REDISCOVERING THE GREAT AFRICAN IDENTITY

REDISCOVERING THE GREAT AFRICAN IDENTITY

KULENGA AFRICAN RENAISSANCE

We have all one time or another heard about lost cities that were discovered under water. Some are uncovered under the ground and the desert sands and centuries of vegetation by archeologists. From the fossilized study done on a lot of these, it was discovered that a lot of these are advanced cities. Believe me, those are not conspiracy stories. Some of them, the city's existence has been forgotten before they were rediscovered, and some of them, their memory was preserved in myth, legend, or historical records but whose location was lost or at least no longer widely recognized. Cities may become lost for a variety of reasons including natural disasters, economic or social upheaval, or war. Over time, geological activities on the earth like earth quake and land slide can completely bury the history like nothing like that ever existed. Some of them are in north Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Like Heracleion; the drowned Egyptian city and the medieval castle of Africa called symbaoe in Zimbabwe.

The basic invariant principle is that “Nothing is new under the sun”. The fact that history doesn’t have a proper record on these things doesn’t change the fact on ground. What is history if not that it is the penciled prejudice of another man. As long as it is written by man about the activities of man, it will never be objective. Its always a subjective prejudice that is dependent on who is writing and what is pushing him/her to write.

Modern history makes it look like western history is the history of the world. So there was the antiquity period, the middle ages (early, middle and late middle ages), the renaissance and reformation, then the enlightenment and revolution of the 21^st century. Its made to seem that all the events of the world is shaped around westernism and all that happened within it. That’s a fat lie. Its like thinking that God has only been speaking and relating with the Jews just because that was the one that was recorded. God has been relating with a lot of ancestries even before the Jews came into the picture. At the same time, such similar western events has been happening in so many cultures around the world. They just were not recorded. And if you care to look, you will see the evidences everywhere. Similar chronologies of philosophies, politics, architecture, literature and art and all the events of conquests, achievements and advancements are present everywhere.

Very few history were actually written down. Even the few that were written down are usually lost in wars and natural disasters. A lot of them are forensic traces using artifacts, monuments, arts, traditions (oral and symbolic) etc. Africa has a lot of all these. But western history has made it look like we don’t. African history was not lost. It was stolen. For example, if you schooled in Nigeria, you were probably taught that it was mungo park that discovered River Niger. Such absolute rubbish. Where was all the Onitsha people that was living there all those years?, where was Obi of Onitsha? That mungo park will come all the way from Europe to come and discover a river we have been fetching for years. It was arts that preserved the roman and greek culture over the centuries. And we have a lot of it in Africa too.

Let us go on a journey. If you used to be great, it doesn’t mean that you stopped being great, it might just be that you forgot who you are and you need to be reminded.

we have done it before, we can still do it again!!

KULENGA AFRICA RENAISSANCE SERIES