small 'a' african

Not so small anymore

Song: Black - Santan Dave

This is a term I coined when talking to my mother about why her trying to find me friends (or partners) back home in Ghana is unlikely to work. I initially said “small g ghanaian” but wanted to open up the label incase other people felt similar.

In part, I think it’s because as much she loves me and I love her, she has a very loose idea of my interests. Someone will mention liking ‘movies”, and so she’ll insist that this person will be my next best friend - turns out they only watch murder mysteries/documentaries and the like. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. I just have a really weak stomach when it comes to most things gory and morbid. But of course, that’s just a matter of taste. There’s far more to a person than that, of which I’m aware. So I’ll always humor my mother. Worst case scenario, I have one semi-awkward interaction that ends with fake platitudes. Not the end of the world. Best case scenario I make a new friend/pen pal!

Best case scenario has never happened. I take partial responsibility because I put a stop to these occasions. My reason for that being the premise of this essay.

I’m a small a african - or at least I feel like one. Even though I grew up there - all my childhood and teenage years - I still felt apart from everyone. Because of the fact they spoke the native language more fluently than I was taught - and every attempt was met with laughter, and then pulling me into a different room to get laughed at (not great for a child’s confidence). Because of the short stint when I was born abroad, and so spoke differently, I was written off as a foreigner even while ACTIVELY LIVING in the country. Because of small things like humor - pain and slapstick comedy always confused me. So did gossip. Calling it out the moral problems with it got me negative points. I loved the food - but in smaller doses. Ghanaian food is exceptionally starch heavy, and people assumed because of my gender and size that I ate a lot. So not only would I be shamed for not eating enough, but how I chose to eat. Up until I certain age I had only ever eaten things with utensils. So yes - I’m aware it’s unusual to eat fufu with a spoon. But when you have been taught to eat things that have soup with a fork, what else are you to think??

Writing this out, it becomes obvious to me that most of my feelings of exclusion stem from not being adequately transitioned from one culture to another. I was about 3 - 4 years old when we moved from the West to Ghana. For some reason I had such a firm grasp on the rules I had learned at a young age. Children are meant to be adaptable, and I certainly did, but I was not adequately being accommodated.

This is one of the biggest wedges - unwillingness to accept or even consider differences within the community. The important part being WITHIN the community. Things and people outside can change and we can say “Oh that’s just them. You know how they are”, when the ‘they’ in question is ‘known’ to be a hundred different things that can and will be contradictory. So the second you deviate from what they perceive as the norm - you’re either exceptional or eccentric (not in a good way). And if you’re exceptional in a way your parents can’t brag about or isn’t immediately bringing in money, you’ll be demoted to eccentric (or sometimes straight up disappointment).

I was called “obroni” - which means white in Twi. I’m not fluent, but I understand enough to get by and to get offended. Being dark-skinned as well, made it sting even more but it seemed as though I couldn’t help it. That made me jaded. So for the majority I of my teenage years I resolved myself to not care. If everyone around me had relegated me to a familiar looking foreigner, that’s all I planned on being.

I was othered before I even had a chance to fully develop an identity. Between then and now some growth has been made, but that initial disconnect is still very gaping.

I am proud of being Ghanaian, but also very aware of the shortcomings of the culture. I believe and pray that the future of the country is bright, but I know that the current administration (old heads) are actively hindering this progress. I know that the forward thinking youth are the future, but I don’t feel a particularly strong obligation to be a part of their ranks. I want to help. I do want to contribute - if that can be done from a comfortable distance away. From the home that I made for myself. Where I feel as though I belong. Things do have to change, but whenever there is discussion about change the same ugly faces pop up. Corruption. Reluctance to change. “Culture”. “That’s just not who we are”. I feel terrible saying that, but it’s my honest truth. It does come from a place of privilege - to be able to claim geographic distance as well as the cultural.

I would like to not consider either option - if I could go back and engineer my own childhood, I would ensure I felt embraced by both despite whatever oddities I carried. I lived there long enough to gain familiarity and some identification, but the lack of a warm reception and integration left me hollow in some parts.

I didn’t feel loved by the culture while I was there. I felt loved by certain people, but when it was a group of Ghanaians I just knew I had to go in a corner somewhere and entertain myself.

Online, I see this issue with a lot of younger generation africans - usually first or second generation - that were raised in two worlds. One that spoke about progress, acceptance and choice - and one that demanded allegiance and conformity. There is life and culture on the African continent, but it has been undeniably tainted by western colonialism. And the fact that this muddled version is what most of the older generation are enforcing as “African” is a large part of the problem. From gender roles to religion, all of it has been touched and mangled by the white man’s hands and painted black by the people to try and reclaim some semblance of sense and solidarity despite having been literally broken apart and divided by arbitrary lines by greedy European powers (called “The Scramble for Africa”. Very eloquently put).

Different tribes, dialects and practices were categorized and boxed away for their own subjugation - and somehow so many African elders forget that. They behave as though slavery is only an African American problem, ignoring that there are still PHYSICAL remnants of the fact that we were being robbed on our own land (and then they make us visit it for field trips in middle school).

They behave as though being upset at the transgressions makes no sense. They act as though it didn’t happen to them - that it’s just a problem for “those people over there”, all the while still actively suffering from the forcefully inherited social systems of democracy and capitalism.

Black is so much deeper than just African-American
Our heritage been severed, you never got to experiment
With family trees
‘Cause they teach you ‘bout famine and greed
And show you pictures of our fam’ on their knees
Tell us we used to be barbaric
We had actual queens

“Black” by Santan Dave (2019)

That’s something else that makes me feel othered. This sense of inclusion sometimes seems to come at a cost for a lack of empathy and quickness to point fingers and dismiss problems. Quickness to yell and berate someone for a simple mistake, or decide that they can’t be trusted because they don’t understand something. In that mess I learned to shrink myself and simply focus on producing results. If I take up little space and just do good in school, there will be minimal problems.

