Out of Africa

There’s a multitude of Africans in the Diaspora. How does your life in the Diaspora line up or differ from this view of “What the Diaspora is all about”?

Most of us will forever remember exactly where we were the night Barack Obama was announced as the next President of the United States. I wish I could say I was at Grant Park (especially since I was living in the Chicago-area at the time), but instead I was working late at school. Even so, it was still memorable. Now it’s just days before the inauguration and I’m starting to wish I bought a ticket to D.C. and will be at the Washington Memorial.  Well … almost. It sounds like it’ll be really crowded. 

People are coming from all over the world to see the dawn of a new era in the United States of America.  Airlines with international flights that day are entirely booked up. In Nigeria, people are even moving to neighboring countries with the hopes of getting on a plane that will bring them to the States on Tuesday. 

“Being the first African-American to be elected president of the United States, there is this euphoria on the part of Africans to grace Obama’s inauguration to lend moral support.  I learnt people are also going there from several other parts of the continent” – unnamed source.

It’s obvious that Barack Obama becoming the 44th president of the United States will not simply affect this country … it looks like many Africans believe January 20th will be the dawn of a new era for Africa as well.  However, will it be? Nigerians here in the diaspora have a warning:

Don’t celebrate more than the owners of the occasion. Rather, Nigerians should use the occasion to ponder and pray for their country. Americans and Kenyans, the warning went on, worked hard to get to their present status in life.

Emma Agu, a Nigerian singer who will perform at the inaguration and the African Inuagual Ball, has a similar warning, but his act “Obama: The Wind of Change” speaks to the frenzy and excitement which the election has brought: Africans may need to work hard to change their status in life, but winning the election Obama has become the catalyst of change that may have been needed to make this happen. The act, he said, is not a praise song but focuses on how the frenzy of the election swept through the world, and how it can change it. 

“The change that must come to African nations. The change that tells sit tight leaders like Mugabe, and the other tyrants in Gambia, Bukina Faso and whole lot of them that their time is up. The change that we are one nation, one people under the sun. The change that all men are equal,  regardless of who they are,  or where they come from.  

Obama: The wind of Change is my own little way of   using my God’s given talent to contribute to the on-going happiness that has touched the whole world.”

Just like we won’t forget where we were November 4, 2008, none of us will forget where we were in two days either.