AFRICAN EUROPE

Sousa Jamba travels to Ham- burg, Brussels and Rotterdam to see how immigrants from dif- ferent African nations have fared SOMETIMES I feel guilty for being in the West. I often feel like an opportunist who will only go back to Africa when there is less political repression, corruption, and other problems the continent is now facing. I also feel at times as though to some Westerners the likes of me are all here because we like Burger Kings and apple pies. A trip around Europe, however, revealed to me that Africa now extends to parts of some European cities. In these communities, Africans do not feel as guilty as I often do. For them, it is as though they have never left Africa.

I went to Europe mindful of my experi- ences as an African in London during the past four years. I learnt to think of myself as an African and as a black person in London. In Zambia, where I grew up, I used to think of myself as an Angolan.

In my first years in London — when I knew few people — I used to go to the bar in the Africa Centre to meet other Afri- cans. I stopped going there because I found the men too patronising. They all insisted that I had become too Westernised be- cause in traditional African culture the young did not disagree with their elders. Some of my views were also very unpopu- lar. I had several heated arguments.

Like most young Africans in London, I often felt confused. All the talk of multi- culturalism in Britain was something which pleased us. But we were aware that when people talked about the promotion of black culture, they were actually talking about the promotion of the culture of the largest black tribe in Britain — the West Indian. We feared we would be absorbed into the West Indian community. This made us slightly edgy because some of us felt we were different and our difference was not going to be appreciated.

We tried hard, however, not to make this difference apparent to white Britons. Some black Africans in Britain often be- come schizophrenic: we adopt different personae for whites, West Indians and our fellow Africans. When we are before whites, we automatically see ourselves as representatives of the race: we begin acting black. When we are before West Indians we act African. And when we are before Africans we act Nigerian, Ghanaian, or Zimbabwean.

THE German city with the most Africans is Hamburg. Some refer to it as Ghanaburg because it has the largest concentration of Ghanaians in Europe after London. In contrast to the other two European cities that I visited — Rotterdam and Brussels Africans in Hamburg are not concentrated in one area; they are spread all over the city. There was, however, one major dif- ference: in Hamburg, black people especially men — stopped me in the streets to ask where I was from. I was invited to a party and to a football match. The Ger- mans, however, ask different questions: they want to know why so many Africans have decided to remain in their country.

I was standing late one night at the central railway station in Hamburg await- ing my contact in the city, an old West African man who had lived in Germany for more than 30 years. My contact was already three hours late and I was becom- ing restless. A hefty German drunk stag- gered over to me and said: `Where are you from?'

`Angola.'

`How many did you kill?'

`None.'

`It is just like the Nazis; nobody had killed anyone. Why are you here?'

I was saved from the. German drunk by the arrival of Mr Cocker, my guide. Mr Cocker said when he came to Hamburg in the late Fifties, the Germans were very proud to see black people in the streets. He said people then kept smiling at him in public. At that time, he said, there was much work available. The Germans were then very guilty about some of the atroci- ties which had been committed in the war. Every German, Mr Cocker said, wanted to prove that he was not a racist.

Mr Cocker said that the Germans' atti- tudes towards Africans had changed be- cause most of them are now concerned with Eastern Europe. Mr Cocker said some Germans felt responsible for the hardships some of their brothers had faced under communism.

Mr Cocker, like most Africans of his generation in Hamburg, had worked on a ship. He said as Hamburg had very liberal immigration laws, he and his colleagues had decided to remain in the city. As time went by, they had decided to bring their families to Germany. In that way, the African community kept expanding.

Mr Cocker insisted that he belonged to a generation of honourable Africans. He said in his time nobody believed in easy money. African workers then believed in hard work, and Mr Cocker was very proud to be black. He lamented that the African riff-raff had now found its way to Ham- burg.

I had always thought that Ghanaians did not have the same reputation as Zaireans or Nigerians for being fraudsters. Mr Cocker said whenever Africans were in- volved in some shady activities in Ham- burg, Ghanaians were most likely to be involved. Mr Cocker said some Ghanaians had taken to forging passports, smuggling drugs, and other illegal activities. Mr Cocker is, of course, not Ghanaian.

The following day Mr Cocker took me to Hanzplatz, a square where most Africans hang about doing nothing. Mr Cocker said he had often seen drugs being traded in this area. I could tell that most of the young, black people on the square came from the lumpen proletariat of some West African urban centres. The sight of so many idle black men depressed me. I also felt slightly intolerant because I had seen men in worse conditions — such as the Unita guerrillas in Angola — make better use of their time. I now understood Mr Cocker's anger.

