USA Africa Dialogue Series - “DILEMMA OF A GHOST”

The title of Ama Ata Aidoo's famous play engulfs the lives of people who leave the comfort of their homes to labor in the vineyards of others in an "Elsewhere Community". 

In my village in Ghana, in the years past, no sojourner was allowed a voice in the affairs of the community, in the chief's palace. Sojourners from Northern Ghana who came from their homes in the North to work as laborers on our cocoa farms in the East lived in our village like "ghosts" at our pleasure. We smiled to them in public and spoke differently about them in private. We could dismiss their opinions by asking them to get back to the North. If they insisted on a right to speak, even on the most urgent moral issues of the time, we could threaten to take the pieces of land on which they farmed from them. In short, we exploited their migrant status and frightened them into silence. They lived like ghosts at the mercy of my elders who built the village. The dilemmas of the northern migrant were bottled in a ghost-like frame.

The African intellectual-immigrant in an American academy has a dilemma similar to the northerners  in my village. That immigrant must weigh his positions on volatile politics and weighty moral dilemmas carefully.  If that immigrant is an Akan, there are proverbs that can serve as antidotes to that dilemma of a ghost. The Akans have a proverb for everything, and proverbs about weighty moral issues, volatile matters, terrorism,   vengeance, and proportion are couched in indecent language. 

The Akans say that "when a person strips naked in front of you and farts in your face (an indignity in the first place), be careful in your response because when you are consumed by rage to return the fart, in a disproportionate fashion, and urged by many to do so, you might end up defecating in that person's face, and the initial sympathy you earned from suffering an indignity might evaporate and you could earn the scorn of the community for committing the intolerable".

Just a thought!

Edward Kissi

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 18, 2023, at 3:44 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Dear sir:

Hegemonic power is framed in moral terms: power is moral; challenges to power is immoral. Whatever power does is regarded as moral. Power then defines challenges to it in amoral terms as in terrorism. Critics of power are then labeled: anti US/anti-order, anarchists. And what you wrote below, to power, is treated as out of order. And to defenders of power, they ask: "why did you leave your shit-hole country to teach us what to do?' Hegemonic power, historically, has always been dangerous.

TF

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Sabella <sabidde@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 8:21 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - What was I saying?

1.    According to Emmanuel Macron, we should be afraid of "Islamist Terrorism," but should have no fear of apartheid and or settler-colonial states.

2.    They said we should be afraid of immigrants, but they have nothing negative to say about neo-imperialists and their predatory tendencies.

3.    Recent events have shown that the US is not and cannot be an impartial arbitrator in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

4.    Some rich and powerful individuals are threatening educational institutions and critics of the State of Israel for "holding on to their beliefs." What's the moral of their action? "He who pays the piper dictates the tune."

5.    In today's America, there is a price to pay for the public support of the Palestinians. For more than three decades, I have been a supporter and an advocate of the two-state solution and the right of both peoples to live in peace and peacefully.

6.    Why is it so difficult to understand and or accept the fact that Statehood for the Palestinians is the right and just thing to do and would lessen the tension in the Middle East?

7.    According to a news report, "Germany's Scholz warns Iran, Hezbollah not to enter Middle East conflict." Ha, there is God ooo…why not advise the White House not to overtly/covertly enter/send military and intelligence aid to Israel?

8.    "The emperors and generals who sent their men to war in August 1914 thought in terms of weeks, not months, let alone years." - John G. Stoessinger

Sabella O. Abidde

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