Adventures of the ScapeGoat Episode 1: Retribution

PHD.

THE ADVENTURE

READY OR NOT, AFRICA HERE WE COME!

As we begin to descend, I hear a voice over the intercom system from the Captain (in French), while I didn’t quite understand him, I heard the DING, DING, the fasten seat belt melody and I saw the flight attendants take their seats, and suddenly it got extremely quiet.

I then realized we were about land so I looked out of the window and there it was: Leopold Sedar Senghor Airport in the capital city of Dakar in the country of Senegal. However, I was puzzled as I looked around and noticed that they were all praying and bracing themselves in their seats. Unsure of what else the pilot could have said earlier in French I screamed aloud in English, We made it!, and everyone stopped praying and raised their heads and looked at me with the evil eye; [at least, that’s how they appeared to look at me]. I think to myself, Uuh oh, I must have said something wrong. Anyway, I’ve heard about that evil eye here in Africa, and I am on the look out to avoid any and all possibilities of getting any whammies put on me.

Thank you, Jesus! I shout as I continue to counter whatever spirit they were trying to put on me with their funny looks. Shhh! I hear from several irritated passengers, but I don’t look up this time. Just in case some of these brother Africans on board have that voodoo power, I quietly and confidently use words to counteract their intentions: Spirit! Spirit! Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me … break me, melt me, mold me, fill me, SPIRIT! They were praying, so I pray quietly out loud too. Good! I am sure that I scared away anything bad.

The song Spirit of the Living God was still fresh in my mind. The choir sang that in my send-off last night, just hours before I boarded my night flight. I hadn’t been to the church in years, but my mother and her infinite wisdom thought I should go to the church revival before I took this trip and repent for my sins. I am glad I complied as it was an enlightening experience to see all of those people filled with the spirit. Man, so many people got happy and started shoutin’, some fallin’ out, just after Rev. Turn-er preached. Who would know that I’d need the words from a song they sang to ease my mind from feelings about being whammied with the evil eye these people kept throwing my way?

As I start giving more thanks (just in case) for my continued protection, I am suddenly distracted. DING DING! I look up and see the light and realize it is the unfasten- your-seatbelt sign and everybody started clapping. WE HAD LANDED SAFELY.

The majority of the people immediately jumped up and began collecting their belongings and started toward the exit door. I, however, was a bit overwhelmed and sat calmly in my seat for a while as I waited for the aisle to clear and tried to listen to the distinctive sounds of some of the different world languages being spoken around me. I listened, not knowing a word, but figured that I was hearing a mix of French, the native Wolof, Portuguese and even some Arabic, as well as some of the local languages I had heard of.

Remaining calm, I tried to tune in to see if I could make any real sense of anything, and I heard this one gentleman speaking a mixture of dialects which included some English and tapped his wrist to grab his attention as he was passing my seat.

I asked him why everybody was praying and then clapping when the plane landed. The gentleman replied, Nous etions entrain de prier par ce que le nom du pilote est Ulanda Ulucky. Man, his reply sounded as if it was in French. I mistakenly presumed he could not only speak English but understood it as well and I was so disappointed when he did not respond in English. The man turned and continued to walk toward the plane exit. After taking two steps, he looked back at me with a fixed glare and after a short laugh says Bienvenue en Afrique. Oh shoot! There goes that damn evil eye thing again. And being blue new, has this man just cursed me before I can even get off the plane? He thinks I did not hear him telling me to turn blue or something. I really have to say some more prayers, I think, as I start to reach for my carry-on and pull myself up from my seat.

As I stood and walked down the aisle and got ready to exit the plane, the first thing that captured my senses was the smell. Jeez! Does the wind smell like incense in Africa? I later learned that burning incense daily is like a culture within itself. Well, not sure what else I smelled, but the land smelled like everything was alive, and all of my five senses were dazzled at once: sight, hearing, taste, and especially my spirit and soul somehow felt empowered. I felt an eerie type of thrill throughout my body that I could not explain, compounded with this overwhelming feeling of Déjà vu. From the moment the plane made contact with the soil and I with the African people on the continent, I knew my life and thinking would never be the same, and the total impact of my sensual experiences would far exceed my expectations of Africa. I was certain about that.

Having exited the plane, I entered the airport and found it full of information service representatives, duty free shops, shuttle buses and taxis – the works.

Wow! My first trip to Africa and what a shock, nothing like the Discovery Channel depicted! That anxiety attack I had on the plane before landing was for nothing. My eyes just rejoiced seeing the surprisingly welcoming faces of the airport personnel after experiencing the evil eye on the plane, especially when I said Jesus. But now everyone was smiling at me and the many other tourists as we deplaned and headed for the immigration station. I must admit, even before we landed I was having a panic attack and my mind was starting to race.

