A long, long time ago....

Again it's been a while. Sometimes I get so absorbed with my life, I forget this little unknown place that is mine. Few people know it, less people probably read it, but you know what, o one of the three people who do, I really don't give a fuck.

I've never been much of a journal writer. It always seemed useless to me, not because my days were always monotonous and nothing happened, not even a hangnail, but because I remember most stuff. Makes it impossible for pain to ever go away, really, but it is what it is and no matter how much I could piss and moan about it, it won't change a thing. I could drink loads of booze, sure, but that particular delusion of levity has lost its appeal last millennium.

Of late I've been in touch with people from Nigeria and Kenya, writers and people who want to. It's driven home a point that had been nagging me for a long while.

We're arrogant, and ignorant. By we I mean everyone whose nations are robbing Africa blind. Not that a CEO of a multinational company will give a shit about what I have to say. The bastard will probably just go on wanking with his new severance package.

How much do we know of Africa? Me, personally? Not so much. Not that I know that much about Russia or Asia. But Africa, the cradle of homo sapiens, we should know more. Colonies, sure, savannas, the crap you learn on nature shows. But people, countries? This continent has always been treated as something different, somewhere you get diamonds from, or the backdrop of Quartermain or Tarzan stories. And slavery, of course.

What's depressing is that countries like Britain, Belgium, France, owe a lot of their wealth to colonies, and instead of doing something for those countries, you know, like actually lending a helping hand to get shit properly started, they support the same corrupt assholes that pollute our governments. Greed rules, and everyone who stands in the way gets pushed out of the same or run over.

Do European countries owe the so-called third world nations? Yes. Does the USA owe the former slaves and victims of Jim Crow? Yes. The problem is that most countries are run by corrupt bastards who rather give the CEOs a hand-job than to do what is right.

What's just as bad is the loss of cultural identity. Be it in the form of language or history. Oral traditions faded with the jesusification, and since government was run by foreigners, that language was adopted.

Language is a change that happened, close to impossible to really go back now, I think. That realization doesn't make it better, it is what it is. But as the Celtic civilization was basically wiped out at Alesia and Anglesey so were the histories of Africa obliterated. A continent's worth of stories, fables, tales, mythology gone.

I'll never write stories set in Africa or anything resembling African cultures alone, I couldn't. These stories have to be told by African writers, for they at least do know the hearts of their people, and it should be their voices to tell these tales.

The problem with that isn't so much the willingness. Believe me there are a lot of people out there who think they have something to say, like there are here in whitemansland, and like here most of them won't ever be able to, their grandiose ideas actually amounting to nothing. The problem is language. Many speak English, or what passes as English in their country, and while such a dialect is perfectly all right for their every day conversations, it is not all right for writing.

Yes, they write for themselves. But the voices need to be heard, need to be read! And in order to be heard and read the writing must not be what us ignorant whites "expect" from Africans. It must be better than the average Englishman's or American's, it has to shine! Yes, the stories are from authors written for them and their people, but that is not enough! That can never be enough! In this world where we grow closer together every day, being misunderstood or dismissed because of language is tragic.

African writers, whether you write in English or French, or whatever else language, please I beg you, learn the proper usage, show us ignorant whites that you are great!