Thank you for this. I have a hard time these days doing my own research. I try to keep a clear line between what is fact and what is emotion and I've argued that sometimes African Americans do not behave in a very African way. Sometimes I feel that calling ourselves African is like a pauper usurping a throne. My admiration for the remittance economies of Africa, with all that they attempt to do for their families, quite nearly places these sisters and brothers of the continent into the realm of demi-gods. I wonder why is it that we spend, in example, 7 billion United States dollars on hair when our children occupy forty percent of those who are food challenged. I also wonder why does any Black American woman continue to throw this money away when it hasn't caused them to attain any other goal than having hair on her head. In my traditionalist and, patriarchal (as I've been told that I am) mind, the only reason a woman should spend that much money on something she throws away is to get a husband. Our 73 percent rate of illegitimacy exhibits that husbands are not attained with the purchase of hair from the locally overpopulated for of self-denigration: the Korean hair selling man (and woman).
One nation of people sends their children out into the world. Those children, in return, help to pay for jumpers and tuition and books and passage to other nations and the wealth is constantly circulated within the community to the greater good. The word "remittance" means more to me than an economic value. Remittance, to me, is love and faith in action. I can't believe that the first time I heard the word was in an intercession course in African politics. I took the course during the winter break (January) 2009. It wasn't any type of advanced learning experience, although I was at the end of my graduate student career the course was only a 2000 level (sophomore) offering. It wasn't the course. It was the teacher. An individual who opened my eyes, after nearly five decades of haunting this planet in darkness, to what it means to truly function as a community analogous to the whims and perception of former slave masters or colonizers. The remittance number says, proudly, "we will not be what you need to see." I thank this teacher, at every turn, for that defining moment in my intellectual development.
Thank you,
La Vonda R. Staples
On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:
Diaspora news: Nigerians abroad to remit $21bn in 2013 -World Bank--
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La Vonda R. Staples, Writer
BA Psychology 2005 and MA European History 2009
"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough."
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great; Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President.
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