One of the in-flight personnel who realized I was looking a bit too nervous came near to me and said Monsieur, welcome to Senegal, the land of hospitality. She displayed a wide grin and motioned to shake my right hand as if to comfort me. I reached for her hand in turn. Merci, thank you. In truth, I only remembered merci because it sounded like Mercy. Oh Lord, I was thinking, please have mercy on me, I know that my fate and destiny are in your hands. I reflected at this moment on the fact that I have not always lived life the right way, but I comforted myself, thinking at least I am seeking out truth.

Man, I sure hoped some of these white tourists were truth-seekers and repenting folks too, quickly looking at a few of them disembarking from the plane. I wondered did any of them feel any remorse for the actions Europeans took against African people. With this thought, my mind replayed that old commercial loudly, You cannot fool Mother Nature! And then BANG – a lightning rod strikes everyone down. OK, I have got to face it, some folks might never change, but it is good to have hope that people change for the better, because the truth of the matter, I do not want to be involved in any big paybacks concerning them or anyone else. I was curious as to why I was having such reflective thought, especially after all of those funny looks on the plane. I started to worry a bit. In fact, this strange sense of awareness since my arrival was just plain scary and then suddenly, the word Karma popped into my mind.

Mercy! Mercy! I pray as I exit, careful not to walk too closely to anyone, remembering that I was pretty close to the place where Kunta Kinte was captured. I think I’d better be careful just in case Karma decides to answer Kunta Kinte’s distress call. I am sure his calls were recorded in the ether when he cried and kicked as he was captured at gunpoint and his hands and feet shackled. I expect he was dragged through the hot sands and locked in a dungeon on the Island they call Goree until a ship arrived to steal him away. I am also very sure he rebelled all the way to that dungeon where he was horrifically and unbearably shackled on a ship, packed like merchandise, left lying in his feces, others dying at his side, and suffering on a three-month journey by ship from Africa to America. I know his cries of despair had to have been heard. Didn’t someone hear him as he mourned and cried as tears dropped down and stung the open wounds in his neck, as the brass cuff on his neck; and ankles scratched him with every move. Did no one hear his moans and groans? I’m sure they did!

Once Kunta arrived, he was stripped naked, onlookers staring and pulled at his body, even sticking their fingers in his mouth. He was taken to an unknown plantation, where in the ever-so-cold dead of night, he secretly cried and prayed to go back to his own home in Africa. In this new home he was broken and broken-in and his mind as that of a whipped horse and his culture and beliefs beaten right out of him daily until he could not fight back, his back left scarred with whelps. Though he was a man in every respect, his mind was broken like that of a wild and whipped horse. Kunta suffered and was beaten until he submitted and transformed into a slave. I thought, what if the sound of mourning travels to someplace light years away and no one knows when it reaches its destination, or when it will get its justice? What if there is karmic destiny and justice?

Yes, this attendant had no clue as to the visions that were circling around in my head. I was paranoid alright. These strange karmic thoughts, the spirit, and the evil eye all haunted my mind as I walked nervously, looking from side to side when I deplaned, as I suddenly realized I was walking next to French tourists. And they colonialized Senegal, right? Let me just keep moving right along …

Somehow I realized that I, just like countless other African Americans had always associated Africa with hot weather, bare-breasted women, lions, tigers and hyenas, and so I was SURPRISED to see any modern-era development. I am happy to say, we stood in line with the immigration policemen ready to receive us, many with smiles and open hands. We handed over our passports, they were swiftly stamped and we were nudged on to the door from immigration that empties into the baggage hall. As soon as I walked through, I was rushed by several boys asking if I need help with my luggage. No, I tried to say as they hustled my bags away, and several boys maneuvered to push my cart all at the same time. Instinctively, I quickly took control of my cart because I initially thought that someone might be trying to steal some of my bags; but later, after easing my suspicions a bit, I realized that this was just an honest hustle for the boys, and I relaxed and felt pretty confident.

I started to blame movies like Tarzan, and many of the others that have conditioned me to think that Africa was just an untamed jungle. These movies had been very successful in leaving at least four imprinted pictures of Africa in my mind: Black half- naked people, wild animals, starving Ethiopians, and VOODOO. Now I started to feel a little bad about thinking that every African was giving me the evil eye and I knew I’d have to go easy on them and myself too. Something or some things just keep us mistrusting AND MISTREATING each other.

