The African Presence

George Lamming explains how the existence of identity manifests in one’s life regarding his
belonging. A negro western Indian who lives in Europe usually feels anxious when visiting Africa,
because he incidentally wonders about the departure of his ancestors. He knows that they were
compelled to leave under the oppression of their colonizers. And so “his relation to that continent
is personal and problematic. As to the American tourist who pays visits to Europe, he feels proud
of the mother land where his descendants used to live. He was introduced to its prosperous culture
and historical achievements through education, and identifying himself in Europe is flavored with
pride and pleasure.

When George landed in Accra, he was skeptical to all the happenings, and all the staff, including
himself and the scoutmaster felt embarrassed when they were unable to understand Accra’s local
language “Fanti and Ga”. George admits that the random high voices of its citizens reduced their
disgrace. To his astonishment, Accra was a free restless city with harbor and scaffolding
everywhere, and such vitality to compete an ambiguous future fashions the city’s excitement and
the overwhelming confidence of its inhabitants.

Several cultural incidents struck his mind. The meaning of things is different in Accra. Prestigious
privilege is given to the funeral as an expensive ceremony (bacchanal). The Ashanti culture favors
the nephew as a heir over the son. All occurred in astonishing formality, and culture was a tool that
governed people’s combination, despite their different age or mentality.

George explains that his experience in Ghana unmasked his imprisoned humanness and desecrated
personality in Europe. He witnessed how freedom is enjoyed in a place that all he learnt about was
a sort of an irony.

How Africans appeared in movies depicts a true story of oppressive colonialism. they were
believed to serve the “white master” in a privileged way. George criticized how humiliating it was
from the part of the Parsons and the Cocksures with the native Africans. The latter had to behave
the way they were taught, as obedient butlers, as big boys and small boys who were compelled to
silence and loyalty during mealtime ceremonies. Their uttering a few words of a foreign language
(English) with an artificial smile that lasts for seconds was an example of human devaluation

How Africans receive Western movies with absence of skepticism matters for George. Their
dramatic lives depict an immense attraction and obedience to the West. African have the capacity
to entertain themselves by adhering to the ideology of the colonial’s life style. The classical battle
between the White stranger-man and the Bad-man is a dramatic illustration of the ideology by
which Western and Indians are bound. As George says, people get used to and thrill to the killing
because it’s been a norm of life. The killing of the Indians in the western Cowboy films has no
value as long as the cowboy himself is overestimated as being the one of right. It is not important
to figure out why a given cowboy appears killing with his gun, but the most important thing is to
perceive how accurate is his shooting.

He describes his exhausting and mysterious travels to a number of places such as Zaria, in Nigeria.
He had to overcome a long sandy way with no sense of time. (“ I forgot tomorrow’s name”). The
incidence between Ibadan and Illorin, where he witnessed a blind and deaf old man walking dead
center of the road, drew his attention to the savagery of the place. In Tegina, George was astonished
with the ultimate liberty of the policeman who granted himself with a casual uniform but no boots.
He was convinced that the policeman should be shaped so, for an escaping thief or prisoner would
be wearing no shoes, and the policeman’s boots were only to prevent his speed to catch up the
fleeing prisoner.

When George was intimately received by a S. in Zaria, he doubted such hospitality. It mostly meant
that S. was much concerned about the future of the African continent, and his spontaneous service
harmonized his alliance with the West Indian’s case as well.

The current political situation changed in Nigeria. George describes the predicament of the British
under-secretary who got used to a strategic servility with an organized intimacy. It has become out
of reach for a British responsible who spent more than twenty years in Africa to return home and
adopt an ordinary citizen’s life. George asserts that Africa is no longer England’s proletariat. The
Africans may demand from England to reconsider their oppressive vision. All they ask is to
transform Prospero to his original condition of a men among men”. George argues that some
British nonconformists and intellectuals should be paid homage for their marvelous efforts to
defend Africa. Cases in point are Fenner Brockway, Noel Brailsford, Kingsley Martin, and Basil
Davidson who approaches the African concerns with respectable self-responsibility.

During the Minister’s party, George noticed the cultural clash that occurred between the English
wife and the minister’s wife. There was a clear certainty and relaxation of the minister’s wife,
though she was not much intellectual. As to the English wife, she went through a serious
predicament because she felt being strange and dislocated. What an irony George raises here. It is
the English woman who was and tried to conceal her fear and uncertainty when she was compelled
to a mere discourse about children, although she gained a little confidence when the minister’s wife
confirmed that their children would head to England for studies. George asserts that in is “no
longer” a Prospero’s time, and it will never be again.
George scrutinizes the existence of the English language in the courtroom to investigate on the case
of a West Nigerian suspect who spoke only his native language, “Ibo”. It is crucial to mention that
neither the judgewho was an Irish, nor the council of the Crown who was West Indian, had
knowledge about “Ibo”. The future of the accused was then dependent on translation.

George also draws our attention to the mutual dependence between the African scholars and
England which provides them with education. Doctor Alex’s, George’s friend from Sapele in the
Southern side of Nigeria, had contributed to the advancement of blood researches in Oxford’s,
which was in favor of the Nigerian children as well.

Heading on the Queen Marry plane from Southampton to New York, George describes the
culturally fragmented first-class Venezuelan businessman, who shouted on the plane staff as an
expression of his resentment about the sausage being served. George asserts that the Venezuelan
wanted to be watched, and wished to fashion himself as the master to be assisted, but his dignity
was bitterly hit by the collective punishment from the passengers in a Bingo game. (he showed his
deficiency to play that Western game).

George raise the controversial concept of the American dream. He himself thought of America as
a land of wonders and a “kingdom next door to the sky”. However, his anxiety to get an American
visa and the dubious and firm customs of the American homeland security awakened his
consciousness about his distinct race and color. George had the chance to meet a Trinidadian
novelist, miss R. in Harlem, where he witnessed the crust of the dark mysteries of the “New World”.
He affirms that the fastidious and eloquent Trinidadian companion depicts a great example of an
American social construct (as her British-made sister that George knew in England). For him,
roaming down Harlem with the Trinidadian lady was an African excursion in USA. His British
assets confronted the American life style and services. George experienced his race and the English
language lostness on the American territory.

George witnessed Eurocentrism in the Harlem bar when he received such stupendous homage from
the master of the ceremony. He asserts that because he was granted from the Western name
Guggenheim, the word that substitutes the millionaire, his Negro West Indian status would have
been honored so.

Throughout his travel to Chicago, George made acquaintance with Negro Americans who
established their own colonial achievement at its very highest level. Those Negro elites challenged
the supremacy of the “white standard in the “white” territory. Yet, the horrifying massacre of the
young Puerto Rican boy by four white men (because he was believed to have looked for a long at
a white woman) was a tragic hooliganism act depicted the eternal racial war in USA.
In the end of the chapter, George meets his old friend Alex, the other West Indian Negro. George
remembers how his friend Alex was extremely humiliated in his first arrival to a “white” Miami’s
restaurant in USA. He was not allowed to sit with the “whites” on the same table.