Check it out

I dont owe the blacks a damed thing other than a good scolding to get up on your own hind legs and make a life for yourself and your children without gov help.

Did they make the tin for their roofs?

Grrrrrrrrrr.

Remember this quote from James Cone? “Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.”

Anyone who listened to that for twenty years would get a lot more excited about Kwanzaa than Christmas.

“…we left the dusty road and walked down the dusty track to the humble village of my ancestors, past the dogs and the chickens and the humble dwellings with their walls of sun baked mud and their roofs (or is it ‘rooves’?) of corrugated tin.

How simple and honest did the lives of these villagers seem, I thought, uncomplicated by possessions or the fatuous luxuries of the West, like electricity, vaccinations and clean drinking water. Their lives, though brief, were so much more real and so much closer to nature than those of we who could take not having hookworm for granted. At once I felt at home among these simple people and couldn’t wait to start ordering them around.

The humble villagers flocked from their huts and greeted us with warm smiles and outstretched hands. “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” they called, which I was told means “Welcome, stranger!” in the local dialect.

“They are delighted to see you, Barack” said Kevin, my local guide, as eager, friendly hands helped themselves to my watch, shoes and wallet. These curious objects were passed wonderingly from hand to hand until a scuffle broke out and a big, mean looking guy grabbed everything and ran off down the dusty track.

“He’ll bring my stuff back, won’t he? I asked Kevin.

“Sure, Barack” he assured me. “Sure he will”.

“Hello, sonny boy!” called a beaming matron. It was my father’s sister, Aunt Okeydokey. Welcome home!” She put her tongue down my throat in the traditional greeting and I did my best to reciprocate before giving her the traditional gift of a one way plane ticket to Boston.

I have no idea what she did with it, no idea at all. Next time I’m in Beantown I’ll ask her.

Later, after a humble feast of “pies” made from the rich red soil of Kenya mixed with pond water, Kevin and Aunt Okeydokey led me to the village cemetery and to the humble grave of my father.

“That’s him, over there” Aunt Okeydokey. There was a pile of rocks and a simple memorial made from beer cans hammered flat.

“HERE LIES LEE HARVEY ‘BUD’ OBAMA” it read, which seemed to say it all, somehow.

“I didn’t know they called him ‘Bud’” I mused. “Is that because he was everybody’s friend?”

“Um, not exactly” said Aunt Okeydokey, while Kevin raised a hand to his lips in drinking sort of motion.

“Oh, I get it” I sighed. “Gee, this graveyard seems awfully full. Why’s that?”

“You stupid American” snapped Kevin. “Of course it is full. What else would it be? People drop like flies around here!”

“Oh? How come? “

“This should be a rich country, Barack” said Kevin, as Aunt Okeydokey nodded agreement. “This should be a rich continent. We have all kinds of resources, actual and potential, yet we are poor and we are hungry and we are dying. Why is that?”

“I dunno. Whitey’s fault?”

“No! It is because, although the colonists left us with the apparatus of good government, with the mechanics of democracy, they could not give us a shared sense of the common good or what public service means. In Africa, the attainment of personal power means only the opportunity to enrich oneself and one’s family and one’s tribe through theft, at the expense of all others and of the nation. And from that absence of a tradition of service and accountability, follow oppression and famine and war, do you see?”

“Hmmm…that’s interesting” I mused. “You know, Kevin, we Americans have much to learn from the simple ways of you humble villagers. You have taught me a lesson and when I get home to Chicago I’m going to put what I’ve learned here into practice – I promise!”

“You mean the part about public service and accountability?” said Kevin. “That is good!”

“Um, not exactly. I kind of meant the other part; about personal power and enriching oneself and stuff”.

“That is not so good, young Barack” said Aunt Okeydokey.

“Don’t make me cancel your reservation, Auntie” I said and she went all quiet.