The African Experience: A Curse or Blessing

The African Experience: A Curse or Blessing

The native African places an immense amount of

importance and respect on Nature. Its effects determine

certain predicaments that control and direct African lives,

and how outsiders, especially Westerners, perceive them.

Never before has a group of people followed so religiously

and faithfully a baffling phenomenon such as nature. Nature

worship has deep roots in the African tradition and is now a

full and indispensable branch of the African heritage. Nature

defines Africa to the world as the “Cradle of Mankind.” To the

African, Nature also acts as a mediator between the gods in

the heavens and man on earth. This relationship, I feel, has

been greatly misinterpreted by the vacuous and ethnocentric

civilized world: it has been tagged as ‘black magic,’ ‘voodoo,’

and other meager figments of unfortunately parochial

imaginations. What an insult! Oh may the gods forgive them,

for they know not what they do.

“In the beginning was the water, and the water

was with god, and the water was god.” This quote clearly

defines how the natural elements such as land (earth), sun,

moon, lightning, and, in this case, water are considered not

just as the vital necessities that help sustain life but as the

gods of life. They are built honorary shrines as an act of

appreciation and appeasement. In Egypt, in northeast Africa,

a great temple was built for Isis, the water god. This temple

was built so flamboyantly as an attempt to try and reflect

architecturally how important the Nile is to the people of

Egypt. Without the Nile, Egypt would have been a barren,

desolate place, incapable of supporting life; just an eastern

extension of the Sahara Desert. Therefore, the great river is

considered a miracle, a miracle from the gods, given in order

that man may continue to exist and not be annihilated. Hence

the magnificence of the Temple of Isis.

African peoples had a lot of mysteries in their

continent which they tried to explain. And once again,

they turned to their superiors in the supernatural world, the

gods. For example, if lightning should strike, that would be

an ominous sight, implying that the gods are angry with

the people; an extraordinary harvest or rain after a long,

intolerably dry season would be considered as an act of

favor towards man by the gods. All this was the Africans’

way of trying to understand the unexpected and to explain

the inexplicable, functioning much as science does in

contemporary Western society. Why, then, does this entire

system connote barbarism or a rustic, undeveloped mentality

when used in its original context, or when approached by the