An elderly British woman pulled over to offer me a lift this morning to what I could remark as a miracle.
Hardly would people offer lifts to strangers in lonely, easily suspicious circumstances. Danger prone places. Nonetheless she did.
In the car we had warm conversation and it happened so seamlessly and that made me feel that her humanity was natural.
She didn’t have to think about it. Like a jet-flow, it came out on first impulse.
She gave up an appointment she had planned for the morning to bring me safe and cosy right at my door. And her last word: ‘live a good life’!
I had prayed barely 10 minutes before she showed up hoping to get a lift out of the public bridleway where I was. A place that had little access by car.
Her act, being wonderfully human inspires a thought about the ongoing hostilities of Russia towards Ukraine.
In time past my questioning thoughts had been, could it be that our humanity had long died, or it may be on ‘protracted coma’, neither responding to treatments or simply surgically dead to feelings and human emotions?
How wrong!
The streams of human energy, goodwill and love that have flowed towards Ukraine these few days is potent sign that our collective humanity is alive. The world is talking. Flurry of sanctions against
Russia’ have been coming in quick successions. A genuine act to deter further damage to precious human lives.
I could feel in this instance how the world still has respect and love for human lives.
I thank the whole world for their unquestioned show of humanity towards the people of Ukraine.
And how severely frustrated I feel when I see that Africa hasn’t received a tiny fraction of this kind of show of profuse human affections even when the whole world could see that many nations of Africa literally live on graves of fellow humans.
More so when I know that our humanity wasn’t dead.
I don’t hope that the world could give me an answer to my frustrations on how Africa and its lives are treated.
Just wondering if humanity can become so unnatural depending on who is involved ?
My British angel woman who showed up to my rescue was certainly not unsporting with her act of humanity, if she was, she knew I was black and nothing stops her from acting in favour of her other instincts, to which I certainly have no right to question her choice.
I was not yet born during the Biafra war, but my parents were my first historians who told me the Biafra story with a broken heart, how the world powers looked the other way and precious lives were lost even the lives of innocent children.
I lived with the pains of their sufferings and all that the Igbos had to go through, and Biafra and her story discoloured my perception of the Whiteman and made me feel bitter against my own countrymen.
This is the sort of humanity that I can question. The one that acts wilfully and genuinely responsive to one and listlessly and grudgingly to another.
I can prove that this humanity is not dead but alive, and yet why does it play dead to Africa?
