialects. Religiously speaking there is no difference between Hausa  language and English or French but before some persons, these are inferior language. Are they? To them one cannot be a believer and still use one's native names? They then to forget that God who  created English, Arabic and Russian speakers is the same God that created Hausa or Lamnso. Therefore there is no podium one can stand on to state that one can only be a believer if one took the names or language of the messengers of such believes or religions or philosophies.  Naïve persons do not ponder upon  this as they accept imposed inferiority of their languages and cultures vis-à-vis other languages and cultures that emanate outside the continent of Africa. 

I would not like to go into history as inciting Africans to abandon their foreign beliefs (see my reaction to President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo in my blog) but I would like to be known as the one who told Africans that they could welcome foreign sciences and technologies as the Japanese did without necessarily abandoning their Africanness. I would like to be reiterating that you could be a Christian without necessarily dumping your Africans names, philosophies and cultures. Gentiles were accepted once baptized. If you could accept others, why do they expect you to change before they can accept you? How many White Southern Africans are known by the Zulu, Xosa , Shona and Ndebele names? How many speak those languages ever since their fore parents reached that sub continent in the 16th century? Just make an effort as some Zimbabwean-Europeans are doing and you will be amazed at the good neighborliness that you will build. Furthermore, if we overemphasize on the importance of some dominating languages, we could be killing subordinating ones. We kill many every year and some days we will be lamenting over their graves and asking linguists how we could resuscitate them. It will be too late. What is the solution?

Let me not zigzag from the mean topic in this section of burlesque names. In the USA, there are many such names. One is Intercourse found in the USA. The word has several meanings and we call this in English grammar disambiguation.

It will be recalled that the French students are backward in some scientific fields because by the time they translate latest scientific papers published in America or the English-speaking worlds, they are late and by the time they have them in France they sometimes a year old. The reverse is true of getting innovation technologies published in French journals in the English speaking communities. Some French establishments are aware of these shortcomings and insist that synopses are published to in English. The Dutch Government circumvents this by ensuring that their students learn English at primary school level so that they are able to read the dominating scientific reports in English. Let us not go far. Rwandan officials were smart to adopt English. In Asia the Chinese and Vietnamese are doing this too. That is a different topic.

This idea of getting scientific reporting fast accounts for more Dutch and German students being more bilingual in English than their counter parts say in France. Having made this point, once more I should not be misquoted by someone that the French education is mediocre. There are more French scientists in French than scientists in all of Africa combined. As small as their population is vis-à-vis the entire continent of Africa, they are far advanced in scientific research than say Nigeria that has got thrice its population. They are a nuclear power and the only country in Africa that can come near France is the Republic of South Africa. [It should be mentioned here that when it comes to nuclear technology, it is a guarded secret as it is not to the best interest of everyone if terrorists lay their hands on].

Not to digress again, in the days of slavery and slave trade, European slave traders could buy black of white slaves. The black slave was actually an African person from the Sudan, Nigritia, Guinea (Aguinaldu) or Western Africa and the white ivory was actually ivory tusk. The first black suffix designates real slave and the later tusks. Therefore we will be stupid or phlegmatic to insist in the 21st century to call ourselves SLAVE COAST REPUBLIC / REPUBLIQUE DU COTE D’IVOIRE. This is an appellation that would turn William Wilberforce, Jacob Clarkson, William Pitt and other abolitionists in their graves. I am not the one to tell Africans what would happen to them if such were to occur.

I have suggested a list of names including Songhai, Bandamia, etc, in my book that could be taken by President Alassane Ouattara and his entourage to save us from this opprobrium. They should make sure that it is debated and not a mistaken name as Abidjan the place name of their economic capital.

Agree with our previous interlocutor/contributors that Africa has more pressing needs than to be bothered with change of its regionym in macrotoponymy. Although one of our contributors has stated that Africans are more educated than the Chinese and India, they are still very poor and technologically backward. To me, Africa is the least developed continent economically irrespective of masses of natural resources and virtually free labor supply. It still has the appalling infrastructure when compared with India, Asia and South America that got independence from European power around the same time. If you want to disagree with me count how many Africans are in Diaspora and how many strive to go and work in Europe and North Africa to the extent that many lost their lives while crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea. Is it not a repeat of what happened during the trans-Atlantic and trans-Sahara slave trade? We call this brain drainage, write copious articles and books about it yet nothing has ever been done to address it. Without mincing our words 9 in 10 spinsters sounded in the Cameroun Republic dream is to go to Europe or North America so as to get married to White men. The reason is not that the White man is good at making love; it is because he would alleviate their economic status and those of their extended families. They become milch cows and that does not go well.  Additionally, is that a tangible reason to get married? This, my dear readers is that morganatic wedding that end up in miseries and our African girls marauding the streets of Europeans cities as prostitutes. There is nothing in some of them call love even among their kinds. What does Europe offer Africans that Nigeria cannot? Why has the issue of economic migration never been seriously addressed by those erstwhile provinces of France and Britain that turned over night to pseudo nation states or banana republics? Is this not a pressing issue that should be addressed than the place name fiasco?