There were, however, many Afro- Germans in Hamburg of which Mr Cocker was very proud. On a Sunday afternoon, he took me to a house of a successful engineer who lived in a suburb out of the city. I was impressed by how clean this part of the city was. The engineer — who spoke fluent English although he was born in Germany — was pleased to see us. His wife, who was also of African descent, cooked us foufou, a West African dish. As we spoke, South African music played in the background. The engineer and his wife both spoke Tui, a Ghanaian language; but they spoke German to their two daughters.

I asked the engineer whether he had experienced any racism when he was grow- ing up. He said he had not. Having been one of the few blacks at his school, he said, had been like a privilege: all the German children had wanted to befriend him be- cause he was different. What, then, did he feel about the rising anti-black feeling in Germany? 'This is just a phase this country is going through,' said the engineer. 'We blacks in Germany now have to adjust ourselves to assert our presence.'

As the afternoon wore on, during which Mr Cocker kept telling us how united the first Africans in Hamburg had been, four other Africans came into the house. They were all very loud and boisterous. One, a lean, tall man, wore make-up and enjoyed biting other men's ears. He was slightly drunk. Mr Cocker bent over and whis- pered into my ear that in the past Africans in Hamburg would not have become homosexual.

All the young Africans that I met in Hamburg said they were in Germany to stay. Some insisted that the anti-black feeling was confined to a negligible section of the German society. 'It is now our turn to colonise Europe. We even have black people in German soap operas,' a man told me in Sam Brazil bar, favoured by most Africans.

IN BELGIUM, the African quarter in the middle of Brussels is called Matonge. This rallying point of over 30,000 Zaireans living in Belgium was named after a lively ghetto in Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire. In Matonge, most Zairian things are avail- able: paintings, food, beer. In Zambia, where I grew up, it was said that Angolans were hard-working and stingy and Zaireans were thieves. As an Angolan, I had been taught to think of myself as being immensely superior to the Zaireans. Fourteen years later, the atti- tudes which had been dinned into me in my childhood had not completely vanished. In Brussels, I still found myself looking for those traits which had made us laugh at the Zaireans. Indeed, the traits were all there.

Zairean men and women are obsessed with clothes and appearances. In the even- ings, most Zaireans gather in a shopping mall called Gallerie D'Ixelles rigged out in their best clothes. Some men just stand on the street corners to be seen and pose like male models. Others use mercury soap said to cause skin cancer — to bleach their skins.

To sustain these expensive tastes, many Zaireans turn to crime. Zairean intellec- tuals in Brussels are very ashamed of this. In fact, most of them rarely go to Matonge. In mid-January, there were fierce con- frontations between the police and Zai- reans in the area. The scuffles had been sparked off by several police raids to pin down drug dealers.

There are several reasons why Zaireans are drawn to the country which had colo- nised them. Some come to Belgium as students and decide to stay; others are political exiles. The most obvious reason, however, is economical; for many Zaireans — as with most Third World people Europe is synonymous with wealth. The second is prestige: many people told me that in Zaire a mere sojourn in Belgium is enough to enhance one's status.

As I met more Zaireans in Brussels, I felt my attitude towards them change considerably. Lacking imagination, some African politicians have throttled our cul- ture: only those artists who defer to the politicos, for instance, are likely to suc- ceed. In Brussels, Zaireans have revital- ised central African culture.

I was told that people came from as far afield as Finland to learn Zairean dances. Also, several radio stations in Belgium had slots in which African music was played. Some Zaireans told me that they felt as though they were now doing what Euro- peans had done in Africa: that is, spread their culture. Indeed, even when in Africa we used to laugh at the Zaireans, we admired their music.

I felt most sympathetic to the Zairean artists and intellectuals who, like myself, have been forced to remain in the West because of the political situation in Africa. I particularly liked Maurice Boykasse, a poet, actor, storyteller and musician.

An ardent Catholic, Maurice had just written a musical about Africans who had died for the cause of Catholicism in the Buganda Kingdom. He invited me to a performance in a small, Flemish town called Harelbeke, which is about two hours drive from Brussels. I travelled with the members of the Libiki theatre of which Maurice is the head. In Harelbeke, we were treated to a sumptuous lunch at the local convent of the sisters of the order of St Augustine.

That evening, St Salvador Cathedral, in which the musical was held, was mainly filled with old women in stylish hats. Though the musical was set in the 19th- century Buganda kingdom, it was actually about power in contemporary Africa. Though the musical had several flaws, I found it very moving.

