Africa 2010

The Africa those of us in the Diaspora romanticize, daydream over and hope to return to some day, doesn't exist. Africa is just as technological savvy as those in Silicon Valley, perhaps more than the residents in the flatland schools in East Oakland. Most people have cell phones connected to the net. When I mentioned email addresses most people had one, unlike some responses I get in the US from those resistant to technology.

Even in those villages without running water, trips to the tap a regular part of one's daily routine, had email. In Djawara Village they use solar and have computers with iffy reception, the same with phone reception, but the point here is they are connected.

Viola Vaughn, director and founder of 10,000 Girls says there are no underprovided girls in her program; the same can be said of Africa. There are no underprivileged Africans, poor Africans or Africans who need a handout. No what I found here are people who straddle both the past and the present quite well and are doing more with less than I have seen to date.

Can you imagine trying to deliver placenta with candlelight, one's iffy generators either gone or on their last leg. Kids are seated on rocks in Qur'an school because there are not enough chairs. Smiles light their faces...each morning Allah's word wakes one from pleasant dreams.

Chickens roam freely and when two young men verbose words turn into a potential fight, my companions move to separate the men, as the elder --in this case, Ousmane Ndoye, tells the boys to let it go. I only saw a parent strike a child once and when she did, at a public event, Mouhammedou told her that wasn't necessary and an elder woman seated elsewhere said something too. The woman was ashamed, Pape said and she didn't strike her kids again.

On the bus, people help each other with the kids, lift them on and off the bus. Distract them if they are irritable.

Third World...hum, I think First World is a concept the western nations are not living up to on a human level. The Africa of our dreams is there, it's in our DNA. It's in our genetic retention: the walk, the gestures, the rituals we can no longer explain, the language, no one speaks over here anymore.

Africans in the Diaspora have a lot to share with Africa, and vice versa. Neither of us was static over the past 500 years and together as New Africans we can certainly move both our destinies closer together and further along.

The hands are not out; they are clasped in partnership.