I’m often asked what I miss most about living in West Africa. I certainly miss the obvious things like family, friends, colleagues, school mates, the food, the music. The list could go on and would probably be the same for any immigrant who has left home and started a new life in a new home. But there is one more thing I miss dearly - the interpersonal connections that are so natural and basic to life in Africa.

Here in the US I go to my local Jewel grocery store and I am often tempted to chat with the cashier and negotiate the prices of the things I have put on the counter. Then I remind myself that the cashier does not know me, nor care about me as my rice seller in the market did at home. And certainly, this cashier has no say in the price of the food items that appear in my basket each week. Those prices are determined by an invisible coporate presence and controlled by mysterious global markets. I miss the way I used to be able to chat easily with market sellers who actually seemed to know me and my family.
Each morning in the suburban town where I live, I catch a bus to the train station. The same people sit in the same spots every weekday morning. Since this is a routine, I see the same faces every day. But for the most part, nobody says anything to anybody else. Eyes are blank, people stare straight ahead, as if meeting the eyes of someone else is a taboo. You mount the bus, hand the bus driver your card, and shuffle past familiar faces without so much as a “good morning.” In West Africa, you come into a space and you say good morning because, although you may not know these people personally, they are part of your community. It is polite to greet people and wish them well. It is expected. It is the “done thing.” So I wonder what would happen one morning if I got on the bus and paused before taking my seat. What would the reaction be if I stood there and said loudly, “Good morning, Y’all!”
Then the other day, as I was waiting for the train, a man in front of me shouted suddenly and broke into a sprint towards another cluster of people who were waiting for the train. It was only at that point that I noticed a man yards away who was standing very close to the tracks as the train was approaching. The “rescue-man” reached the man just as the train was approaching. I wondered why the other people closer to the man, who must have seen him leaning towards the tracks, did not pull him back. Again, they were minding their own business in the way that is supposedly modern. In Africa, someone would have interfered. They would have shouted and pulled him away noisily. I wanted to hug the man who had run from a distance to intervene because what he did was such a beautiful gesture in this environment.
This always bothers me because I wonder what “community” means in this context. Community means something very different in the US. A certain US politician loves the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Although I grew up in an African town, the sense of “the village” was always around me. I see very few “villages” here. I’ve adjusted because that is what you do in a new environment. But I do miss the “village” aspect of Africa, that sense of community that seems so human.

For centuries, African Americans have searched for their roots in Africa. They wonder where exactly on the great continent they come from. Few are as lucky as Alex Haley to trace their “roots” to the Mandinka tribe in Gambia. These days, there is exciting news of DNA testing which will lead to the revelation of one’s African ethnic group. Henry Louis Gates has a series on PBS that traces the lineage of African American celebrities. Supposedly, finding out where you come from and your heritage, brings a valuable sense of strength and belonging.

But I wonder about the value of ethnicity for Africans. While there is great pride in knowing that one is Igbo, Hausa, Akan, Mende, Luo, or Kikuyu, there is also great pain too. My book club has just finished reading Chimamanda Adiche’s interesting novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, which revolves around the ethnic violence of the Biafran war in the late 1960s. The ladies in my suburban book club said they could not relate to the ethnic divisions. (I reminded them that this was similar to racial divisions here in the US, with which they should be familiar.) As an African, I can completely relate to ethnic tensions. I am reflecting on how ethnicity has been the source of so many tragedies across the continent.

On February 28, 2008, Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki finally signed an agreement that brought hope to the peace process in Kenya after the contested elections last year. Over a thousand people have died since then. Kibaki would hold on to his position as president but Odinga would be made prime minister. Kofi Anan brokered this lovely peace deal between these leaders of the two major ethnic groups. But I wish Anan would talk about peace to all the people, young and old, who were somehow plunged into a morass of ethnic pride and hostility. Even though Odinga urged Kenyans to “destroy the monster that is called ethnicity,” the ethnic groups have continued to perpetrate acts of violence against each other.

So I find it ironic that while Africans grapple with the problems of ethnicity, African Americans continue to reach for the hope that is ethnicity.