Between Africa and the West
A Story of Discovery
by
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Yes, there is much in the West’s which is good for all of humanity. Strides in education, science, technology, and economics, arts and culture in the West have and continue to benefit much of the world. But the values of the West’s development model are not simply to be lauded and accepted as though it was some divinely appointed way forward for everyone. I have discovered as I have lived in the West that while development has the capacity to deliver some goods, it also equally has the capacity to undo other indispensable goods for humanity. Yet, the West is often so absorbed with her ways of life that it often speaks and acts as though her way is the ONLY way of life worth knowing, talking about, and living. How right, Chinua Achebe, the African novelist of blessed memory, was when he noted that ‘travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves’. Africa and her peoples are not, however, without their own problems. As my people say, “If you warn the dog (to keep away from the bone), you should also warn the bone (not to tempt the dog).” One of the salient lessons of history is that a people who settle for consuming other people’s products can always only expect to be followers rather than leaders in a world of competing interests in the race for power, significance, influence and control. In a world of innovation and creativity in all fields and levels of human life and experience, Africa and Africans cannot expect to influence the rest of the global community in any significant developmental way if they are only always satisfied with consuming other people’s ideas, policies, and material goods. They need to create and promote their own cultural values, material goods, ideas and the environment that enhance life and living on their continent. ‘Development’ is not in the gift of other people to give to Africa and her peoples, neither is it a pre-defined finished product of one culture to be handed over to others. Only Africa and her people can develop Africa and in ways that foster the kinds of values they cherish and further their interests.
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About the Book
Where is home? There were plenty of twists and turns in Sahr Yambasu’s journey from a small remote village in Sierra Leone to becoming a Christian missionary in Ireland, driving a taxi in Galway and having a home in Carlow and Bray. This is a story of that journey. In telling it, Dr. Yambasu deals with the important and global themes of culture, colonization, change, resistance, conversion, displacement, development, identity, prejudice and the longing for his home country. He does so in an illuminating, thought-provoking, refreshingly honest and engaging way. This is a very human story which many who have left home to make a living in a different country and culture can easily identify with. Here is a distinctive voice which needs to be heard. What happens when a child in Africa sponsored by western charity grows up? Sahr John Yambasu was educated thanks to the philanthropy of a family of English Methodists and in the style of Edel Quinn made a pact with God to devote his life to spreading the Christian message. His route from frugal existence in Sierra Leone to life in ministry in Ireland, where he also became a war refugee, is told with great insight, humour and wisdom. The diaspora is a familiar theme in Irish literature but here we have the memoirs of an immigrant, a valuable realigning of the normal Irish perspective on the world. Sometimes moving and occasionally hilarious, Yambasu describes how he nearly gets himself run over crossing a street in Belfast just to greet another black man. As the father of three children in an inter-race marriage – and one, moreover, who has worked as a Galway taxi-driver - he also questions Ireland’s avowed commitment to multiculturalism...a much wider audience will benefit from its reading. Joe Humphreys Irish Times journalist and author
About the Author
Sahr Yambasu is a minister of the Methodist Church in Ireland. He studied at the Sierra Leone Theological College in Freetown, then at Queen’s University, Belfast for his Bachelor of Divinity degree, and later for his PhD at the University of Cambridge in England and his Masters in Development Studies at the Holy Ghost College, Kimmage, Dublin. He was Principal of Sierra Leone Theological College from 1993-1995, is a co-founder of Africa Centre Ireland and has chaired its board for several years. He is an occasional lecturer at University College, Dublin, in Anthropology of Humanitarian Assistance.