African


I don't remember meeting any particular people from any nation from Africa until I went to college-UMM. Before I begin, I want to inform you that Africa is not a "country", but a "continent". Many of my African brothers and sisters gets very uptight about this. Anyways, as I write this today (9.28.03), I can trace as far back in Middle-Junior High School when I began to learn about this continent. My teacher had us write to the well known past-current American Civil Rights leader, Jessie Jackson, on our concern of the independence of South Africa. This particular nation has changed since it was finally awarded it's independence.

At UMM, I began to distinct the uniqueness of each African nation as I began to meet an international student from various parts. As of today, I'm still learning....After college, I had the privilege to attend an African/African-American conference called Impact (my personal story) in Atlanta, Georgia. I noticed a slight difference of the African American culture there compared to the Midwest.

Western Imperialism and Africa As Seen in an Eye of Both Worlds By: Miracle Obeta Sophomore
Political Science Major
University of Minnesota-Morris
Thursday, September 29th 2005

Africa is the second largest continent on the face of the Earth with the most amount of natural resources, and houses a population of well over 900 million people. It is home to 52 diverse and culturally enriched countries with well over 752 languages. Born in Nigeria, a country located on the West Coast of Africa, I was exposed to and nurtured in the cultural richness of Africa for the first twelve years of my life. My family immigrated to the United States in 1998. Since then, I have educated myself in the history of America and critically analyzed the racial history, conflicts, and relations of this nation. Through the course of my education, I was greatly astonished by the linkage of African history with that of the Western World since 3000BC to 2004AD, and how much of what is currently occurring in the Continent correlate with events of the western world from the times of the Greeks to the colonial days.
Prior to Africa being known for its political and economic instability, Africa was home to one of the greatest ancient civilizations and kingdoms. Starting with the Egyptians, the great pharaohs of Egypt both Black and Semitic in origin, possessed economic and military power that was unmatched by no other civilization of its time for over 900 years until it was sacked by the Persian empire in the year 712BC and by Alexander the Great of the Greek empire in 525BC. Following the Egyptians was the Timbuktu civilization that took roots in Northwestern Africa and established an economic power that was equivalent to that of the Greeks. Apart from being a powerful economic and political ground, Timbuktu later became a breathing ground for Islam in Africa after it was conquered by the Persian empire. The Persians introduced Islam forcefully to the African civilization, and the teachings of Islam was slowly introduced to other great African civilizations such as Kush, Axum, The Almoravids, Kanem Bornu, The Forest Kingdoms, and the Swahili Kingdoms in later times. The Modern day Zimbabwean based ancient civilization best known as “Great Zimbabwe/The Mwenemutapa Empire was the only great African civilization that was not invaded by the teachings of Islam partly because they were too far from the Islamic influenced Northwest Africa. The Hausa Kingdom mentioned above took roots in the modern day Nigeria and Benin. Nigeria is currently a nation in which half of its population are Islamic and the other half Christian. The Hausa people in Nigeria account for most of the Islamic population.
Nonetheless, when most Americans think of Africa, they vision a continent full of political instability and economic woes. As an African who happens to be raised in a western nation (the U.S), I have noted that such visions from the American people comes as a result of the Western medias’s portrayal of the continent. This helped me explain why as a young African arriving in the U.S during the late 20th century, my first encounter with racism and prejudice did not come from a White person, but an ignorant American of my own race. The Media’s role in the portrayal of Africa is greatly influenced by the globally historic Atlantic Slave Trade that took place from 1440AD to 1870AD in which well over one hundred million Africans were enslaved and dispersed throughout the world by the Dutch, Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, Great Britain, British North America, U.S, and many other Western Nations. Following the Slave Trade came nearly two hundred years of colonialism in which all of Western Europe forcefully established colonies in the African Continent. Africa was exploited, oppressed, ethnically divided, and psychologically enslaved from the late 19th century to the late 20th when Africans began to gain independence from the Western World through rebellion in most cases. Some of those ethnic division was finally exemplified in the recent ethnic killings between the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda, Zaire, and Burundi in which the Belgiums played a big part of. Most African nations gained their independence in the year 1964. Out of all the African nations, Ethiopia was the only country that was not colonized by Western Europe. Although the Italians succeeded in separating the modern day Eritrea from the mainland Ethiopia, they never succeeded in colonizing the nation. In essence, while African Americans were being oppressed and psychologically enslaved by the White population in America, all of Africa was being exploited, oppressed, and psychologically enslaved by the rest of Western Europe.
After the end of colonialism in Africa, the Western media became a key player in helping to maintain separation of Africans living on the mainland from those enslaved in Western Europe and North America both psychologically and physically. One of the ways in which the Western Media went about doing so was to depict the African continent in the manner that it does today. To understand this concept, one must close his or her eyes and picture a commercial, movie, documentary, or scientific study exploring one’s favorite place to vacation. Now imagine if that concept is reversed, and whomever is in control of those commercials, movies, documentaries, or scientific studies does not want you to travel, vacation, feel culturally, racially, historically connected to that place, he or she will portray that place as being the worst place that one can ever be. The mainstream media only approaches regions of Africa with a crisis driven eye that gives people, specifically, African Americans in this country an unfairly biased, stereotypical, and often false visions of the African nations. This concept has and continues to be practiced by the Western media and Africans in the Western world continue to be psychologically victimized.
As much as this evilness angered me and continues to anger me, it’s more frustrating when your fellow classmates discover an article on Amazon.com that claims that some men in Africa are known to breast feed and find it to be the most solid fact ever presented and fail to challenge the legitimacy of the claim. Worst enough, you have your professor teaching the class that some men in Africa do breast feed, and in many cases that the HIV virus evolved from Chimpanzees in Africa while clearly this is not true. Africans have been living with Chimpanzees and other exotic animals for as long as Africa has been in existence, and no animal has been known to produce a viruses in human history. It does not occur to them that this theory might be part of the media’s role in its long history of degrading the African continent in the worst way possible. This is another issue that can be discussed, but if one is still convinced that Chimpanzees are the source of the virus, one should ask his or her self why is it that the first case of the virus took place in the U.S and how did it reach the African continent to later infect millions? Why is it that the U.S media never explores the origins of the virus? Why is it that the aids was first known as a gay disease in the U.S? Why is it that African Americans in the U.S have the highest rate of Hiv infections when clearly, every immigrant that wishes to enter the U.S is tested in his or her homeland and in the U.S for any possible illness? Why is it that the U.S government provides 6 Billion dollars to Africa every year to fight aids? To be friendly? Right. What other country had the capability of creating a virus of this magnitude during the 1970s? Where does the term “biological weapon” evolve from? Africa? The truth about the origins of the virus lays in America’s backyard, but as we know, “the facts will never be questioned or challenged because the U.S public is never deceived by the U.S government and media about an issue, and just because it’s published or thought in class it must be true.”

African-American Outreach


Reccomended Resources

LOCAL

  • Alpha & Omega, history of the Christian fellowship group at UMM (MRC) that met Friday (1998-2001)evenings @8pm-till when the Holy Spirit told us we are finish!
  • STATE

    Articles

  • An African Perspective on Immigration, by Bruce Corrie (a former UMM staff-MSP-I believe?) from ethnic trends
  • Ethnic Foods

  • Akili Tea, authentic (east) African

  • *referred from Freeman, operations manager, whom I met (8/13/04) a the local Byerly's by my parents's home in St. Paul

    NATION

    Education

    English

    Story Tellers

  • African Safari Story Telling, (Kansas City Young Audience)

  • *Shared at Morris Public Library around June of 2004
    Contact:
    Milton Gray
    326 NE Cedar Court
    Blue Springs, MO 64014
    816.224.8733
    mgray88643@aol.com
    "Very educational, cultural (African-wore a Ghanan garb), and entertaining for all ages (young and old are very encouraged to be involved during storytelling) as he got the audience interacting"-Sal

    History

    -Books
    African Heritage Bible, w/ African Biblical roots
    *other stores: book close outs

  • Our African Heritage Bible, from book close outs ($15only)
  • Black Heritage Bible Lessons
  • Black Quest
  • Black and Christian
  • Black Samson, modern-day Samson
  • A Chronology of African American (Black) Missions
  • Collections, archives at Wheaton College
  • Conferences

  • Impact, making an impact one life at a time (my experience in 2000)
  • Internet Focus

  • African-American Web Connection
  • Culture

  • Inside Africa, Inc., "art and culture from the heart of Africa"

  • P.O. Box 4712; St. Paul,MN 55104 U.S.A.; tel/fax 651.646.7612
    *met Gladstone K. Natala at the Minnesota State Fair's International Bazzaar (cultural booths) on Saturday, September 2nd of 2006 through his friend at the "African" booth. I was introduced to him by another African "guy", who I chatted about a UMM connection from Zambia.

    GLOBAL

    "WE are THe World (with words)"

    We are the world
    We are the children
    We are the ones who make a brighter day
    So let's start giving
    There's a choice we're making
    We're saving our own lives
    It's true we'll make a better day
    Just you and me

    Send them your heart
    So they'll know that someone cares
    And their lives will be stronger and free
    As God has shown us by turning stone to bread
    So we all must lend a helping hand
    -
    written by Michael Jackson

    Related Links:

  • In the 80's
  • Culture

    -Clothing

  • Uju Fashions, based in Canada

  • *met at myspace on Sunday, June 18th of 2007

    Food

  • African Cookbook, from Africa Guide
  • African Food Staples
  • How to have an African Dinner Party, from congocookbook
  • Food of Africa
  • Fufu-The Congo Cookbook

  • *tried this for the first time when my Ghanan housemates made this in 2001
  • plantains-congo cookbook
  • Humanitarian

  • Stand With Africa, from ELCA World Hunger Program
  • Magazines

  • Gospel International Magazine
  • Gospel Today, An African-American Christian lifestyle magazine
  • Maps

  • World Atlas
  • Media

  • African T.V. Network, a new positive perspective of this beautiful continent of close to 1 billion people

  • *I found this site through reading the paper today (Sept 30th of 2005), which is an idea that I said "it's about time". After meeting many int'l students from this continent, I've learned to agree that the western world has "negatively stereotyped" this land/people.