Economic Potentials

To get ourselves distracted from pressing economic debacles by this issue of place names and naming is not intellectually challenging and convincing enough. All we need to do is to look for ways to harness the River Congo to produce electricity that could be exported to Europe and Asia and stop bandying words on place names whose etymologies some of us dabble based on conjectures. If electricity from the River Congo cataracts alone is tapped, the D.R. Congo (Rightly should be known as “Bula Mutari”) will never go tasty and hungry for the next two hundred years unless some natural calamities were to come from no where and destroy its hydroelectric stations or divert the river to thin air. That could trigger industries that would attract investors and create jobs and take us away from the temptation of building nuclear energy plants as Mali is on the verge of doing. Imagine Somali after Said Barre having a nuclear electric plan. Not one would be safe. That attempt should be thwarted in Mali that has unruly men who attack and kidnap people for ransom moneys. It should be persuaded to desist from that suicidal action before they become like Pakistan with a nuclear capability that is the nightmare of India, Israel and America. It will be recalled that Africans are still suffering from the effect of the test of nuclear /hydrogen bomb blasts the French tasted in the 1950s and 1960s in the Sahara. Before we welcome certain industrial innovations, we have to ponder upon them and ask experts as the Germans, Japanese and the Russians.

Does it not bother us that in the 21st century eight out of ten Africans would want to emigrate to Europe and North America to where there are favorable economic climates? It is a shame that we sit and watch our leaders fowl our economies with wanton corruptions, plow in nothing and we fervently believe that we could ameliorate ourselves and our continent by rendering our badly needed services in foreign climes? Since the 1500 AD Africans have been exporting their kinds to other parts of the world by vice or voluntary means. How has 600 years of exporting African to the Americas helped Africans and African Americans? To me, it had brought humiliation and stinking opprobrium. If Africans are not careful they could be re-enslaved by the new comers from the east who come to stay and not to return to their original homes. The terms of settlements should be clear as this broad day light and should be cast in stainless steel that should never be remolded. ‘Naturalize and plow back your profits in your new homes and not ship them to your old homes as once did the Indians in Uganda who after living in Uganda for one hundred years still called themselves Indians. Did we doubt it when Idi Amin Dada took the draconian measures of driving them out? It was because Ugandan Indians had not accepted to settle in Uganda as their homeland. To them it was a market where profit was obtained with impunity and taken to be invested home India where it was safe. Were they right? That is a different topic.

Lesson from the Japanese and secret of Industrialization

The Japanese threatened the very industrial core and power of Europeans because they learned European secret of industrialization. If we are not motivated to learn all these where do we think we are heading to and how are we to be respected by the industrially developed nations if we are not going to talk to them as equal from the position of strength? Is the right stratagem to invite foreigners to sell them chunks of our lands and they employ us to work on them instead of employing them to work for us in our lands? Is the right attitude to exploit all hard woods and export them to be stored in Europe and we are left with nothing? I learned one thing while working in Zimbabwe, that African Zimbabweans were scared of managing their affairs. They had been used to European Zimbabweans managing for them and when they were given that sanction to do things for themselves, most of them were petrified. It was for this reason, hitherto that European Zimbabweans were skeptical and often commented that they were aware of the fact that they had taken over their (African Zimbabweans’) lands but were doubting it that they could use the lands properly when they lacked capital, managerial skill, and the technical know-how that would make good farmers. I did not have to go far but to look at the swimming pools of homes Rhodesians abandoned and Africans took over. They were used as dust bins and where they were grudgingly used the water was brackish, no money to buy 'alginates'.

