aliopacto

At first I bridled at this idea, that

"You cannot, except at a high cost, make permanent friends with Africans in Africa. The cost is a heavy dependency that expresses itself in every phone call, every email. The prisoner cannot treat a free person as an equal. As a foreigner you have the capacity to free your African friends. That is, to organize visas for them, invitations, sponsorships, and eventually, permanent residence in Europe via marriage or subterfuge, followed by years or decades of support, encouragement, and help. Either you act, and that will change your life in ways you did not plan, or you do not act, and then your friendship is meaningless."

But in fact that is quite right, it is not far wrong. The African continent for those who cannot leave it has come to be experienced more and more as a form of detention camp, an open prison from which it is becoming almost impossible to escape. This is an indictment of our global system of gulags and occupied spaces stamped 'it's mine/ours/not yours'. Apartheid is truly global. This is what globalization meant!

I prefer it when you write about Africa. Some of the short stories are really heavy, heavy. God! This was enjoyable, somehow, because you clearly enjoyed speaking from a position of security! Also admiringly of those whose lives are unfree… making a virtue of necessity is no virtue, if we consider…?! Thanks for this

Unexpectedly, Africans do not for the most part either feel sorry for themselves, or angry at foreigners. In my experience they have an extraordinary capacity for resistance, for positiveness, for finding pleasure and joy even in the most difficult of circumstances.

It is this capacity which the astute visitor can try to learn, and perhaps take back home.

duuuuuuuuude..
what in the world are you talking about.
You say africa is a prison (i know you were hypothetically speaking) but that is so inaccurate, actually its plain nonsense.
You are quite ignorant on many levels and it offends me.

I have been to europe and i am a nigerian in nigeria and believe me, what you have written is so full of shit (am sorry i cant be civil, you've written so much nonesense)

You are probably a prisoner in your own world. Am so sure you are not content with your current situation and are trying to better yourself.

Anyway before i totally rain insults on you, i will cut it short, your article is garbage and inaccurate. Next time you are in Lagos (which does not represent the whole of Nigeria, try mix with other types of Nigerians, i only wonder what it says about you when all the people you mix with are as you described, find some class). And lastly dumbass, "Gold digger" is an english word, so women sleeping with men in exchange for money and gifts actually started with your side of the world. Get Educated!