Between Conflict in Gaza and Conflict in Africa; Understanding My Ignorance

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Between Conflict in Gaza and Conflict in Africa

 Understanding and Moving Beyond My Ignorance 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju 

I am significantly informed about the political, military and to some degree, the historical dynamics of the ongoing war in Gaza but even though I am a Nigerian, living in Nigeria, I know nothing about armed conflict in Africa except for the little I know about terrorism in Nigeria's North.

Why?

The Gaza conflict is more meaningful to me because of my identification with its religious and historical contexts.

I am able to relate the conflict to the religious context of the Bible and the struggle between the Abrahamic descendants.

I am not able to appreciate a larger context in African conflicts providing a depth of meaning beyond the struggle for more basic issues of survival.

I also have some background on the history of the Gaza conflict, such as the heroes on both sides, from Israel's Menachem Begin and his terrorist Irgun group to  the Palestine's Yasser Arafat and his former terrorist PLO.

I also have some background on Jewish mysticism and its relationship to Jewish history and even wrote an MA essay on Yaffa Eliach's Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, enriching my understanding of Hasidism, the Holocaust and relationships between spirituality and history.

But I have no such Interconnected understanding of African realities. My understanding of Africa exists more in terms of atomistic silos, in which the spiritual and philosophical do not intersect with the historical and political, no such reference as the Bible and other texts  to dramatize the intersections of all these for me in African thought.

What should I do to bridge these gaps?

To create a richer understanding of African existence as a quest for meaning in which prayer and warfare, combat and worship are interrelated aspects of one whole, an appreciation facilitating my moving from my primary interests  in quests for meaning, particularly in spirituality and philosophy, to other issues that shape African lives?

Another reason why I am better informed about the Gaza conflict while knowing nothing about conflicts in Africa, such as the one in Sudan, is that my Google news aggregator, which organizes and presents news items to me on my phone once I open Chrome or Google, hardly presents news on conflicts in Africa, but provides a consistent network of news on the Gaza conflict from different parts of the world and from various perspectives.

Could that be beceause I set that pattern myself in vigorous and broad ranging exploration of various angles to the Gaza conflict shortly after it began, thereby training the Google news aggregator to find and bring me such news?

An expansive education on Africa is clearly needed, perhaps beginning from something like Joseph Ki-Zerbo's   superb article on prehistoric African art in the UNESCO History of Africa Vol.2, where he reflects on the beginnings of unique humanity in art and perhaps moving on to Suzanne Preston Blier 's argument about the relationship between conflict and art in creating Ife art in Att and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power and Identity, and also taking in Akinwumi Ogundiran's bold analysis of how politics, commerce, spirituality philosophy and technology shaped Yoruba history in The Yoruba: A New History.