The Cameroon Development Corporation and no lessons for the indigenes

The Cameroon Development Corporation was and still a foreign concern in the Cameroons. It existed since the days of the Germans and changed hands with the English and now the French and a handful of adventurous locals. True it created jobs and all Africans could do in those plantations since their creation was to harvest crops with machetes and parceled them for Western European marts. Africans were and are employed as laborers and after 55 years of working hard daily they have not learned any technologies that could ameliorate their lives or help them set up their plantations. Sadly they returned and still do hitherto to their villages as they came, naked and even more moronic as they left their backward villages. They could not open farms or get pensions and there was no multiplier effect. What was the essence?

What is wrong with us that we cannot man our own lands and produce what others want? Must it be produce by those whom we are supposed to produce and sell to them? Then we will be confined to the state of slavery in our own lands for the foreseeable future. Are we not tired and do we forget that we were once used and are still used before our political independence in some quarters to buttress the Western Economies when ours were and are still in shambles. If there was forced migration during the times of slavery to produce goods for Europeans and if today we still do not reason and still feel that the best way is to still move over to Europe to work for them for stipends when we could have full pay for our productivity in our African homes, then slavery and slaver trade had never left us or taught us a single lesson. It is for this reason that when people are crying of sincere industrialization we are crying over spurious change of place names. Where therefore are our priorities? Let us in Africa invent a car that will only run on oxygen that is as common and produce all that the Asians, the Americans, Europeans and the rest of the would badly demand; we would not go about trumpeting to the world where we are and what we are but our clients would come to us with open arms asking for where we live. They would not need roads and names. Can we for one minute leave the alehouses, she-beens, chicken parlors, games and ponder upon Cheikh Anta Diop’s 1974, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State. West Point: Lawrence Hill and Company, 125 p? He outlines what we could do to be industrialized and be partially self sufficient and garner the respect and grandeur that was once Africa. I have mentioned one, the harnessing of the mighty River Congo to generate hydro electricity for our use and export.

You will see that before the name Africa was used to stand for the continent that is located south of Europe and to the southwest of the Middle East, various names were used to regions of Africa and they all stood for black. Starting from Western Africa are familiar with, we have Nigritia, then sometimes known as Guinea, (Aquinalda) then we had Western Sudan, Ethiopia and in the good old days we had Egypt. They all stood for black, designating the general color of the soil and sometimes that of the inhabitants as those of the Sudanese and Darfurians who had been blessed by nature with dark skin to cover them from the cancerous radiance of the sun. They never and do not suffer from cancer of the skin as do some of us who are light skinned. Therefore, the black melanin that gave some names in Africa is a blessing which when some brothers and sister want to shade them as if they were rotten sloughs because they had mistakenly taken the Caucasian fair complexioned skin as the prototype. I laugh at their deadly naivety. How does the change of complexions to mimic that of the brothers who had been made so by the temperate climes ameliorate the economic climate of Africans? How does it take away their miseries? How does it take away the pandemic HIV/AIDS and related illnesses that nearly surpassed malaria in Africa? We could indulge in academia, philosophies but we have to keep on reminding ourselves of where we are going to and if what we are doing are positively changing our economies positively.

Fantastic Sounding Names

You see that some states have fantastic sounding names but their total wealth is not up the wealth of tiny Luxembourg or that of  the municipality of Monaco in Western Europe. If Amerigo Vespucci reported the founding of America by Christopher Columbus and if a reader mistook his name Amerigo and wrote it America as the continent that were founded. What is wrong with this so long as it is not derogatory? For those of you who have done choronomy or onamastics or cartoglinguistics, America is a typical mistaken regionym or macrotoponym. The users know that it was mistaken name but dare not suggest that it be changed. Africa was not a mistaken name. It was a shift name, Whatever its etymology, it cannot be changed but those who strongly want to call it the poorest continent on earth peopled by economically less dynamic persons can call it what they like with their tribal names. I hope they have to seek its standardization from the United Nations Groups of Experts on Experts on Geographic Names (UNGEGN). If this has been entrenched and permeate the entire world and now the Indians who are the prima occupantis of these continents came up and exhume some names that is the authentic name of the America could it be accepted?.

The Africa you all claim is no longer peopled by the original inhabitants of Africa. They have all emigrated to Europe, Asia and the Americas. There is no place on earth that is not inhabited by Africans. The difference why they are not looking like Africans that we know of or what some of us erroneously want to insist we define as an Africa is because the climate changed them in the course of their emigration. They have to adopt and adapt or else were faced out from the face of the earth.

