OUR perception and interaction with the surrounding affects not only our choices but also what is available for evaluation. Sounds diabolical but its pretty simple; we manufacture our reality, and it in turn moulds us. This translates to what potential we perceive, and that which we actualize.
It has been said rightfully that whatever poverty a community like ours faces is due to choices we make, or fail to make. I want to state that our interaction with time is actually the mindset that facilitates this alchemy.
We often perceive time to be made up of the present- sasa, and zamani, a long time ago. We often do not see the future for what it is, as a continuum from our past. We choose to cross the bridge when we come to it. By so doing we fail to employ the lessons from yesterday and today to prepare for tomorrow.
Africa is to a great percentage in a time wrap that places us on the receiving end perpetually. At worst, its like a race between a donkey in Lamu against a formula 1 car on tarmac. At its best the formula 1 car is racing against a reconditioned Toyota.
Information and knowledge acquisition, the ingredients of know how, and thus ability or its potential is learned behaviour. We can all sit in a class and cram information. The researcher will be puzzling how it so happens that with all the information it’s like society has this humongous black hole that just sucks it up! Ask the National Aids Control Council people. The difference that having information makes is only possible if the recipient decodes the message, pre-supposing that the two have learned the same symbols, and the recipient has the desire. That desire is only possible when the recipient, in interacting with the environment has in person determined the pattern of cause and effect! The play of what has been observed, confirmed, what is, and what that portends for the future then tips the scales. A learning society is what it is called.
The reason it is called a learning society is that as a whole, or the critical mass of it shifts perception and behavior in tandem. Social change is not an easy thing. There is basic stuff around us that has taken a hundreds of years to mould. Take racial prejudice, apartheid and the fight for gender equality.
Even when we do, we often think of the past as a far flung era. We may have grand parents who lived it , - the era when things happened differently. A time when expectations were less in some areas, and more in others. A time when it was possible for people to do manual feats that we now look at as myths. It would come as a surprise therefore to discover that in truth, the future is made up of a titration of the past and the present. It requires us to unlearn what we have held as the geographic north, to realign our compass and purpose. It needs dialogue among, and between individuals and groups. It requires us to develop a caring side,- social responsibility. Capitalism, the present economic order fosters competition-, information is power. The hapless easily become the haveless. We may think that natural selection is a debate ended in class. We have another think coming then. Who can imagine the potential disparity between a 14 year old teenager who first went into the internet at 7 years, and a counterpart who will first encounter the computer at 25 years? The African may never surf the internet. How does the world look like to the two? What realm of possibilities do each see? Who between the two is likely to be looking forward to international travel and jobs? How do their current status affect their other choices in life? How will their current status affect their children? If information is truly power, then a polarized disparity is immediately created.
The above phenomena only becomes a reality, albeit a social one, when we compare our society to others. We have previously refused to do this on the grounds that we are different, we should not be compared. Truth is, it should be clear by now that in as far as existence, and its quality are concerned, they are directly proportional to the amount of information, resources and power we wield. There has never in time been a time when resources, natural and otherwise were at a greater demand. It is competition time. The survival of the fittest.
It is a sad moment when a would be contender is disqualified at the start of the race. Africa is often disqualified even before the day, granting the west the gold automatically. Sometimes we realize this when reading history books! Sometimes we just realize it when talking to a stranger, a foreigner who has researched on us. The moment when the puzzles fall in place is too late for meaningful action. Things happen at our door step, but since our cultures have ingrained in us a mechanism of dealing with it, we forget. Stuff that happens behind our house but does not make it in the 7 o’clock news is no news to us. We do all the reading we need for life in school. No wonder we leave it to teachers to teach our children everything. The often valid issues these teachers have are not our concern.
Often life as acted on the big stage of life can also be unfair. The person in China, touching the trunk declares it round. The Indian has a story to tell about its tusks. The Burmese sitting on it talks different. We sitting in its shade are not even aware that this is a large animal, and that it moves. Travel often helps to see the other side of the fence. To experience a different way of life. The traveler stands a chance to have a ‘they’ experience. So does the highway traveler who notices its tusks reflecting light in a lonely country road. The sad thing is that the ingrained vulnerability binds us from taking a decision so we take refuge in numbers, religion being an example.
The situation is worsened because when we go to school, we read subjects and books written for other cultures and realities. We do not build on any body of knowledge from yesterday. We learn to shun it. The language of instruction is foreign too, and so vital meaning is lost as we grapple to take up the foreign information! This type of education dis-orients us and only succeeds in driving us further from our communities who should benefit from them. All over Africa its principally those in the law, medicine, architecture who get to influence society, and often not professionally. The teacher, the artist, the social scientist, don’t, or at least no one acknowledges them. Albeit this is not per se a chosen option. However, as said above it is sad when you realize that the choice was made for us while we were not even aware. By ‘failing’ to make a choice we actually endorsed one!
In the reparation campaign and debate, no one knows the claim value. At least not on our side.
Adult learning only becomes possible when we can unlearn what we already know. It’s a honest soul searching and soliloquy. They say that best learning takes place after the teacher leaves. I reckon the best learning takes place where there is no teacher. Its often a painful lesson though. Costly and time consuming. Often it’s a reinvention of the wheel. It is more endearing though, and the lessons are likely to be handed over to future generations. Steeped as we are in our misplaced beliefs, cut off by the channels of communication, ever becoming more and more poor, in Africa we continue to attend the school of hard knocks. Unless we change, Africa never will.
What are you doing/going to do about it? Will you stand to be counted with the solution providers or with the problem?
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