Entering Fortress Europe

Originally posted on www.ekosso.com

About a week ago, I left Phnom Penh for England, where I am spending Christmas and New Year.

I have been looking forward to the trip not only as a respite from the rice-based diet I have been consuming in Phnom Penh, but also as a means of escaping the office where, of late, I have been forced to consider making difficult decisions.

As we near my destination, I gathered my personal effects, strewn in characteristic fashion all over the bit of space the airline allows me for the price I paid. It has been a long twelve hours on this particular aircraft. I’ll be glad to stretch my legs.

But I am not at ease in my mind.

Each time I travel by air to or within Europe, I do not feel happiness or relief as my journey ends. This Saturday morning, as I look down on Europe, with its aseptic dusting of snow, as I gazed out of the window at the fuzzy geometrics of this systematic civilization, I asked myself this:

Why do I come to a place where I know I’m not wanted?

But if I’m not wanted, who it is that does not want me and why do they feel this way?

We are all familiar with the immigration debate. We know that Fortress Europe has girded itself about with barriers and seeks to allow only those people who will help it preserve the civilization it has developed. Because I am, in some way, one of those who have been allowed in on sufferance alone, I am acutely aware that I am, in immigration parlance, an alien.

I have the option, because of my personal circumstances, to seek British citizenship in a few years. But I am ambivalent about getting a British passport. For one thing, it would require me to live in Britain for a length of time, and although there are things I like about this country, living here is not one of them. It is unlikely that I would get the kind of work I enjoy doing. And the houses look so small!

For another, I feel it would be a betrayal of my country. But I am aware that I think this way because my circumstances allow me the luxury of such thoughts. Unlike me, many who come to these shores are at bay and the alternative is death or despair.

So I look at the snow covering central Europe, and my stomach tightens a little. My jaw clenches and I can feel myself beginning to grind my teeth. I recognize the signs.

I am afraid.

I am afraid of the subtle and not-so-subtle humiliations I may have to endure at airports, not particularly because of the colour of my skin, I don’t think, but because I represent the poor knocking at the door of the rich, who do not really like to share their wealth.

I am afraid because I feel I have to be careful when entering a shop carrying merchandise bought in another location that might be available in the shop. So I practice self-censorship (a couple of days ago, I elected to stay out in the cold and wait for my companion rather than enter a shop with my previously purchased merchandise – I was worried they might think I had stolen the newspaper I carried under my arm).

Then there’s the issue of breaching Fortress Europe. Nearly three years ago, I had a rather unpleasant experience at the airport in Rome. Although I was coming in on a European flight (we all know how the guards of Fortress Europe swarm over the luggage and passengers from poor countries), I was made to wait until everyone else had left, then my passport was examined minutely, discussed, set aside and discussed again. In the end it was flung back at me and I was allowed in. I do not think I have ever met such rude, churlish border guards before.

I remember being singled out for the sniffer dog when I was entering England from Amsterdam. I remember a great many unpleasant events.

My experience has not always been as bad, but it’s the feeling of rejection I remember, not the warm welcomes (and there have been many). The prospect of rejection is always at the back of my mind whenever I travel in Europe.

This is what I tell my relatives and friends back home: don’t come here if you can help it. There is some love and unqualified acceptance, but there is a lot of pity, indifference, contempt and sometimes even hatred. Better stay at home and be hated by the ones who know you. There’s nothing for us here that really matters apart from work and money, I think. But then what can you do without work or money?

I left my previous job in The Netherlands because I had a better-paying job in a new and exotic location. My decision to leave invited the tenacious ire of a superior at work and I was very glad to leave indeed. I was glad to stamp the dust of Europe from my feet.

But I carry Europe with me. I will have to return from time to time and quite possibly permanently one day. In any event, although I love Phnom Penh, I went there primarily to work and the challenge of work is no respecter of boundaries. Then things I hate about work exist also in Phnom Penh. And so, seeking succour and time off, I travel back to Europe, where I think I’m not wanted.

I think of myself chiefly as a technician in a given speciality. I enjoy the nuts and bolts of my job. But I do not like the politics and I certainly do not like supervising other people. As they say, be careful what you ask God for; he might give it to you.