Africa circa 1901

It was wrong in the pass to associate Africans with blackness as Africa was not and is not still peopled exclusively by black or dark-skinned complexioned peoples. There are rosy Africans or Caucasians who were in Africa before the first immigrants of Europeans left Europe after the so-called discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. The Arabs came in the 7 AD and you cannot strictly tell us that they are not Africans as the Boers or other Europeans settlers in Southern Africa. They still retain their rosy complexion what some Caucasians erroneously call white. Where do you classify the Fulani, the Chao Arabs, Arab, and Barbarians in the Atlas range, Tutsis, peoples of Chinese origins, and Indians? They are there and will be there forever. Even before the so-called categorization of man by color started by those who had put the erroneous white above the scale of human categorizations, particularly accentuated during the days of slavery and slave trade, everyone was the same. You will remember that the Popes of Rome had had four truly dark complexioned African Bishops of Rome. With the coming of color as the criterion for categorizing men on earth for their worth and even their IQ, some fair skinned Caucasians had since then and hitherto denigrated the man of African whose skin is dark or darkish to the bottom of the race scale and that false perspective is the casus belli. A time is coming, as it is now among the young Caucasians and Africans when they will totally believe that the color of the skin is another cloak men wear and that inside they are all the same. They are smarter than their predecessors and know that color had been given by climates and the nature of their landscape for what biologist term protective coloration that is also common among some creatures.


Therefore the prefix white, yellow or black to designating any person on earth is wrong. The most we can do to distinguish ourselves where it is imperative is to state that he is an Asian, She is an African. An African can be an Asian and vice versa. There are European Africans who are Africans even mentally and they are known as Africans. In this case, African could be what we used to be called in the past as white, brown, black, and yellow skins and not exclusively black as was erroneously called in Europe and America of the pass and by racists of today who are naïve or uneducated minorities.



After Benetton: http://beibysrabbithole.blogspot.com/2010/10/united-colors-of-benetton.html

Can you differentiate the color of a person from his blood and heart? (After Benetton)

[The name will be in which of the official languages of Africa? Is there a standing or an ad-hoc committee established that could see to this? When the UNGEGN or ICA calls for a convention how many Africans nations bother to send in delegates even when being held in Africa? Something is awry in Africa or with Africans. They have been used to aliens doing things for them and when it comes to working for them that dependency syndrome or paradigm is not easily shaded. Colonialism was wrong. How many Africans are prepared to rectify the damage done by the colonialists? ]

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.
vibango@yahoo.com


Appendixes


From: Jonathan Reynolds
_________

From: "bradley borougerdi"
University of Texas, Arlington


This is a very interesting debate. I have enjoyed the article so far
(though I am not finished yet), but it has occurred to me that the Native
American case is very similar. The various cultural groups in the
Americas before the oceanic revolution were named Indians by Europeans,
and scholars have tried to get rid of this misnomer but their efforts have
largely failed. I would image that if we deconstruct the naming of things
in general (along with other cultural groups as well), we might find that
a significant amount of mishandling has occurred through time (in fact,
this might even be a part of the naming process). The naming of America
is a case in point. Shortly after Waldsemuller published the first map
with America as the name for the so-called "new world," he realizes that he
gave too much credit to Amerigo Vespucci, but it was too late and the
name stuck. This might just be my overly cynical nature, but I think that
changing the name will not work because it is too entrenched in the psychic
of many individuals and groups (even if most of them are not from Africa).
In fact, I wonder how many times a name change of this magnitude has
actually been successful in the past? Nevertheless, it is important to
highlight this discussion to demonstrate the falsity of history and the
tendency humans have of categorizing people and culture into large groups
without justification and for the purpose of satisfying their own agenda,
and for that reason alone the article (or what I have read of it so far) is
beneficial. I am just a PhD student working on my comps with one of my
fields as African Diaspora, but I am going to add this article to my list
of comp readings.


Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 13:09:09 -0400
X-Posted from H-NET List for African History and Culture

From: Jonathan Reynolds
_________

From: "Asar Imhotep"
No Affiliation Provided


Greetings Dapo

Thank you greatly for your reply to my article. Your insight
is valuable and has been considered. I do feel, however, that you may have
not have actually read the article per some of your statements in the last
email. About 2/3 of your article was about race and race wasn’t a factor
in this discourse. A matter of fact, I stated clearly that an
identification based on race is reactionary. Thus why I rejected Wole
Sonyinka’s suggestions for a new name for Africa (Abibirim
and Abibiman “black land, black nation”) because it was based on the false
taxonomic notion or race which would put Europe at the center of our
ontology (given we’re only “black” in relationship to them who are
so-called “white”). I have a strict biological
conception of race and the folk taxonomy as expressed by the layman
doesn’t fit this standard for which I categorize human beings or which
traditional groups actually classified themselves.

