The Predicament of Africans In Diaspora; A Conflict of Cultures

Being an open paper by Oliver Mbamara, Esq., 2003

The typical African individual living in any western nation makes an effort to balance his culture with what the foreign society or environment demands. It is a continuous battle trying to adapt to the foreign culture and society while at the same time striving to hold on to the traditional African within the individual.

While in the western society, if the typical African insists on being an African to the core, the western public will misconceive him, but if he wholly imbibes the foreign culture, he would likely lose the core elements that make him a traditional African. And if in that condition, he goes/comes home to Africa, he would be seen by the typical traditional Africans at home (and there are millions of them) as a disgrace to the motherland and culture he was supposed to represent. He would be regarded as a sell-out. He would be viewed as one without consideration or respect for his roots. He would be treated as one who chose to snub his culture out of egotism and pomposity.

To avoid being continuously tongue-lashed and insulted, the returning African would try to hide the influence of the foreign accent on his speech.  Usually he fails at it because sooner or later, the foreign accent slips through. In the end, he only subjects himself to ridicule and scorn. He becomes the worst of two worlds – neither being able to properly speak and exhibit his original language and traditional culture, nor successfully imbibing the western accent and culture. A sort of dilemma hardly understood by those who have never been faced by the reality of this dual situation on a first hand experience. 

This predicament is further compounded by the fact that the individual thus becomes a master of neither his original African traditional culture, nor the previously strange western culture. It is worse when he now has a family, perhaps an interracial one. How complex it is, probably becomes manifested in the characteristics of the children raised with such background.

Yet, many of us will neither relent nor crucify ourselves. Rather than waste in self-pity, and self condemnation, some of us have found some solace in simply balancing the two cultures and giving the situation the best shot we can give to each of these conflicting worlds, ONE AT A TIME.

REFLECTION:

Be that as it may, it is perhaps pertinent to note that some individuals see beyond the demands of society, whether it is the African society or any other society for that matter. In the hustle and bustle of it all, the individual has an opportunity to learn and to develop himself as Soul. Every other thing would have been vain. The consolation would lie in the fact that at the end of one’s sojourn whether at home or abroad, there would be some everlasting trophy to proudly show for it when the individual comes to the end of the race and to the end of his calling on earth. Ironically, the knowledge that there is an objective to improve as Soul, would supply the individual with the strength to continue striving in the face of all these challenges. This is only my understanding, and I am still learning.

The Predicament of the Stranger

And then somehow the stranger

Finds himself in a foreign land,

Beset with sudden challenges

Of life and living all too strange.

And then he reaches deep in him,

For the strength of his own culture,

But finds himself in a stranger’s maze,

Brought by a culture all too strange.

And what was once there in his life,

The root and core that made him strong,

Becomes worthless in the eyes of hosts,

And his predicament would then begin.

To salvage his pride once owned before,

He borrows the foreigner’s twisted tongue,

While keeping down his own parlance,

But in the end, he had lost himself.

And no one would really know indeed,

What plight it was that held him down,

Trapped in the puzzling pit of dilemma,

Except the few caught in the same trap.

He had failed in his compelled bid,

To be the man that pleased his hosts,

And he had failed to be the man,

That his kin have known before.

The Jack of two conflicting worlds,

And proven master of neither one,

But what shall be gained by self-pity?

Or harsh judgments that kill the will?

A man does live but a life at a time,

And so his ways may not please all,

But solace lies in the balance of things,

While living these worlds, one at a time.

Oliver Mbamara, Esq. Copyright 2002

Oliver Mbamara is an Administrative Law Judge for the State of New York.