The Shadow of the Sun

by Ryszard Kapuściński

I am struck by how firmly each race is grounded in the terrain in which it lives, in its climate.

Climate theory?

With their strength, grace, and endurance, the indigenous move about naturally, freely, at a tempo determined by climate and tradition, somewhat languid, unhurried, knowing one can never achieve everything in life anyway, and besides, if one did, what would be left over for others?

Yikes - focus on physical traits - hints of laziness or am i reading too much into it?

“Who knows? We believe that an opposition is necessary. The leader of the opposition in parliament receives a salary from the government. We allowed all these little opposition parties and groups to unite, so they would be stronger. Our position is that in Ghana, anyone who wants to has the right to form a political party—on the condition that it not be based on criteria of race, religion, or tribe.

How is it that during the nineteenth century there were ships on lakes deep in the interior of the continent? They were first disassembled at oceanic ports, then carried piecemeal on people’s heads and put back together again on the shores of the lakes. Cities, factories, mining equipment, electrical plants, hospitals, all were carried in sections deep into Africa. All the products of nineteenth-century technology were transported into Africa’s interior on the heads of its inhabitants.

How and why did this happen? First, a short detour into the foul realm of racial thinking. The central subject, the essence, the core of relations between Europeans and Africans during the colonial era, was the difference of race, of skin color. Everything—each exchange, connection, conflict—was translated into the language of black and white. And, of course, white was better, higher, more powerful than black. Whites were sir, master, sahib, bwana kubwa, unchallenged lords and rulers, sent by God to hold sway over the blacks. Into the African was inculcated the notion that the white man was untouchable, unconquerable, that whites constituted a homogeneous, cohesive force.

It is this very problem that existed in Uganda. As defined by its current borders, it was a young country, barely several decades old. But its territory encompassed parts of four ancient kingdoms: Ankole, Buganda, Bunyoro, and Toro. The history of their mutual animosities and conflicts was as colorful and rich as anything between the Celts and the Saxons, or the Montagues and the Capulets.

In the course of four hundred years in Luanda, the Portuguese did not dig a single well for potable water, or illuminate the streets with lanterns.

With time, the British introduced a system of forced labor: the tribal chief had to supply a given number of people to work for free. They were placed in camps. Large concentrations of these gulags indicated places where colonialism had settled for good. Before this occurred, however, other quick alternatives had to be found. One of them was to import to eastern Africa cheap labor from another British colony: India. In this way Dr. Patel’s grandfather found himself first in Kenya, and then in Uganda, where he later settled permanently.

The ideology of the slave traders was based on the belief that the black man is not human, that mankind is divided into humans and subhumans, and that with the latter one can do as one will—preferably, exploit their labor and then dispose of them. In the notes and records maintained by these traders is laid out (although in a primitive form) the entire later ideology of racism and totalitarianism, with its core thesis that the Other is the enemy; worse— subhuman.

The drinking of morning coffee is an age-old ritual here, with which—along with prayers—Muslims begin their day. The bell of the coffee seller, who each day at dawn walks up and down the streets of his district, is their traditional alarm clock. They jump up and wait in front of their houses, until the man bearing the fresh, strong, aromatic brew appears. The morning’s first cup is an occasion of greetings and salutations, of mutual assurances that the night passed happily,

for the great famine was the result not of a shortage, but of inhumane relations. There was food in the country, but when the drought came, the prices went up and the poor peasants were unable to purchase any. The government could, of course, have intervened, or allowed the rest of the world to do so, but for reasons of prestige the regime did not want to admit that there was hunger in the land, and refused aid. A million people died in Ethiopia during this time, a fact concealed first by the emperor Haile Selassie, and then by the one who took his throne and his life, Major Mengistu Haile Mariam. They were divided by their struggle for power, united in their lies.

Amin usually telephoned his subordinates, but he also used the radio. Whenever he announced changes in the government or in the ranks of the military—and he was constantly instituting changes—he would do so over the airwaves.

Interesting...1960s Twitter

I sometimes read stories about a child in America or Europe shooting at another child. A child killing one of his contemporaries, or an adult. Such news is usually accompanied by expressions of horror and outrage. In Africa, children kill children in enormous numbers, and have been doing so for years. In fact, modern wars on this continent have been, and still are, largely wars of children.

In those places where conflict has lasted decades (as in Angola or Sudan), the majority of older people were killed long ago, or perished from hunger and disease; children remain, and it is they who are doing the fighting.

Then they walked out, and returned carrying an enormous steaming clay pitcher filled with marva, a hot local beer made out of millet seeds. You drink marva through a long, hollowed-out reed called an epi. This reed now started to circulate among the guests. Each drew a few sips and passed it to his neighbor.

ecumenical diversity and tolerance. We pass an ornate mosque, whose

Estimates of the number of victims vary. Some say half a million, others one million. No one will ever know for sure. The most terrifying fact is that people who only yesterday were guilty of nothing today were murdering other completely innocent people. And so even if the number of victims was not one million, but, let us say, just one, would it not be proof enough that the devil is among us, and that in the spring of 1994 he just happened to be in Rwanda?