Secondly, I agree with your statement on identity, at least
in part, that it is based either on historical shared unities or perceived
future shared ideals and goals. Your assumption that the name chosen
doesn’t reflect this, I feel, is mistaken. The term used Malela (malelela,
Egyptian <= mry) is found in practically all African language families. It is a Pan-African term present in the historical consciousness of African people. For the term to be so wide-spread among African language families suggest that at the formation of this concept, the ancestors of those who carry the term belonged to the same speech community: thus sharing the same culture. This can be demonstrated for thousands of African words and is why African linguists argue primarily for a single super language-family (see Rkhty in Karenga & Carruthers 1986, Diop 1954 and Obenga 1993). As stated in the article, the suggested name was chosen precisely to remind Africans of their ancient historical unity which can easily be demonstrated by examining African languages. It is in recognition of this ancient cultural unity (as demonstrated by numerous works) and the clarion call by Cheikh Anta Diop in Black Africa: An Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, that this proposal was made as Africa is slowly moving towards a unified sovereignty. In the spirit of self-determination it is imperative that Africa picks a destiny (a name) that best reflects its intentions, history, gifts and vision. Given the above, I took it upon myself to answer the call of African researchers who 1) called for a unified African state, language and culture, and 2) called for a redefinition of what it means to be “African” (in terms of identity) given that this name was imposed upon the people by Europeans without any feedback or consent from the people themselves or any knowledge of its meaning and historical context. I did not in the article go through any historical and cultural examples of indigenous naming processes. I discussed that in my book The Bakala of North America. But in general, naming conventions on the continent are aligned with destiny, the goals to be achieved by the person (or community). I only suggested a name within the tradition of indigenous naming conventions on the continent, using a modern variation of one of the most ancient names on the continent. The name is one of the most ancient names for a land mass (the Nile Valley) that we have on record and this process is no different than modern Ghana naming themselves after Ancient Ghana that was located further to its west. The same spirit is present in this endeavor. As Cheikh Anta Diop noted in Civilization or Barbarism (1981): “For us, the return to Egypt in all domains is a primordial condition to reconcile African civilization with history, to be able to build a corpus of modern human sciences, to renew African culture. Far from delectation with the past, a look towards ancient Egypt is the best way to conceive and build our cultural future. Egypt will play in a newly thought African culture, the same role the ancient Greco-Latin played in Western Culture” Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 22:00:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Wendy Wilson

------------------

I mostly regret entering the fray about the naming of Africa!! I would
like to suggest that list members not assume that contributors have little
experience in Africa, or less than their fellow contributors. I can also
assure you that you are reading much more into my reply than was intended.
Surely, people of African descent in the Americas are Africans and named
themselves as such as early as the eighteenth century, when they began to
lose specific continental ethnic affiliations because of slavery. And
people from the continent are also Africans, with a very particular - and
their own - local histories. On that level and in many subtle ways we are
all Africans. But if we can accept James Brown was from Georgia we should
accept and appreciate Fela Kuti was from Abeokuta - that doesn't hurt
anybody!! Distinct and lively cultural streams from the same source.

On the other hand, naming one development challenge- as I did - is not
the same thing as declaring that challenge as exclusive or even the most
important, and should not be read as such. Again, I suggest that some
colleagues reflect on the difference between excellence in debating, which
has its own merits, and exploring scholarly possibilities and new
information. We cannot talk with each other if each exchange becomes a
retort and exercise in "most black" or "best Africanist." To my mind, this
degenerates into the sort of style now popular in the Western press. We
should have some respect for each other. One would hope that on this list
we share at least a basic respect for the education and experience that
people bring to the exchanges. Let's not resort to the superficial "break
the other person down" that is so rampant in the American press.

