"It is all due to a parable that came to me as I waited in a lobby of a New York hotel, trying to figure out the meaning of the wonders I had seen in a flight I had made around Africa and all the lands where dwell black folk, in the form of a bird.
"[The Wizard of the Crow] told the story of his travels in time and space in search of the sources of black power and a rather long parable of how humans surrendered control of their own lives to a blind deity with a double barreled name of M&M, or money and market, and how Africa's independence mutated to dependence.
"Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa's souls from the continent to the four corners of the world? How could Europe lord it over a continent ten times its size? Why does needy Africa continue to let its wealth meet the needs of those outside its borders and then follow behind with hands outstretched for a loan of the very wealth it let go? How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one who knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa? I cried.
"I saw this: Around the seventeenth century, Europe impregnated some in Africa with its evil. These pregnancies gave birth to the slave driver of the slave plantation, who mutated into the colonial driver of the colonial plantation, who years later mutated into the neocolonial pilots of the postcolonial plantation. Is he now mutating into a modern driver and pilot of a global plantation? But Africa impregnated its own breed, which made our people sing. Even if you kill our heroes, we women are pregnant with hope of a new lot. Therefore, don't cry despair at those who sold the heritage; smile also with pride at the achievement of those that struggle to rescue our heritage.
"So I said to myself: Just as today is born of the womb of yesterday, today is pregnant with tomorrow."
(from Wizard of the Crow, 2006)
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