ONUMBA.COM, USA – Some Africans have been caviling from the rooftop knocking President Obama for not visiting Africa enough. 
The president would probably beg to differ, but all of that is now water under the bridge with the good news for everyone being that Obama is about to visit there.
And as Obama prepares to visit Africa, with plans to go to his ancestral homeland of Kenya for the first time as president, his grandmother Mama Sarah who lives in the western village of Kogelo has already turned in her special request, asking that she be allowed to prepare a meal for her grandson. That right there is not asking for much. Onumba.com hopes they grant her modest request. That’s African tradition. She said she will prepare “all the traditional food available” for the president, to possibly include “fish, chicken and maize porridge.” That’s really sweet.
But now comes the interesting part. Turns out Obama’s grandmother is not the only one requesting something involving the president’s highly anticipated visit. The miffed anti-gay group in Kenya is also requesting that Obama not bring up the issue of same sex marriage during his visit, letting him know well in advance that Kenya is not interested at all in his global same sex marriage agenda and Theravada.
“We do not want Obama and Obama, we do not want Michelle and Michelle,” they chanted in choriamb. “We want Obama and Michelle and we want a child!”
“It is important for us as Kenyans to know that the US is not God, and thus we cannot follow them blindly,” said evangelical Christian pastor Bishop Mark Kariuki.
From the look of things, especially with those poignant comments, it just doesn’t look like Africa and Obama will ever agree on the issue of same sex marriage. With that inveterate stalemate in mind, the following is a story pulled from Onumba.com archive for the reading pleasure of our audience. Enjoy.
ONUMBA.COM, USA (Culled from Onumba.com archive, 2014) – President Barack Obama recently wrapped up his first major visit to Africa where he urged the leader of his host country of Senegal to elevate his governing game to a different level. Actually, all African leaders should do just that on important matters of nation building, economic development and helping their people.
But if what Obama was getting at was to goad President Macky Sall and other African leaders to embrace gay rights reform, to promote same sex marriage or anything like that, he might as well have stayed home.
It is a profound boondoggle. Bluntly put, same sex marriage won’t happen in Africa, not in this lifetime, possibly, not ever. Its actually a big waste of my time writing about it.
Why?
For one thing, it is intensely culturally inharmonious with a smorgasbord of African male machismo ethos and swagger rooted deep in elaborate traditions that fan its flame. To inject homosexuality into the scene would amount to, among other unimaginable changes, dismantling deeply held customs in culturally rigid societies where male and female roles, even demeanor, are finely delineated and non-negotiable.
Summed up, hell will freeze over and over before that happens.
Of course, Africans love and embrace Obama affectionately. They are profusely inspired by his epic historical accomplishment being the first Black president of the United States. He certainly made all Black people proud. But that doesn’t mean that Africans are prepared to blindly follow him and the United States into what many of them decry as immoral pit; into what many of them adamantly see as Obama’s ill-advised declaration that same sex marriage is OK.
For African people and Obama, perhaps, this is one of those classic situations where the saying, ‘let’s agree to disagree’ is flawlessly applicable.
In Senegal, Obama and Sall found themselves grappling with the uneasy circumstances of their disagreement over gay marriage. They struggled to navigate through what was clearly an awkward moment over an issue Obama knew quite well was hugely unpopular in Africa.
It wasn’t easy at all for Sall who faced the tough conundrum of wanting to be a nice, welcoming and gracious host while recognizing the need to be straight with his brother guest, not vague and mushy, on an issue of inveterate passion for both sides, saying: “We are still not ready to decriminalize homosexuality.”
Ouch.
Though Sall assured Obama that his country is “very tolerant” and respectful for the gay community in Senegal, he still made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want to be pressured into accepting the gay lifestyle.
There you have it. In many ways, Sall was actually speaking for the rest of Africa.
Look, at the end of the day, it really boils down to this. While gay rights, same sex marriage and similar agitations that dangle the ululations of the aggrieved gay community are resulting in tectonic shift in attitude favorable to that community, and the gay lifestyle becoming increasingly acceptable in the United States and other Western societies, the obvious fact is, African countries are nowhere near the cusp of dancing and crooning along with the Kumbaya gay cuddling crowd. This is not an important matter for Africans. What they worry about is surviving today and getting to the next day. They worry and hope that someone, anyone, would address the apocalyptic matters of poverty and disease as well as corruption and government mismanagement pummeling their continent.
They worry about the feckless and lousy leadership in a tormented Africa. They worry about the debilitating social condition, impoverishment and near collapse of economic and political development and infrastructure in societies across a mind-numbingly glumly continent moaning and groaning in pain.
No one is Africa is sitting around in the midst of pummeling poverty and misery dwelling on the poor gay community and the often trumpeted debilitating woes of its members.
Obviously, gay rights is a topical issue of constitutional quandary in an abundantly wealthy America, where the basic needs of all citizens are largely met, which then allows the well funded governments the time and luxury to focus on addressing decorative and ancillary matters totally outside of critical issues of fundamental survival.
But for African people, most of whom are dangling on a tattered thread of impoverishment with mind-numbingly very little to live on, toiling daily in Gehenna-like conditions just to survive and provide for their depressingly deprived children, gay right issues are not really what’s bothering them and could care less about whether or not those issues are being addressed anywhere.
President Obama and America really should understand and respect Africa for seeing this issue through a vastly different lens.
One more thing. Its worth mentioning that the African pushback against the relentless tide of immense Western pressure and badgering to cave in and embrace same sex marriage is actually rooted in the same moral arguments, and similar to the kind of stubborn resistance mounted against gay rights in the United States just decades ago. Clearly, open acceptance and wholesale cuddling of gay people we see today did not happen overnight here, either. And even now, there is still a vast concourse of holdouts, though often private and cricket about their view. Obviously, things have changed immensely in the United States, but it all goes to show that folks (Africans) should be allowed to move at their own pace, change at their pace, even if you think that pace is a pittance.
And please don’t remind me of Black people being in the same conundrum long time ago during slavery and Jim Crow era. This is about lifestyle, not humans.
To belabor the point, America also went through an extraordinarily period of transformation from a largely openly homophonic society not too long ago to one now where the trend has totally reversed; the vitriol, frown and rage against gays no longer intense. That’s why the whole frenzy of gay coddling has now ragingly snowballed into a stampede of politicians and community leaders tripping all over each other in a haste to declare support for gay marriage and most importantly to be seeing publicly doing so.
Clearly, it is a thrilling triumph for American pursuit of a more perfect union. That’s good for America. But again, not everyone shares in that excitement. It just doesn’t look like African societies are prepared, definitely not now, perhaps never, to travel down that same terrain to achieve their own brand of perfection. A more perfect union, yeah, Africans want that too, as long as it does not include the notion of a man marrying another man. Africa is unwaveringly passing on that one.
Gay rights, ahh, maybe someday, eons from now, perhaps, but definitely not same sex marriage. Fogedaborit.
Please, it won’t happen in Africa. And it shouldn’t. Africans don’t want it. America should respect that and back off. Help Africa in other areas, not gay rights.