I speak several African languages and will not go further than that, here,
to demonstrate that I have some understanding of continental as well as
diaspora (old and new) cultures. Of course it is wonderful that the AU has
made affirming statements about the African Diaspora. However, I argue
that respect is critical and I suggest that personally I would not go to a
Peulh Futa and tell her that we can call Labe, Adamawa! I would not tell
a Tiv that I want to rename their territory in Nigeria, or a Mo sotho that
they can call their land KwaZulu. You are speaking of Cheikh Anta Diop but
bul fi essayer jaay titre; bul dem cikao bopp nityi! I suggest
re-listening to Fela Kuti in Colonial Mentality and Original Sufferhead.

We should respect the fact that the majority in Africa want to participate
in forming Africa's future. Is there a future for Africa, whatever it is
called, if the millions who live in the continent have no say in their
future? That is what I am saying. There are many pressing issues on the
ground, I am sure you will agree, and the name of Africa is not the
immediate one most people who live there are facing.

Wendy Wilson Fall, PhD.
Associate Professor
Chair, Pan African Studies
Kent State University
Kent Ohio 44241
office tel 330 672 2300
cell phone 330 357 2165




Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 15:05:49 -0400
X-Posted from H-NET List for African History and Culture

From: Jonathan Reynolds
_________

REPLY 1

From: "Asar Imhotep"
No Affiliation Provided


Greetings Chambi

You asked, “Imhotep don't you think (re)buying Diop's
call far below to look back to ancient Egypt vis-a-vis the
West looking to ancient Greco-Latin is also reactionary?” I do
not think so. He wasn’t saying that just because Europe does this,
therefore we should. What Diop is talking about is the natural tendency
for human groups to look at their ancestors of historical memory for a
sense of self and direction. Europe was just an example out of many. This
practice would happen whether Europeans enslaved Africans or not.

In terms of ancient Egypt, I like to look at it as the BaMalela utilizing
their own traditions and collective history as a resource and not simply
as a reference. What we are discussing here is a practice in which the
indigenous discovers and bring forth the best of their culture(s), both
ancient and contemporary, and using that as a foundation to bring into
being models of human excellence and possibilities
to enrich and expand the lives of “African” people. Egypt is simply a
cultural anchor and a historical starting point for which to forge a new
reality. This has always been an “African” practice.


Ancient ciKam (km.t, GebTS (Egypt), tA mry) is the earliest
example of a “Pan-African” society. In ancient times the drying of the
Sahara became the major challenge for the inhabitants living there. As
water and food became scarce, large scale migrations began to happen in
all directions. A large amount of these people went into the Aegean and
the Nile Valley. What we know today as Ancient Egypt was the result of the
coming together of various African cultural groups who forged an identity
and created a civilization that lasted over 3000 years. As a result of
this process they named themselves in terms based on the shared
philosophical evaluations of the person. Such
self-definitions were rmT (Common Bantu: luntu, rumtu, lome, romi “man,
human, divine beings”), gbt (Amarigna GebTS), and km.t (ciKam, tiKam,
“land ripe, well cooked, mature, ready for human and spiritual
development, sovereigns” [see Asar Imhotep Ogun, African Fire Philosophy
and the Meaning of KMT]) to name a
few.

Africa is once again moving towards a federated union of
states (Egypt was a federated union of nomes) and once again the challenge
is how do we maintain cohesiveness once unified and what is the goal of
our union? Like any corporation, the name chosen for the entity reflects
the essence and the goals of the corporation (and the people who govern
it). The question is, “Do we seek external sources for our identity and
reasons for unification? Or do we search within ourselves for direction?”
The latter is tradition for which this discussion is based.

_________

REPLY 2
From: "Asar Imhotep"
No Affiliation Provided


Greetings Windy

I thank you for your insights. I would like to respond to
your response by asking at what point did African-Americans relinquish
their rights to engage in public discourse about the collective “African”
identity? Are we not “African” people? Is there any truth to Malcolm’s
assertion that “a kitten born in the oven don’t make them biscuits?” At
what point did we stop being “Africans?” Is the “African” in
“African-American” just there for aesthetic purposes? This is not a
suggestion from an outsider looking in, but from a living Sun (son) of the
(African) Soil whose lineage traces to peoples in Mozambique.

While we lost the individual ethnic identities as a result
of the holocaust of enslavement, it was the African-Americans, people of
the Caribbean and in South America who first embraced the term “African”
(although “given” this title by colonizers as they had no alternative
names as a result of a loss of language). This is evident in things like
the African Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Lodge of Freemasonry,
etc. African-Americans have every right to engage in this discussion as
any Amazulu, Igbo or Dinka. The “Africans” on the continent did not call
themselves as such until recently as they still had an individual ethnic
identification.