My thoughts turn to food. I am sick and tired of the rice-based Cambodian fare, but what I pine for is not European food. What I want is fufu and eru and "sleeping" (overnight) mbanga soup with macabo. I want ekwang and pepper soup okra with liver. European food sometimes tastes good, but I know it does not agree with my waistline. What kind of place is this, I ask myself, where the food is prepared according to very high standards of hygiene but is so bad for me that I have to fight a pitched battle with it in order to prevent it from depositing itself into the nooks and crannies of my body, accumulating until it becomes a source of despair when I inadvertently catch sight of myself in a mirror?

What kind of place is it where even the food is my adversary? Why am I coming here?

Even traffic is my enemy. Or rather, public transport is. I can manage trains, but I do not like to speak to bus drivers. When I was in The Netherlands, I used to get off one stop early on a particular bus route because I could not pronounce the name of the preceding stop (it is true, though, that some wit said Dutch is the only language which does not sound cute, even in the mouths of children). Although the public transport system here is beautifully organized, I think I still prefer our anarchic approach back home. In our transport system (or the lack of one), there is a vibrant humanity and room for chance that they don’t have in Europe.

I do not feel a thrill at nearing the end of my twenty-three hour journey. It gives me a strangely exhilarating thrill to know I am returning to Cambodia each time I leave it. I find it unutterably exciting. Perhaps Europe does not excite me because I know so much about it. When I went to secondary school, we were the first batch to stop studying European history and start studying world history, and therefore a little of our own, for the GCE. But as a pre-teen, I loved the Punch cartoons in the European history books and that excited my interest in European history as a whole.

Anyway, I have filled out the requisite landing card and here I am. It is my turn before the guard on Europe’s frontier. I get through without a fuss. I collect my luggage, change into warm clothes and head out to meet Europe.

I am stopped by a border guard who sidles up to me and puts deceptively soft and sibilant questions. I answer them to his satisfaction, I think, since I am allowed to go free.

He’s black.

Welcome to Europe.

Comments

[Dr A A Agbormbai]

Very interesting!

[Ras tuge]

'And so, seeking succour and time off, I travel back to Europe, where I think I’m not wanted.'

How miserable! And how can your relatives take you seriously, when you tell them to stay in Africa, whilst you boastfully claim to carry the useless Babylon shackles around your feet?! There's such a sorrowful absurdity in the fact that after having addressed all the evil propensities of Babylon, a woman still wants to return there from time to time, and she even looks forward to returning there permanently to be shackled in the notoriously tiny and mouse-infested shacks of Her Majesty's rotten England! What an outlandish hypocrite you are,lady. What a mental slave!

Africans ought to realise the urgency of returning to Africa to transform the place into a land of light, that will spare them the injustices of mystery Babylon. It is ridiculous for this lady to misguidingly suggest that she goes to Babylon to relax, when the white lot themselves can't wait for the slightest chance to escape from Europe for a breather.

I am telling you folks, Africa is GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD! I mean, i relax here like i've never relaxed in all the time i've lost in that fucking Babylon. I was very eager to abandon Africa, but after all these years in Babylon, i have finally realised that Africa is the true home for the black man. Hence, I rather spend my time in fighting to bring about positive change here, than to waste precious time weeping all night long about Babylon, when i know that their xenophobic acrimony against the black man shall all but exacerbate.

I'll fix this Africa, then i'll wait fi di Babylon dem. You better stop moaning like a helpless animal, and fight to brighten the corner that will always be yours. I understand that some people are still excited about Babylon, but i am surprised that learned people are foolishly toying with the notion that acquiring Babylon citizenship will make them better in the vicious eyes of Babylon. We got that shit of paper long long time ago, and then what? Dat shit na change who i am, for as long as i am a black man, i am AFRICAN.

[The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.]

...very interesting neat piece of writing...I enjoyed

.....In the heart of it though, you perceive the paranoia of the African educated class...the fear to turn things around, even though they know cameroon, for instance, offers a better option....

