Grand Theft Statue

Look at what Senegal have got themselves! It’s beautiful innit?! Standing at 160feet it’s higher than the Statue of Liberty, designed by a Senegalese architect. The Monument of African Renaissance. Cool name too! Africanness, Strength, Beauty…At a cost of $27MILLION! That’s about £14 MILLION. In SENEGAL! –A country where half the population lives below the poverty line.

I want to be annoyed for the Senegalese but I can’t because (get offended if you’re the type that likes that getting offended or tell me it’s none of my business. I AM a West African but one who has never been Senegal. I DO plan to go to Senegal someday –but only because I heard the women there are beautiful and speak French) Let’s be honest there’s always going to be poor people and politicians will always do what they want with our money. What better way for a politician to spend money you didn’t want to give them than this? The tourism it will attract might make your children and your children’s children less poor later?



Nevertheless, some women are upset because it looks like the woman is being pulled along so it’s sexist, the Muslims are annoyed because it's facing Mecca and the bared flesh, the Christians are also upset because of the bared flesh but for a bonus upsetting, the President (who also feels he deserves 35% of tourist revenue it brings in as "intellectual rights.") compared the brother in the statue to Jesus!

So in short the Senegalese are not happy with their new statue. This is by no means an exhortation to anyone that finds themselves near Africa’s western-most point to steal it. No, a plan to take it with a combination of JCB earthmoving machines or hydraulics combined with ropes and pulleys to apply necessary and safe pressure to the statue’s loadbearing points in a twelve hour operation that could be executed during the hours of night…is not at all what I’m saying…at all. I wouldn’t give my email hackdonga@live.co.uk to any of you to contact me regards any projected escape routes (Route 1: Overland Guinea-Bissau to Ivory Coast then Ghana, Route 2: Overland again this time through Mali and Burkina Faso then south to Ghana, Route 3: By sea over the Atlantic ocean with a possible stop at Cape Verde for refreshments then south-east for Ghana)

I have very positive hopes for Africa. I envision this statue one day being lauded as the first of many landmarks in West Africa that isn't a slavery castle or mosque erected by Christian and/or Muslim invaders. After all, all the biggest landmarks always receive criticism at first e.g. The Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Millennium Dome, the Pyramids (I don’t know about the pyramids for a fact but at the very least the builders who were buried alive in them had to have objected)

Will Black people ever be on time?

WILL we ever be on time?

YES –by Gbontwi Anyetei
But of course! Anything white people can do Black people can do better! Black People's Time, Coloured People's Time, G.M.T (Ghana Maybe Time)African Time...These are myths! Conspiracies even! Maybe. Some Black people already ARE on time, right? I’ve seen it. So have you, right?
In fact, it is because somebody arrived on time that you can tell that the people coming in just now are late. INDEED it is because that they know others will be on time and envy them that many latecomers are so. They hope people will watch them and ask enviously "OH…I wish my clocks were broken so". "I wish our car was limited to the slow cruising speed that delivered you here hours after my sadly efficient car got me here with plenty of parking spaces to choose from".

NO –by Gbontwi Anyetei
I think not. The timely individuals my learned friend above talks of are just that. Individuals! Might makes right and the might of the latecomers shall always be mightier! Without them ‘the party’ really can’t get started properly. It is because of the OTHER late people that those who might have been on time will ensure they're also late TOO! It is the latecomers that the early ones keep looking to the door for. The women won’t settle for invitations from those on time because there might be better choices coming along especially if those men are late because they’re making money. Vice versaly, the men won’t settle for the on-time women because the women still on their way might be late because their bums are bigger and they have experienced problems with transportation as a result.

I was born in Africa (West Africa where the BLACK-Black people are and not in the North where the confused Africans are) in 1982 to Black parents and surrounded by Black people. Four years later I moved to Hackney, East London. More Black people. None of the people I know in life are ever on time for everything. My grandmother is late for everything except church, my father will be late for everything except serious business opportunities, and my mum is just late for everything.

All my friends are interesting or cool and fun to be around. None of my friends are ever on time. All the people I have met in life that are regularly on time…haven’t been Black. Neither are they interesting, cool or fun to be around. So is that what it is? Does being interesting, cool and fun to be around mean you literally cannot be on time?! I think it might.

The English (When I say English I mean one of the countries white people from) are an on time. While they controlled most of Africa, Africans took on most of their habits and customs: Christianity, monogamy, depression. Even now, hospitality, tribes, loyalty are not what they were in Africa or amongst the diaspora. But ‘lateness’ remains with us! It is the last bastion of Africanness.

So, we're late. We can't change it even if we wanted to -which we don't. Many a comedian would be without material if Black people started arriving to things on time. This blog you're reading wouldn't exist if Black people arrived to things on time.
Let us then embrace it. When Ancient Rome realised they couldn't beat Christianity they embraced it. They took it over and made it theirs and almost completely unrecognisable from what Jesus left behind. Let us do the same. Let us be late in new and fascninating and suprising ways! We can have reasons that are as inventive as they are unreasonable or we can offer no excuse! To even apologise for being late would be to suggest you ever intended to be on time. To apologise would be an insult to the intelligence of the receiver. To offer an 'explanation' would be a waste of a perfectly good lie you can use for something else later (Get it? 'Later?').
I was once kept waiting by a date who apologised for being 3 1/2 hours late. I pointed out she was only 2 1/2 hours late. (A daylight saving time snaffu). She was actually dissapointed with herself. This is the kind of dedication to the cause I exhort all others to. Let us be SO unpredictable in how late we will be that it would take a book-long mathematical equation to equate our time of arrival. Just like that, every so often we'll accidentally get to business meetings (that we weren't expected to until the next day) not all as late as all that. At that point we can split the monies between us and leave before the white people arrive!

The sun shines differently in Africa so the clocks to which we move will always be out of sync!