A case in point, when I first presented this paper a year
ago to another email list, a Dr. Obododimma Oha of the University of
Ibadan, Nigeria responded and was very interested in the concepts
discussed in the paper. He directed me to an article he wrote titled
“Being African Without Knowing It” (which you can read here:
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Opinion/5527418-184/shibboleth_being_african_without_knowing_it.csp).
Here he echoes the same sentiments as expressed in my paper. He discusses
how his grandmother had no consciousness of being “African” and how his
conversation with her made him question the whole African identity, and
more so its MEANING. Ultimately this is the question that has to be
answered: “What does Africa mean” (literally) and “Does this name
accurately reflect the collect gifts, history, vision and purpose of
‘African’ people?”


When you present yourself to the world, you present to the
world you as the personification of excellence. You present to the world a
high paradigm of human possibility and human achievement; or as Jordan
Ngubane would say, an example by which we present “new more satisfying
dimensions for being human.” It is this sense of EXCELLENCE for which I
suggested a name for African-Americans: BaKala. Ba (they, them, people) +
Kala (the sun, vitality, maturity, the divine, excellence, etc.) is what
our ancestors sought to present to the world and encouraged their children
to live in and grow into. This term
kala/kale/Nkala, etc., is cognate with the ancient Egyptian name for their
confederacy km.t (Tshiluba ciKam, l > m). When the Egyptians defined
themselves as the rmT n km.t, they said we are the “People of Excellence”
(Luntu-n-ciKam). This theme was kept up in another name for Egypt which is
tA mry (Dya Malela) “land of truth, justice, love, fraternity, friendship
and righteousness.” Again, the underlying theme is EXCELLENCE and it is in
this tradition, using “African” cultures as a resource, for which the
suggested was proposed. It is interesting this term Kala, in reference to
excellence, in a recent discussion with Dr. Mubabinge Bilolo (Philosopher,
Linguist and Egyptologist), he informed me that he is completing a paper
where he is suggesting a new name for African people (nkale) as well. As
we can see, this issue is important to many people.

The continent is asserting its sovereignty in various ways
(culturally, politically, economically, etc.). As African people are
seeking to unite in various arenas, developing a new identity is part of
this process. As my article and the article cited above attests, many
“Africans” are no longer satisfied by being identified by foreign
evaluations of the person. This conversation does not only include
continental Africans, but those in the Diaspora as well.

_________

REPLY 3

From: "Dapo Ladimeji"
No Affiliation Provided


Wendy
you have been watching too many Aid adverts! The liberation of Africa from
apartheid costs $billions ( and thousands of lives) ... the income of many
african states is in $billions... the pictures of the poverty of African
Americans in America that came out after the Tennessee flooding was every
bit as appalling as scenes shown from africa... money wise african
americans need to help themselves... if african americans wish to help
africa then political activity is best and forcing the US govt to assist
africa would get more resources to africa than a charity run among african
americans... the greatest assistance of african americans to the
liberation of south africa was political...the pressure on US banks to
stop lending to apartheid south africa... intellectuals are important
...ideas rule the world in the long run... the anti intellectualism of
some african american activism is self defeating... 'most of them cannot
read' ..this is both literally untrue and irrelevant as in an oral culture
education and cultural and political transmission is not primarily based
on written texts so that unlike in US it does not follow that if someone
cannot read they cannot participate in the culture and politics... in any
case the largest numbers of illiterate people are in India and China not
Africa... and India and China are not in need of assistance from african
americans..

Actually your statement "I would find it odd for
> intellectuals in Africa to get together to discuss how I, or African
> Americans, might be re-named." is far from obvious.... I think that AU
calling the the diaspora a fifth region of Africa and thereby allowing
members of the diaspora to call themselves simply African is an
important step/issue.. as is the movement to stop talking/writing about
'slaves' and rehumanise the people by calling them 'transported
Africans'...is also important..' Fanon famously wrote that he did not
care if someone could prove that Plato was in dialogue with African
philosophers of his time because the issue for Africa then was to
fight... he was simply wrong... the intellectual fight is every bit as
important as the political and military...
Finally, I have severe doubts as to the true identity of asor imhotep
..his original essay was in the form of an autodidact but his reply to me
was the stylistic manner of a US/European academic full of tropes,
elisions and circumlocutions that were absent from his original essay and
all attempts by me to find his identity have failed... there is a risk
that he is a hoax...
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