....its strange how we skip through hurdles in foreign lands...but whilst in Cameroon we expect to inherit good life....toiling is un-ordained.

[Kumbaboy]

Sis Ekosso,

You write for us all. The only point of disagreement is the perception that you have to be liked by the natives to stay in Europe. Rather, I would ask whether what you need from Europe is worth the stay.

What we Africans must understand is that we often have to "cease" what we need from Europe and European opinion can be secondary. Our interest comes FIRST. This is precisely how European bucaneers thought during colonization. They came un-invited with guns.

Take a European passport even if you hate staying in Europe. The passport is an essential working document and exempts you from costly travel VISAs and immigration services. Europeans do not expect you to join the army and serve a deployment to qualify for a passport.

[The Ngwa Man]

Kumbaboy, you have said it all, you hit the nail right on the head.

For those of you who don't know what you are supposed to be doing while you are abroad go to youtube and search for:

"akon senegal (africa) song"

and listen to it maybe 3 or 10 times. Pay really close attention to what he says begining at 1 minute 54 seconds (1:54) into the song all the way to the end. I rest my case. Diasporans investing in their countries of origin is a win win for everyone. Its a win win for the host and visitor nations economies.

[Bob Bristol]

It's easier for several hands to tie a bundle. Partnership has been at the back of most giant corporations the world over and especially in the real estate sector. Most Cameroonian diasporans only think of building a nice villa amid the slums. I mean most of our energy goes into projecting our individual importance. If we could relegate this a little and think about the collective success, if we could think transforming that beloved continent, the I don't see how "the where you are" is of importance.

On a different note, I've been wondering what is happening with Up Station Mountain Club. What is happening to the high debating spirit we had here. Folks we've got to ignore the postings of some of those paid propandists and move ahead.

Hope you all had a merry xmas.

[The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.]

...have you wondered why in England and United States, you have black churches proliferating street corners in black neighbourhoods, majority of them having not more than 50 memmbers at any one time in attendance, some even have 2 persons, some 10, the Reverend and his wife, and a noisy band played by the pastor's in-laws?

....many of these groups, all praying to the same God, but could merge into a potent force for community and societal good...

...then Caucasians have fewer denominations, not heavy in attendance, yet very powerful in rallying the folks and the state?

....the African blood merely pays lip-service to social capital, pretending to be there for each other...

....Weak Group dynamics has been the Achilles heels of the African's success.......

...One more thing: why would you think that people who have different views from you about the Cameroon tale have been paid? So, you alone and your cabal have a proper definition of the Cameroon problem and a patent to the solution?

Up Mountain Station is part of a social media where the basics of democratic expressions are tested....so get used to some folks seeing Cameroon in a different light...some enjoy the cameroon toil rather than slaving, despised and hated by people of another race....dying in psychotic unimportance...

[Bob Bristol]

The Entrepreneur,

When someone sees "blue" and call it "black", the views of such person can be deliberated. But when "black" is referred to as "immaculate white" without any feeling of ignominy, then that person is definitely acting on something.

[Kamarad]

The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.: you are entitled to your opinion, however twisted it is, but when you advocate for GENOCIDE against a particular group because your debased self perceives them as a threat, you incur the wrath of people like me. Until you repudiate some of the hateful language you have employed in this SOCIAL forum, you will be called for what you are: a beneficiary of that failed regime in Cameroon, and a HYPOCRITE!

[The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.]

...its simple..name and shame your people who do the dirty work of the regime.....we know them....but we want your hipocritical lot to bite their tongue in naming and rise above tribalism which is killing Cameroon, ...by rebuking your cuning elite.....

[The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.]

...Bristol, perhaps your perception is black.....so you are entitled to it...But the people of Cameroon are entitled to facts that would serve as building block of their humanity...just like the chinese....

[Kamarad]

...um..um...um..um..um...

[Kumbaboy]

The Entrepreneur,

Before you castigate Black churches in the United States and Great Britain, remember that President Barack Obama spent plenty of time in a small black church. He is an inspiration to small churches and one of the most thoughtfull leaders of this great country.