I must admit, back to the minute I walked off that plane, I had expected I was going to have to walk miles with my luggage on top of crazy looking hyenas, and praying no one gives me that damn evil eye on top of it all. And I faced the daunting reality that as educated as I thought I was – a black man with American college degrees, living in the 21st century – that TV and the media had already planted a picture of Africa inside of me and countless millions that was not easy to break. Traveling and/or having a real experience in Africa would be the only way to find my truth.

It’s like when you are trying to convince yourself of something, you make up an excuse. What excuse did I make up, because I knew I had to find my truth in Africa? The reason for this business journey was in fact personal. I wanted to investigate and either dismantle some of these myths if they were not truth, and I wanted to realize some truths of this whole African piece of life – life before slavery, during slavery, our journey to America, civil rights, Colonialism, Apartheid – and study to see how I can better myself and our people. I guess I really wanted to see the pain of this experience, and see if I could understand the effects of slavery on an unwary people. Maybe understanding our collective experience will somehow rescue us.

I had been so emotionally impacted before getting off the plane that I could not fathom what else this journey had in store for me. On top of it all, I felt totally possessed with some thoughts, not really feeling like they were exactly my own, and these constant daydreams that seemed like storybooks in my mind, took place in only seconds. I was trying to take this journey with a very business, sound reasoning approach, because I wanted to see the facts about Africa and our human experience here; but on the other hand, since already being cursed [black], I knew there was more to this journey beyond just natural reasoning. I had become more convinced since the revival last evening at church in Chicago that there is some mystery to history that I would have to consider, taking more seriously the message delivered about the Spirit as being a sign. But this thought of mystery rather than fact is still a disturbing one, I think, as my flighty mind returns when the policeman gestures for my passport, and I start to feel a bit overwhelmed with these boys grabbing my bags. I know they are focusing only on their daily-bread needs and not really concerned with my feelings, of course.

I am sure many African Americans must feel like I feel, but I still question myself, wondering does anyone know how I feel? I am completely overcome with emotions as my two feet made first contact with the African soil. Even from the inside of the airport, I felt RECONNECTED! When I took my first steps back onto African soil, I sound out, Oh yeah! With my hands raised up in the air, I was visibly excited! But deeper inside of me I knew this HOORAY comes with mixed emotions. I knew that not very many Africans that were taken from these African shores would ever set foot back here again. I counted myself special. I felt like I truly had escaped. My, oh my! I just feel as naturally super-special as a black man to step back on the shores of Africa again. Since that new passport cancellation law went into effect whereby if one is delinquent on child support payments it invalidates the passport and disallows travel until the child support debt is paid in full, these days only a chosen few black brothers could make this journey even if they wanted to. I started to feel both blessed and chosen for this experience.

With a sigh of relief, I looked at the glaring sun through the airport window and felt its intense heat shining through. I was just plain overcome with so many emotions about this journey back home that I was absorbed with this every experience. As I near the front of the line, where immigration makes every single person open all of their bags, while waiting my turn, I get this uncanny feeling and thought again about Kunta Kinte.

I suddenly think of myself as a token Negro, and I question Kunta on this aspect in my vision: Have you lost your total identity, Kunta? Is the image you have of God everything but Black? Have you accepted an existence whereby you’ve totally blotted out any memory of your true identity? Have you fallen to such a level where you are even active in blotting out truth, like the Black faces on the wall in Egypt being painted over to deny African greatness or the broken wide nose of the Sphinx being blasted off, to deny that Black existence was connected to anything great? Is the record of Black greatness being completely erased from the human experience? Or, even worse, did the condition of slavery and your treatment by the slave masters not only cause you to separate from your blackness, but had it also caused you to loathe yourself and your kind? My mind suddenly recapped a vivid image concerning Kunta Kinte’s enslavement and the resulting psychosis and broken identity, and even more questions concerning the condition of slavery came to mind.

Poor Kunta was captured, suffering and beaten beyond his human capacity, to make him change into something else other than that which he was born to be. But how could Kunta and all black slaves systematically lose their ID – their language, culture, land and identity? How could enslaved Africans worldwide become so disconnected from being held in high esteem and proud of their blackness to just plain hating and demoralizing themselves? It’s as if some sort of systematic malignment school was in place that planted the seeds of fear, envy, and mistrust betwixt and between blacks, even to the point that many stopped wanting freedom. As though a program was written and implemented genetically that kept African people perpetually suffering, hating, and disrespecting themselves and kind, leaving them with only enough compassion to trust in the good ole Massa. Only the Master could supply their basic needs. Kunta and black slaves had become totally dependent on white people to supply their food, shelter and clothing. This system must have been a perpetual plan, because poor Black people, without the system of food