River Runs Deep

The Jena 6 seemed to have tapped into some kind of undercurrent, a latent discontent simmering just beneath the surface of black society. You just never know what will put people into the streets. Curious though, the media frenzy surrounding this action of a few thousand compared to the silence following the gathering of thirty thousand plus anti-war demonstrators. I can just imagine the anti-Sharpton right-wing talk radio venom spewing forth in their homage to the Duke Lacrosse team. The President weighed in with this bit of wisdom: "All of us in America want there to be ,you know, fairness when it comes to justice." That will be inscribed on the Bush Monument at the Bush Library.

As long as were into Black experience, Bob Marley pleaded for Africa to unite, but post-colonialism has been one nightmare after the next. Late Capitalism does not seem much more promising. Now they have the curse of oil , floods, drought and the War On Terror. "At least 200 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in 17 countries as torrential downpours and flash floods submerged whole towns across Africa."

Establishing AFRICOM will, according to President Bush,"enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development , health, education, democracy and economic growth in Africa." In other words, the kiss of death. The new "development aid" in the form of weapons is pouring into Kenya, Djibouti, Algeria, Nigeria,Mali, Ethiopia, Libya and Liberia. Mix with oil and stir.

Bryan Mealer describes a boat trip up the Congo from Kinshasa to Kisangani in his story The River Is A Road. Describing the traders camped out on the deck: Our neighbor Lucy sold the second-hand clothing worn by almost everyone on the barge and along the river, the ubiquitous American T-shirts donated to charities and dumped on the African market. Everywhere you looked was a strange remnant of home; the old grandmother who advertised a strip club in Kentucky or the stoic fisherman whose shirt read IM THE BIG SISTER.

The 1996-2003 conflicts had sucked in six African armies, and more than 4 million people had died, most of them from starvation and sickness as villagers fled through the jungle to escape the gunfire and pillage. "The war had ended, but peaceful revival had done little for the crowds of children who lined the forest track, their stomachs bloated from hunger, their mothers begging us to save them, begging us to do something."