The Bible does not confine supreme theology to big churches of any particular race. You, your wife, children and neighbours make a large church under Christ.

What is important is not size but the word of the Lord. In a free country, you rally others not by the size or ethnicity of your church but by the resonance of your message.

I hope you had Anglosaxon education.

[Bob Bristol]

I thought intellectuals who can't openly criticise the gov't would adopt funny user's name to really air out their mind. I thought those diehard supporters of Biya can find an avenue like this to speak the truth, to tell Cameroonians that "our hands are tight". But when the usual nonsense is brought to a forum like this, we begin to wonder if some of these guys have not been injected with the C...... virus

[The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.]

...I thought Bristol castigated individualism?

...where did you read black churches being castigated? Black churches were used as example on the dearth of group dynamics as a potent force for change by people who have your dark dry kink hair.....

...if you can't comprehend what you posit, I see why you lack the moral courage to denounce the corrupt elite from your region who babysit a corrupt regime.......

[TAGRO]

The entrepreneurial professor focuses on his so-called dearth of group dynamics in a people sold to slavery by his likes. And unfortunately chooses the Black Church as his example! Which he now seeks to use his excuse to make his salient point! Does this enterprising fool know what the Black Church means to African Americans and the African American experience? Does this fool know what the Black Church means to the American experience?

He's so blinded by hate and self-loathing that he fails to see a people whose supreme moral clarity, sense of justice, and courage over the centuries saw them overcome slavery; whose civil rights movement inspired the world and probably paved the way for his likes to sit there in New England to spew and hate and expose his profound ignorance of the meaning of America.

When others see Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, MLK, The Tuskegee Airmen, Armstrong, Baldwin, etc. An African from Cameroon, drunk with tribal hate and primitive bigoty can only invoke African Americans with their 'dark, dry kink hair...' and their empty churches. Then he says it is 'used as example on the dearth of group blah blah blah...' STFU!

[The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.]

.....small mindedness.......

...the same manner in which Africans have lent themselves to the whips and rods of dominant forces...simply because they were too divided in small egocentric groups must be prevented in shaping the Cameroon of tommorow......

...the Cameroon change must be built first by weaning and cleansing tribalist who pat babysitters of corrupt regime on the back in their village meetings and come on air and say something else. If these well known tribal egocentric remnants are not cleansed cameroon of the future risks a sullied soiled change...

....these tribal bigots who brandish everyone else tribalists except themselves are dangerous and must be stopped. How dangerous? They send even their own children to die in street battles so that they continue babysitting corruption........pat their corrupt elite on the back, visit them in jail, even demonstrate on streets that corrupt men who have swindled billions should be released...simply because they are from your region....though they nurtured and tended corruption.......in CRAFTY PRETENCE.......

.....their cowardice is measured by the extent to which they mutate into anonimity and band together like sheep....in a herd...They think raw noise, bullying and flexing muscles will push everyone else to look somewhere else....while they conceit their cunning crafty mannerisms.... Con men!

....they think insults hurt patriots. Insults don't bite.......

.....we know you. You can't hide. We would not allow you mar the Cameroon of tommorrow as you did 50 years ago......until you cleanse....your crafty attitude........

....we know you've bred plenty of rabbits to unleash into the streets....but your rabbits can't bite....they are cowards....few days of hunger...absence of starch...takes them off the streets....

[Bob Bristol]

Claiming to be righteous is a wonderful thing. Isn't it? So rather than trading insults and claiming to be light years away from each other, I would be pleased to see a generation of youths that can each openly declare that I AM NOT A TRIBALIST, I AM NOT A CORRUPT PERSON. Open declarations warrant a firm commitment, an avoidance of public criticism etc.

It will be difficult to find Cameroonians who have not been at the receiving end of a corrupt deal. From parents to uncles and aunts to tribal folks. From undeserved marks granted by corrupt lecturers to government projects accorded on preferential terms by corrupt officials. Are out of the dragnet?

What we need is a "NEW" Cameroon.

[Bob Bristol]

"Are out of the dragnet?" should read Are you out of the dragnet?

