Wednesday 27 August 2008

TO PETER BURGESS!

Bless you, Peter - I regard you and all the other Westerners at Mendenyo, as true friends of Africa.

To me, you are all honorary Africans - and perhaps, as my New Age friends are wont to say, in your past lives, you might very well have been Africans, too!

I wish all of you well, at Mendenyo - where like the black and white keys of the piano, our thoughts weave a harmonious mental collage, with symphonic accompaniment dominated by themes from Burundian drum-music: 'resounding' gently in our subconscious!

Gosh - isn't life full of exciting possibilities: when you love your fellow humans and care about them enough to want to do all you can for them, to help them pull themselves out of the eternal hardship and struggle of endemic poverty - with dignity and by their own bootstraps?

That is the key block, in the building blocks to true happiness, my brother! That "secret", is the ethos that underlies all African societies - from north to south and from east to west!

It is that that created Madeeba Nelson Mandela: and makes it possible for the black Africans of that rainbow nation to leave the apartheid past behind.

It is that that also enables them to live in harmony with their former oppressors - most of whom lacked basic humanity then, and who today have been redeemed by the forgiveness shown them by their black fellow South Africans. Peace and friendship to you all, at Mendenyo!

Kofi.

No comments: