Crying for Freedom
An African Across Europe to America
by
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I arrived at Zaventem Airport in Brussels at about 7 p.m. It was in December. I had to change planes at Geneva Airport. In the plane to Belgium, I found myself overflowing with fear. I was concerned that I may not be able to cope with the fast moving life I had seen in movies. However, I was also happy because my trip was affording me an escape from my own society, a society I had come to hate and of which I was somewhat ashamed. For me, the thought of what I was leaving behind made the thought of what I was getting myself into seem quite small in comparison. Then it didn't really matter what was in store for me. I was simply grateful to Providence for the chance to escape.
At the Zaventem Airport, I saw a "moving staircase" for the first time. I encountered doors that opened all by themselves whenever I approached them. For the longest of times I was frightened by them because I thought, for a brief time, the doors were magic. It was amazing to me how other people walked through those doors without any concern, almost as if they were oblivious to the doors. While I, on the other hand, couldn't help but stop and watch them open and close a number of times. (Now that I think about it, I think a stuffy old man told me, in French, to "get out of the God damned way, if you please!") So, I entered, following the signs in the airport to the train station. I had studied Economics and French at college. I was at ease with myself as long as the signs were in French.
On my way to the train station, I was accosted by an Arab cab driver that chewed the biggest piece of bubblegum I had ever seen. (I was reminded of an afternoon long ago, watching a neighbor's cows chewing away on some bush.) He asked where I was going and I told him. From my answer he must have been able to tell that I was from another country, and possibly easy prey, because he turned his full attention to me and explained how much cheaper a cab to Leuven would be opposed to taking the train. He told me more than once that it would cost at least twice as much to go there by train. His reason—I would need to take three different trains before reaching my destination. Something about his manner made me leery about his motives, so I refused to budge. Maybe it was the way he kept chewing at his bubblegum as if he hated it and wanted to pound it into nothing with his teeth. He asked me to give him 1500 Belgian Francs (B.F.) for a ride to Leuven. I thanked him for his kindness and proceeded in the direction of the train station. It cost me only 150 B.F. to secure a ticket to Leuven. When I put the change from the ticket into my pocket, I thought about that taxi driver. I wondered if someone like him would ever get his just desserts for preying on the innocent. Well, this may seem crazy, but I wanted to turn right back around and straighten the driver out. I know that sounds bad, but I thought it all the same. As I sat down in the train, which was nearly empty, I imagined his taxicab exploding into a huge ball of fire and bits of metal.
I had two heavy suitcases. I struggled to lift them into the overhead luggage rack of the train. A white man sitting across from me offered to help, which was very kind. After I had gotten the suitcases in place, we engaged in conversation. "You must have arrived from Africa?" Fresh off the boat, right?"
"Yes, from Gold Coast," I replied.
"Gold Coast!" he exclaimed "I lived in Gold Coast for seven years at the University of Legon. My Dad was a professor there. I was just a lad." We continued to talk throughout the trip to the Gare Central of Brussels. He told me he was called Howard and that he was a British Unionist working with a European Labor Union headquartered in Brussels.
When the train arrived at Brussels's Gare Central station, he helped with my luggage and escorted me to the platform for the train to Leuven. He gave me his address and phone number and asked me to get in touch with him in case I had any problems. I didn't pursue anything further with him.
I was a stranger in a strange land; after meeting the taxi driver, I wasn't feeling too comfortable with overly friendly people. (When I was a small boy there was a man in our village who was overly friendly to some of the children, and then one summer we found out that he had been doing some awful things to them and had been for years. Then that man disappeared from our village, never to be seen again. There were many rumors as to what had happened to him, but the only thing anyone could agree on was that no child would ever be hurt or touched again by that man. While I had never met the man in my village as I was growing up, the kind stranger on the train made me remember the stories I had heard when I was a small boy.)
As a child, my parents divorced when I was only three years old. I remained in the custody of my Dad. The first time I set eyes on my Mom was when I was 14 years old. I remember the tears, streaming like a river down her face, when she saw me. It was her fault, she explained to me, for not keeping in touch. As I looked intently into her eyes, I could discern that she had always been present in spirit.
As a child, I missed a lot of good things in life available to Western children. Yet, I grew up accepting everything as normal. Long after I arrived in the land of the white man, I realized that I qualified as an "abused child." Yet, for me as an African, when you had life, and a meal to take you through the day, life was perfectly normal. So, I grew up oblivious to any limitations from my environment and upbringing.
I recall that I had fascinations for the library while I was growing up. Oftentimes, I would disappear from home for as long as two weeks because my dad got drunk and gave me a beating for no apparent reason (maybe I took a wrong step he would complain). I spent the nights in the streets, and the days in the library. My Dad knew that and would come to the library to fetch me when he began to fear something terrible would happen to me. Many years have passed by, and now I was on my way to study in the land of the white man. The train to Leuven was crowded. I had to stand; I was uncomfortable the entire time for some inexplicable reason. The passengers were mostly young children, perhaps students. I didn't see many adults. I later found out that most of the passengers were indeed students on their way back to school after spending the weekend home with their parents. (Belgium is a small country, small enough that students can easily abandon their school campuses on a Friday, travel home to spend the weekend with their parents and still have time enough to travel back to school for the following week's classes.
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About the Book
CRYING FOR FREEDOM tells the story of Oheneba, a young man from Africa whose desire to escape his native country's defective social, political, and economic systems propels him to Europe and eventually to the United States. He discovers that neither place is the "land of milk and honey" he had dreamt of. His experiences and observations during his travels dampen his hope for the black race, which he views as not only failing to trust itself, but also reposing blind trust in the white race and in the Christian religion of meekness and forgiveness: misplaced trust that has enabled the aggressive and the "strong" to perpetually dominate the black race. Oheneba comes to the scathing determination that the white race is a ruthless, bloodthirsty race, quick to give charity but not justice, a race that is never satisfied, that relentlessly pursues positions of command, glory and wealth of every kind, even if it means colonizing and enslaving other races and declaring them personal property.
Yet, Oheneba concedes that he has reached his current station in life partly due to the benevolence of the white race. As much as he tries to hate white people for their greedy and wanton destruction of his race, hate is a feeling very difficult for him to adopt. Oheneba cannot bring himself to apply the word "racist" to whites, partly because he has had worse experiences at the hands of his fellow blacks.
In the end, Oheneba concludes that despite the many sins in white America's past and the flaws in its present, they share with him a common humanity that is evident just below the surface. Oheneba wonders, rather boldly, whether his own life story provides evidence that white America, for all its atrocious and evil deeds, may possess a paradoxical goodness. In order for black people to find their places in mainstream America, much depends upon the generosity of white Americans. And to the extent that many white Americans of past and present are decent, fighting for black people's equal rights and access to mainstream America, sometimes even helping black folks to get ahead of their fellow whites, this paradoxical goodness is evident. Ironically, it is the very attributes of the social systems that Oheneba was running away from that ultimately became his grace: ¬e collective culture or the "it-takes-the-village-to-raise-a-child" approach to life. Oheneba loathed this culture because he felt it created comfort and security for the African and resulted in the suppression of individual responsibility and accountability.
About the Author
The Author, an African born UScitizen, is a published writer and a Certified Auditor with a Fortune 100 company. He reaches his readers with the thoroughness of an anal-retentive Auditor. Yaw Sachi is his pen name.