At a certain point when either you grow up, move away, but in general realize that the way you were raised is not the way things HAVE to be. Then comes the pause. The confusion. The anger. Now that I’m starting to list it out - it is its own form of grief to realize that there is a growing darkness in your homeland that was started by foreigners and is being fostered by the indigenous.

It’s upsetting, but so very ingrained full grown men and women who are supposed to be pillars of the community. It’s become a crab in a bucket scenario, where no-one can really get ahead because everyone is look to pull someone else down for their own benefit. Maybe this is oversimplifying politics, but that’s what it feels like when every election time they same corruption accusations are called and confirmed by each political party against the other. And the public forget so readily about the previous elections. It’s almost embarrassing.

And let’s not even get started on religion. Church attendance is notably higher in less economically developed countries. And I am emboldened to say that there is a BIG difference between church goers and believers - and that goes for any faith. There’s also a difference between people who simply read the text and those who choose to LIVE it.

That can be a whole different essay. But the reason I bring this up is - I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I’m very comfortable with two seemingly opposing truths being true. I’m comfortable because there are many things I do not understand, and me refusing to understand doesn’t make these truths any less so. In the Christian faith I was taught that there is no higher power by God Almighty. In fact, there are no other powers at all. Just God. Everything else is fake. But as an African child we are also taught to fear the aunties and uncles that have evil intentions, and to beware the juju men in the forest at night.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, as with most things that are immaterial. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” [Ephesians 6:12 KJV]

So there are other powers involved on this Earth - which I don’t think should be that difficult to believe given how vast the world is. But, I believe they all originated from God. Kind of like how energy gets used in different ways - electrical, potential, heat, etc. And I don’t know if I would entertain the idea of consorting with an earthly spirit, because at the end of the day God is still among us and within us. To discount all phenomena as demonic just because you don’t understand it feels foolish.

Where’s the imagination? Where’s the heart? Where’s the faith? Not that I’ll blindly believe anything, but I’ll readily be taught and listen if someone has some sort of answer. And it seems so many of my African elders would discount this endeavor as sinful curiosity. How can wanting to learn about the spiritual world that we are unequivocally a part of be sinful?

Sin has been used as a means to scapegoat behavior that doesn’t fit the post-colonial definition of ‘African’. And I use the word post very lightly.

I feel like a small a african because the questions and experiences I have and feel, I know won’t be received openly by my elders without them trying to silence me with a verse or deciding in my minds that I’m being too western. America didn’t invent curiosity, nor did it invent discovery. It shouldn’t be taboo to revisit previously held truths and evaluate them against a new reality. If it is - then that is not knowledge, or faith. It is a fragile and willful ignorance of man. The Truth cannot be so easily broken, as said by one Dr. Goodchild.

This piece started off with me trying to voice my sadness in feeling less than. Somewhere in here I found my direction. I am an African, that much is true and undeniable. A new breed. I don’t belong to the Africa that the West colonized, but the one that’s going to pull the rug from under the West and all its unfortunate descendants. We are among your ranks and beginning to outnumber you. The future lies somewhere in the middle, of that I’m sure. If we have to tear through structure and history to get to the truth that this future will be built on - we shall.

Maybe the Africa I dream of isn’t who we were, but it is who we must become if we ever want to truly be free of the scar put on our people by colonialism. It’s who we will be when we stop holding on to a fragmented identity, and let the culture breathe like it was meant to.

That’s what I want. That’s what I’ve been finding in making with people. Making community. Because no matter where I am, Ghana is with me. I literally can’t help it. Even without feeling the most included in group settings, multiple Ghanaian people made me who I am today. They are the pieces that make up the tapestry that is my soul. I want to use the art that is my experience to shift the larger perspective. Being African can mean many things. We are not and have never been a monolith, so we need to stop killing those of us that don’t fit.

Instead we should be rid off those who prey upon the weak in a system that they are a part of keeping broken. Those who don’t think twice about robbing their fellow African of their hard earned money, bodily autonomy or just their way of life. Those people deserve the gallows.

I dream of an Africa in which people’s worth or authenticity isn’t hinged upon orientation, interests, or whether or not their hair is locced up or not. These are silly discussions unbefitting of a continent that will have international influence. Behind close doors, fine. Government officials should not be having hour long debates on school girls hair. Be serious.

I dream of an Africa that doesn’t need to beg for a seat at international government tables. I dream of an Africa that truly knows that she holds about 30% of the world’s natural resources and she ACTS LIKE IT. When she talks she’s not peddling, it’s a proposal that you should feel honored she consider you worthy to receive. She does not beg, but makes requests - and if need be, she commands.

I dream of an Africa for the present and the future. The past has had it’s time. Respect was given, and will be granted where it’s due. But the land is for the living and we should treat it as such.

So, I apologize. I misspoke. I am not, and never have been, a small a african or a small ‘g’ ghanaian. When I was small, I was made to feel as though I didn’t have a voice - or worse off, that it didn’t matter. But now - I’ll be sure to be the Biggest in the room. The same shall be true of the Motherland.

I am a Ghanaian. I am an African. Next Generation. Undeniably present, and preparing for the next level.

I’d like to give thanks to DrGoodChild , alysa l’se and Peace Ayomidea for the inspiration for this piece. All of you were on my mind and heart as I was writing this. From notes to longform posts, parts of your words have found their way here and I wish to give you your flowers.

Everyone who reads this and resonates with it, please go read their works. You will be thankful you did.