WEST ROTTERDAM is an African is- land in Holland. This is where thousands of Cape Verdeans live. Most Dutch people, however, do not know about the Cape Verdeans: they take them for Surinamers or other blacks from the Dutch West Indies. In fact, most people in the West know little of the ten West African islands which were discovered in 1460 by Portu- guese sailors. In the 16th and 17th centur- ies, the islands became a centre of the slave trade. The people of Cape Verde are descendants of the intermarriage between Europeans and Africans.

As the islands are very poor — and some of them volcanic — the Cape Verdeans have a tradition of emigrating and return- ing to their islands after making their fortunes. There are more Cape Verdeans in America, Holland and Portugal than in Africa. There were thousands of Cape Verdeans in Angola during the Portuguese rule.

In Angola we thought the Cape Ver- deans were very strange. They kept to themselves, listened to their own music, spoke Portuguese with funny accents and looked different: most of them were mulat- to. It was also said that the Cape Verdeans were a vengeful people who used knives in their fights with much ease.

In West Rotterdam, I often felt as though I was in Cape Verde. When I was there, preparations for a most exciting event — the Miss Cape Verde in Holland competition — were taking place. The competition was organised by Guy Ramos, a 27-year-old man who described himself as a 'Dutch Cape Verdean'.

Guy took me along to the rehearsals. Most of the contestants were in their teens and looked anorexic. A professional, black model had been hired to teach the girls to be less shy and cope with the cat-walk. She kept bawling at them like an army sergeant.

At some point during the rehearsals there was a heated argument: People wanted to know whether Miss Cape Verde in Holland was supposed to know more about Holland or about Africa. The con- testants insisted that she was supposed to know about Holland; the organisers in- sisted on Africa.

I was impressed by the assertiveness of the girls: they all put across their points passionately. A compromise was finally reached: Miss Cape Verde in Holland was supposed to know as much about Africa as Holland. Cape Verdeans insist that their women, and not the Brazilian, are the prettiest in the world. I witnessed several arguments over this point.

The other topic which fires Cape Ver- deans is football. There are over 16 Cape Verdean football teams in West Rotterdam with such catchy names as Mindelo Feeling Football Club and Make Love Football Club. There are also over 30 different political organisations in West Rotterdam alone. The Cape Verdians love to debate. They are perhaps the most honest Africans I have met in Europe.

Gastao Silva is the editor of the local Cape Verdian monthly magazine 0 Bole- tim. The Cape Verdians also have a weekly programme on cable television and two different radio stations broadcasting at different hours of the day.

0 Boletim is very exciting and thought- provoking. In one edition, Gastao Silva 'We're sending the cast to Lourdes.' warns young Cape Verdeans not to live on social security but to do everything to advance in school. He also deplores the fact that many Cape Verdeans are in- creasingly less interested in cultural activi- ties. He lamented that most of them were more willing to attend spiritualist sessions.

I attended one session on a Thursday afternoon, and was amazed by the number of Cape Verdeans who turned up: the hall was completely full. Members of this Re- deeming centre, as it was called, believe that people are able to communicate with the dead after proper meditation. When I got into the hall, the attendants — who were all smartly dressed — sat silently trying to reach other spheres. The cere- mony was presided over by a group of elders who sat at a separate table. Nearby were two chairs on which those possessed by the spirits of the dead sat. I tried to join in the meditation, but I did not go beyond the hall's roof. After several unsuccessful attempts, I began to doze off. The man next to me kept shaking me back to reality.

In the Zambian shanties where I grew up, people used to have mashabe cere- monies in which the ancestors were in- voked by the playing of the drums. I was surprised to note that this was precisely what was going on in the middle of this European city, albeit in a different way. The Cape Verdean spiritualists said Afri- can drums invoked lower spirits and that their meditation invoked higher spirits. They told me that spiritualism was, for them, a way of life. One of them, a man called Joao Brito, invited me to his house. He told me that I would note how different and peaceful his house was from the others I had been to.

Unfortunately, things were not that peaceful at the Brito household. It all had to do with Sky television. In recent months, many houses in West Rotterdam had been receiving Mr Murdoch's channel on cable, but now they have to pay for it. Mr Brito has not bought a scrambler. Ilidio, his 12-year-old son, has vowed never to speak a word of English until Sky television is brought back into the house. Throughout my stay at the Brito's Ilidio refused to speak to me in English. His father was very embarrassed because he had told me that his child spoke impecc- able English.

In Holland, most young Cape Verdeans kept asking me about Brixton: they all had a very romantic view of it. But they insisted that the riots they had seen on television would never occur in West Rotterdam. I asked them why. 'We are different. We are Dutch,' came the pat reply.

I WANTED to go to France because Paris has been called the capital of Africa. It has even produced a new type of. black man named by the Cameroonian singer, Manu Dibango, as the negropolitain. The French government is still considering whether to grant me a visa.