[Kamarad]

Ernest L. Molua aka The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.
FYI: You will never become Minister under the current regime in Cameroon. NEVER!! Ashia! You are too mediocre a thinker and too self-hating a person for them.
I am sure your bosses in New Haven, Conn. will be proud of the work you are doing.
America, and unfortunately Africa, has always had self-hating serpents like you: self-hating tribalist You are a necessary nuissance and a reminder of the kind of cleaning up we will do when we take over Cameroon.

[The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc.]

Entering Fotress Europe is an eloquent piece that must be disgested by any serious African...wishing to heal his/herself from the slow death that's afflicting emigrants in a world of hate, subtle racism, rejection of the negro and sheer unimportance of the black skin....though these ethiopians come from a continent belching aplenty...

...."We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view."(Mao Tse-Tung)

[AntiTrolla]

Ras tuge, yyou claim that "Africans ought to realise the urgency of returning to Africa to transform the place into a land of light, that will spare them the injustices of mystery Babylon."

And where are you now? Tell the truth. Have you gone back home to "transform the place into a land of light"? Nooooo. This Babylon you keep mentioning, is it part of a place of light, like Bangem sub-division, which I am sure you have transformed according to yur crazy philosophy?
Is Ras a Bakossi name? Why are you following a religion created in Ethiopia by Ethiopians who are angry when people say they are African? Identify yourself and where you are if you are a real man.
People write intelligent articles on this site and your only contribution is to spout incoherent obscenities. I don't see any light in that.

[AntiTrolla]

Entrpreneur no-news, ya own na how? You completely misunderstood Miss Ekosso. She does not live in Europe. She is visiting Europe.

You say "even though they know cameroon, for instance, offers a better option...."
What, like your no-news rag of a newspaper? Or your madcap non-ideas? Or your monster ego that stops you from thinking . Ah beg go and gas.

And while you empty your bowels, try and stay on-message. Its not about you. It's the feelings an African has when travelling to europe.

[limbekid]

I frankly do not understand the hounding of The Entrepreneur (who I do not always agree with)on this topic. I think he has been very magnanimous with the author. The author has options (she could opt to holiday in Cameroon for instance, without the attendant hassle), but if she chooses to visit Europe instead then it`s a conscious choice. Personally, I do not feel anyone should pay allegiance to a geographical territory if there is nothing to benefit

[Ras Tuge]

AntiTrolla,
since you must know, Babylon is not just a place. Simply i'd say it is a system; that corrupted, perverted, treacherous, abhorrent, and callous nature of the exceptionally vicious system that reigns supreme within the mind-set of Western imperialists.

Rasta came to life to fight this system from spreading, and taking root in Africa. But because the black man has unfortunately always been his own enemy, feeble African elements such as you will always be jealoused of other progressive African fundamentalists like myself. Luckily though, you'll remain in abject obscurity.

As a true born Rasta, i look to MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY'S teaching as the lifeblood of a self-reliant Cameroon, a place where i have much affection for. Having faith about transforming Cameroon into a land of light, where i truly belong is a choice that i will defend till the end, after haven seen what the world is about.

Rastafarianism was not founded in Ethiopia, and it is NOT an Ethiopian faith man. Ethiopia simply happens to be the Promise land in Black liberation theology as propounded by the prophecy of the wise negro master MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY.

And one simple question for you; Why are Africans Christians, and Muslims, when these two monotheistic faiths emanated from the Middle East? By your judgment, it is safe to suggest that Africans MUST undoutedly be stupid since the religion that Christ propagated was violently rejected by His own Jewish people, who consequently murdered him!

' Liberate the minds of men, and you'll liberate the bodies of men.' MARCUS GARVEY

Cameroon and Africa need Garvey's teachings now more than ever. The Nkrummahs, Toures, Lumumbas, Sankaras, and afew others died heroically as Garvey students. Ever since then, Africa has been rotting each blessed day owing to this shameless self-enmity, and destruction that has afflicted a good many Africans. But hey man, there's hope. JAH LIVES!

[dango tumma]

garvey teaching is for ex-african slaves not for proud africans.