Stereotyping Africa. Surprising Answers to Surprising Questions: Surprising Answers to Surprising Questions

Communication

57 Stereotyping Africa: Surprising Answers to Surprising Questions 21. Isn’t it true that there was slavery in Africa before the coming of Europeans? Very true, there was slavery in Africa before the coming of Europeans. This, however, is a very weak excuse often used by those trying to shirk the full blame of slavery from the shoulders of Westerners who did not only perpetrate such evil but raised it to industrial proportions. Those who posit this view fail to let out the whole truth, which is that slavery before the invasion of Africa by the West was not only an African but a universal phenomenon. And the slaves being referred to here, more often than not, were persons defeated in battle and taken as captives who were then expected to serve their conquerors and in the process could gain their freedom and become full members of the ethnic group that had conquered them in battle. The point here, in any cases, is the fact than Westerners transformed slavery to what it was not before, by industrializing it. Edward Bever observes accordingly: “Slavery was common in ancient and medieval Africa, just as it was in Europe, Asia, and America. When an army took prisoners in a war, the captors had the captives at their mercy. They could kill them if they wanted; they could let them go if they felt like it (or for a ransom); or they could put them to work” (23). According to George S. Fichter, in the case of Africa, these slaves could eventually become free by work and being of good conduct; they also got their freedom if they married a member of the tribe holding them captive (3). So, although there was slavery in Africa before the coming of Westerners, the latter raised it to an unprecedented level of notoriety as they left the victims no chance of earning their freedom while treating them as beasts. Communication 22. I hear Africans use a lot of proverbs when they talk. Is that true? Very true! Within a typical traditional milieu, Africans use a lot of proverbs and other rich sayings to communicate, especially when arguing with peers, during important deliberations, or when trying to instruct the young on the ways of the land. These proverbs display 58 Emmanuel Fru Doh not only mastery of the language, but also the speaker’s authority over the topic of discourse, as proverbs confirm and neatly present or defend situations that arise within the African’s world. Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s leading novelists, has indicated the strategic nature of the use of proverbs succinctly when he points out that proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. His novels display the authenticity of this claim. In No Longer at Ease, an elder, in an effort to establish Obi Okonkwo’s strategic position as a product of the village of Mafia, declares during an emergency meeting held by the Umofia Progressive Union: “An only palm fruit does not get lost in the fire” (14). Such a proverb is loaded with meaning that one can only explain one dimension of it at a time. On this occasion, it might mean “one’s eyes are always on something that one cherishes”; and this, as earlier explained, is only a faint picture of the meanings communicated by that single proverb. Besides proverbs, there are many other figures of speech that enrich the daily linguistic patterns of African speech. My late grandfather, on the morning of the day of his death, said to my now late father, “That tree will come down today.” The richness of this expression is seen when it is understood that he was the head of the family and like the giant baobab tree, which provides shelter and protection to those sitting under it, he protected and provided for the members of his family—siblings, children, and grand children—and without that tree, his family would be exposed like a yard without the sheltering and nourishing baobab. The use of proverbs and such rich language displays the very philosophical nature of African societies. 23. How come some Africans speak English perfectly but others do not? This has to do with the country that colonized that particular African nation. If the people were colonized by the Belgians, for example, then it is only natural that instead of English the colonized would speak French, since the language of the colonizer became the administrative language of the colonized territory...