    Missions

  • African Inland Missions

  • Reach Africa-AIM Ministries.

    "A video showing the missions work done by African Inland Mission International. A very moving presentation.

    Movies

  • Tears of the Sun, starring Bruce Willis

  • Related Sites:
    Wikipedia
    "Lt. A.K. Waters (played by Bruce Willis) leads a team of Navy SEALs in Nigeria when its democratic government collapses and a military dictator takes over. Their mission: rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), a U.S. citizen running a mission and hospital in Nigeria. Disobeying orders, they rescue a group of missionaries and villagers and find they are being pursued by the rebel forces. Eventually, it becomes clear that one of the refugees is the sole surviving member of the presidential family, whom the rebels wish to kill. The team and the refugees are forced to make for the Cameroon border, while being pursued by an enemy that will stop at nothing to kill Waters, his team, and the refugees."
    Reviews:
    Haro-Online
    "Somewhere within Tears of the Sun is a deeper message. This movie aspired to be more than the typical action movie, but could never quite figure out what it wanted to say. So it flounders around for a while, before succumbing to the temptations of mindless gunfire and explosions. It would have been interesting if the moral dilemma posited in the beginning carried through to the end, but that is probably expecting too much."
    *I highly reccomend watching the Special Features in the DVD to hear and listen to different personal stories from different individual African nations (e.g. Sudan, Nigeria, etc..)

    Music

    Party In His Presence (party in His presence)

    "http://holywoodmusic.com Debut album from Kofi and Holywood. Praise and worship series combining contemporary, caribbean and black African gospel music. Twi or Akan is our local language. demolishing barriers, Liberia, Togo, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Lybia, Russia, Germany, London. can enjoy this new flavor. hiplife and highlife have a thin line between them, old kpalogo fused with pop music sometimes filled with Ghanian traditional drums with a lot of clapping hands, Pompo, Koby, Paapa, Ofosu, Kwame, Yeboah, megastar, Felix, Owusu. Dance Band in Ghana is also booming, this gospel sounds like African Pop gospel."

  • Holy Wood Music
  • Shanachie
  • Tinder Records, African artists

  • Ethnic Focus:

  • Algerian
  • Angolan
  • Benin, a Morris church connection
  • Botswanan
  • Cameroonan, UMM student connections
  • Egyptian, UMM student connections
  • Eritrean
  • Ethiopian, UMM student connections
  • Gambian, UMM student connection
  • Ghanan, UMM student connections
  • Ivory Coast, a UMM (05') student connection
  • Kenyan UMM student and Minnesota resident connection
  • Liberian, a UMM student I met several times and a humanitarian connection
  • Madagascar, a Morris resident's experience
  • Malawian, a UMM student connection
  • Nigerian, an temporary U.S. Soils Laboratory-Agriculture overseas worker's experience
  • Rwandan, movie link
  • Senegalese, met through the computer
  • Sierra Leone
  • Somolian, a UMM student connection
  • South African, a couple of UMM connections
  • Sudanese, a Fergus Falls student connection
  • Tanzanian, a UMM student (2005) connection
  • Tunisian
  • Ugandan, an e-mail visitor and UMM student connection
  • Zambian, a former UMM experience
  • Zimbabwe, a "junk-email" sent?

  • African Connection News Update

    PLEASE COME AND PRAY FOR AFRICA WITH AFRICAN
    CHRISTIANS IN THE TWIN CITIES AT:

    AFRICA DAY OF PRAYER 2003
    ON
    SATURDAY OCTOBER 18
    AT
    CENTENNIAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
    1524 W. COUNTY ROAD C2
    (OFF SNELLING AVE)
    ROSEVILLE, MINNESOTA

    TIME
    2:00 P.M. - 6:00 P.M.

    In the midst of many difficult challenges facing Africa, God's promises remain true: "If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sins, and heal their land".

    FOR INFORMATION CONTACT SAM OGBONNAYA, PRESIDENT OF AFRICAN CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP, TWIN CITIES AT SamOgbonnaya@aol.com

    Thank you for visiting UMMAlpha! Please feel free to e-mail me (Sal) at ummalpha@yahoo.com on any comments, suggestions (e.g. any new websites),complaints, or anytype of feedback to improve this website.


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