Most perished not on account of bombs or heavy machine guns; instead they were hacked and bludgeoned to death with the most primitive of weapons—machetes, hammers, spears, and sticks. For the leaders of the regime had more than just the ultimate goal—the final solution—in mind. On the road to the Highest Ideal, which was nothing less than the total annihilation of the enemy, it was critical that the nation be united in crime; through mass participation in the criminal act there would arise an all-unifying feeling of guilt, so that every citizen, having on his conscience another’s death, would be haunted from that moment by someone else’s inalienable right to retaliation, behind which he could glimpse the specter of his own end.

Sudan was the first country in Africa to gain independence after World War II. Prior to that it was a British colony, distinct entities artificially, bureaucratically glued together: the Arab-Muslim North and the black-Christian (and animistic) South. A long-standing antagonism and hatred existed between these two populations, because the northern Arabs for years had invaded the South, captured its inhabitants, and sold them into slavery.

There are three types of armed forces conducting this war. There is the government army—an instrument of the Khartoum elite—commanded by the president, General Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Cooperating with the army are numerous official and secret police units, Muslim brotherhoods, the private regiments of large landowners.

Someone is waking me up; I feel a light, careful touch. The face that leans over me is dark, and above it I see a white turban, so bright it glows, as if it were phosphorescent. It is still night, but there is movement all around.

What a beautiful little passage.

“The man and the camel die together,” Hamed says. “It occurs when the man can no longer find milk—the camel’s udders are empty, dry and cracked. Usually, the nomad and the beast still have enough strength to drag themselves to a bit of shade. They are found later lying lifeless in that shade—or where it had seemed to the man that there was shade.”

Nature is decreed by God, and is therefore perfect. Droughts, heat waves, empty wells, and death on the road also partake of that perfection. Without them, man would be unable later to appreciate the true delight of rain, the heavenly taste of water, and the life-giving sweetness of milk.

I went to the university in Addis Ababa. It is this country’s only institution of higher learning. I visited the university bookstore, which is this country’s only bookstore. Empty shelves. No books, no periodicals—nothing. It is this way in most African countries. Once, I remember, there was a good bookshop in Kampala, another (three, even) in Dar es Salaam. Now—everywhere, nothing.

to their own fate. How would they conduct themselves? What would they do? In contrast to their

From their experience in the American South, the Americo-Liberians knew only one type of relationship: master-slave. Their first move upon arrival in this new land, therefore, was to recreate precisely that social structure, only now they, the slaves of yesterday, are the masters, and it is the indigenous communities whom they set out to conquer and rule. Liberia is the voluntary continuation of a slave society by slaves who did not wish to abolish an unjust order, but wanted to preserve it, develop it, and exploit it for their own benefit. Clearly, an enslaved mind, tainted by the experience of slavery, a mind born into slavery, fettered in infancy, cannot conceive or conjure a world in which all would be free.

?

The increasingly important question in the world is not how to feed all the people—there is plenty of food, and preventing hunger is often only a matter of adequate organization and transport—but what to do with them. What should be done with these countless millions? With their unutilized energy? With the hidden powers they surely possess? What is their place in the family of mankind? That of fully vested members? Wronged brothers? Irritating intruders?

Many misunderstandings arise because one side does not understand that things of a very different order can be exchanged; for example, we can exchange something of symbolic value for something of material value, and vice versa. If an African approaches the Scots, he showers various gifts on them: he bestows upon them his presence and attention, imparts information (warning them about thieves, for example), ensures their safety, etc. It goes without saying that this generous man now awaits reciprocity, recompense, the satisfaction of his expectations. It is to his astonishment that he observes the Scots make sour faces; more, that they turn on their heels and walk away!

Africa, except for the Muslim north, did not know writing, and history here is an oral tradition, legends passed from mouth to mouth, a communal myth created invariably at the base of the mango tree in the evening’s profound darkness, in which only the trembling voices of old men resound, because the women and children are silent, raptly listening. That is why the evening hour is so important: it is the time when the community contemplates what it is and whence it came, becomes conscious of its distinctness and otherness, defines its identity. It is the hour for conversing with the ancestors, who have departed yet are nevertheless present, who lead us on through life, and protect us from evil. In

Africa is a thousand situations, varied, distinct, even contradictory. Someone will say, “There is war there,” and he will be right. Someone else, “It is peaceful there,” and he too will be correct. Because everything depends on where and when.

During precolonial times, and hence not so long ago, more than ten thousand little states, kingdoms, ethnic unions, and federations existed in Africa. Roland Oliver, a historian at the University of London, draws attention to a general paradox in his book, The African Experience (1991): it has become common parlance to say that European colonialists partitioned Africa. Partitioned? Oliver marvels. Colonialism was a brutal unification, brought about by fire and sword! Ten thousand entities were reduced to fifty.

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Poland’s most celebrated foreign correspondent, was born in 1932. After graduating with a degree in history from Warsaw University, he was sent to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to report for the Polish news, beginning a lifelong fascination with the Third World. During his four decades reporting on Asia, Latin America, and Africa, he witnessed twenty-seven coups and revolutions and was sentenced to death four times.