So last night I went to a couple of films that are part of the 18th annual African film festival that happens here in Portland, OR every year (well since 18 years ago.) Both films where by the filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno who grew up in Cameroon and both where about the effects of colonalism on Cameroon. I have to say, there is so much that gets skipped in high school history class, that is for sure. I now wish I hadn't dropped out of the African History class I started to take at Corning Community College, but I feel like I'm getting a crash course in African History when I attend these films.
The first film last night was titled Alex's Wedding and wasn't a film the filmmaker was orginally planning on making. He said he was vacationing at his home village in Cameroon when a friend of his kept coming by and bugging him to film his wedding. Eventually, he relented, not realizing this was Alex's second wedding; he was taking a second wife to be part of a polgamious family. Apparently this is a tradition in Cameroon; during the wedding one man spoke up and said something like "in Cameroon we say when a man marries his first wife he's courting the idea of marriage, when he marries his second wife he's engaged, when he marries his third wife, he's really married."
The funny part of this whole thing is that Alex and his family are apparently devout Christians and since the Christian church doesn't condone polgamious marriages, the wedding can't take place in a church...but Alex's family found a pastor who agrees to come to the family's house to marry the couple. Also both wives where obviously not happy with the siduation; the first wife didn't talk openly about her unhappiness, but she kept using symbolism, especially saying things about "men having a sword sharpened on two sides, so he needs to cut down everything in his path..." which I guess was her way of saying that men aren't sexually satisfied with just one woman, but she obviously wasn't happy about this cultural belief. The younger, new wife was also upset; despite the fact that she kept insisting she was thrilled with her marriage, as soon as she left her parent's house and got in a car headed to her new home, she began to sob. Later when the filmmaker asked her about the sobbing, she said she was used to being spoiled by her parent's and wasn't sure she'd be treated like that by her new family. At the end of the film the filmmaker revealed that he had grown up in a polgamious family and he always felt that it was stressful and an unhealthy relationship and he wanted to speak out for the women of Cameroon.
The second film was called Colonial Misunderstanding or Le Malentendy Colonial. This one was a documentary about how the German colonalism of Cameroon affected the country, and also how missionaries where forced to help trick people into giving their lands away, into brainwashing folks that they needed Western items and other malcious things, wiether the missionaries wanted to or not. Also, the second film brought the concentration camps set up by German in Cameroon to hold Cameroonian dissitants prisioner and basically work them to death. This was happening in Cameroon at the same time that back in Europe the Germans where systematically killing off the Jews..interesting that Europe wasn't the only place where German had concentration camps at the time. The film had horrible pictures and bits of film of starving Africans in these camps, and Africans with chains around their necks being forced to build railroads and things like that. I'd never heard this interesting little piece of history before, nor had I heard that there was actually a meeting in Berlin held by the most powerful European nations to divide up Africa and to plan how to most easily take pieces of land from local peoples without resistance. The Europeans knew missionaries already had sway in many African communities, so they knew if it was preached from the pulpit that giving in to the will of the white man would benefit the Africans and that that was the only way they'd move into the modern world, well then, they'd have a lot less resistance. So they forced missionaries to tell the local peoples these things. The Europeans also knew that tribal lands where held in common by all the people of a village, and that a chief would sometimes symbolically "give" land away to a neiboring tribe by making some small trade with the neibors. This would give the neibors some rights to use to the land. Africans, generally speaking, like Native Americans, didn't have a clear idea of one person owning a piece of land; to them, land is held in common and used by everyone. So the chiefs "traded land" with white men for simple things; alcohol, guns and the like. They had no idea that the white men really intended to own this land for the rest of forever....they thought they'd probably use the land for awhile and then go back to Europe. They didn't understand in most cases the scope of what was happening...and the Europeans knew this and chuckled to themselves.
After the two films, there was a very cool Q&A with the filmmaker and I learned a lot from that as well. Many people in the audence where also Africans and chimed in with other prospectives and taught us more about the problems facing Africa at the moment. One man asked a lady next to him if he could borrow her cell phone and held it above his head and said "and this is what all the fighting in the Congo is about right now...the minerals needed to make one of these..." I had no idea where cell phone maternials came from and really had no idea that there was even fighting in the Congo (that's how ill informed I am about world events.) I was greatful my cell phone had come used from my brother-in-law, but I still felt a pange of guilt as I pictured poor black people dying so I could make convenant phone calls from where-ever I happen to be. I am also sad that so much of orginal African culture has been completely whiped out by colonalism and the missonaries (both films had a lot of religious scenes that involved Africans worshipping a white God who was imported.) Luckly a lot of African churches these days are a gathering place for powerful African activists; but it certainly wasn't always that way.
I feel glad to have been given the opportunity to learn more about the atrocities that Africa has suffered...now I have more to think about as far as what I can do to help and what I can do to end oppression in all forms. I want to start an organization dedicated to bringing medical supplies to midwives in Africa...I think it is going to be called Support Our Sisters or S.O.S.
Love always,
Carrot
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