Africa, I Love you !

Just finished reading Chinua Achebe's classic "Things Fall Apart" which speaks of the vibrant culture in a village Umuofia in (Probably Western) Africa and how the life of fun loving people around here is affected by Christianity. It showcases how amazingly colorful and in depth the African culture was before the whiteman and his all savoring religion branded it as the "Dark Continent".

Achebe fiercely resents the stereotype of Africa as an undifferentiated "primitive" land, the "heart of darkness," as Conrad calls it. Throughout the novel he shows how African cultures vary among themselves and how they change over time.
It is the white missionary's inability to recognize that the Africans did not wish to change which leads to the breaking up of the villages in this region. The missionaries represent the ruthlessness of the white man in Africa. The villagers were asked to be obsequious to the white man and his religion or suffer the consequences. The way they force their world view on the natives clearly shows how forecful impingement of religious/cultural dogmas can ruin lives and ways of living. Most of the "developments" that the christians were trying to bring forth could be classified as "modernisation and routing evil" from the African society if we define the ways of west as "modern and eminently acceptable for humanity".

Keeping aside any of these larger issues the beauty of Achebe lies in anecdotes, songs and adages prevalent among the natives. COuple of which comes quickly to my mind is - one a lyric and nother a story about mosquito and ear !
Once a mosquito wanted to marry an ear. Ear said," How can I marry someone like you who has such an ephimeral life?. I dont know in how many hours u would be dead or be killed?". Thus rejected by the ear mosquito took a vow that whenever it shall meet the ear, it shall hum around it to make it acknowledge its vibrant life ! An to this day it stays !!!
And the lyric was (with my own naughty modifications;))

When I hold her hand, she says,"Dont Touch".
When I hold her feet, she says,"Dont Touch"
But when I hold her full grown breasts,She pretends not to know !!

Achebe's is "hold her waist beads, she pretends not to know - which is though equally naughty would be lost on readers who might not know the connection between waist beads and making love in Africa. Hence this destruction by yours truly !!)