Hi!
    As some have registered a desire to once in a while have non-political discussions, I thought I would throw in this butut on an issue that I have pondered for many years. This is the issue of African cultural identity or what it means to be African or Gambian. Ask any Samba or Demba in the streets of Gambia to give you a symbol of Gambian culture and the odds are that he will show you a hut, some forest or some animal like an elephant - which we incidentally do not even have. Is this truly what our culture is or is it a state of our backwardness or underdevelopment?
    All the societies on this earth have at some point in their history lived in a state of underdevelopment and some have through some form or other evolved into advanced societies socially, technologically, economically, politically etc. This means that all societies have historically lived in huts, roamed forests etc. in their days of underdevelopment and Africa therefore does not in any way have a monopoly on the claim to huts as a symbol. Many of the societies that have advanced in the aspects mentioned above have however thrown away the symbolism of the huts etc. that used to be their reality in their days of underdevelopment. This is to due to the fact that a stagnated culture is one that is not conducive to development and innovation. Should we therefore accept the continued symbolism of huts and other signs of underdevelopment as what rightly describes us? It is granted that a vast number of Gambians and Africans live in huts in villages near the bushes but should this mean that this state in our development cycle should be what we should be stuck with? Should this mean that cities and all they encompass should be discounted as not being part of our culture?  
    We have so readily accepted the symbolism of underdevelopment that we have tended to miss its psychological effects. It is a given that one of the most effective ways to perpetually keep one under one's influence is to make him or her feel inferior. This has been practised since time immemorial and is most vividly illustrated in modern times during the Atlantic slave trade and the colonisation of Africa. It is the lingering effects of such practices that we are witnessing. Look at African especially Senegambian music videos and films and this fact becomes glaringly evident. In order for the producers to feel that they are portraying ''African culture'', they have to shoot most of the films and clips in the bush or in village settings. This tends to keep alive the stereotypical impression promoted in the West of Africa as a backward jungle. I sometimes feel so enraged that the beauty of Dakar is nearly never portrayed in the Senegalese films - films produced and financed by Senegalese. No wonder most of the African films financed through Western agencies such as Channel Four, French Ministry of Culture and others plus African books tend to be given acclaim only when they portray village life. I am yet to see an African film financed by Western institutions that positively portrays the nice infrastructure of African cities. Why? Because Africa does not have nice skyscrapers, roads, bridges, villas etc. to show or is it because it is a means of keeping the stereotypical impression of Africa as a backward haven of man-eating savages alive? Imagine a Canadian mayor in 2001calling Africans cannibals!
    It is a fact that a lot of the African city life is influenced by Western culture yet one has to understand that no society has a claim to technology or development. The mistake that is made most of the time is to equate technology and development with the West. This is a grave fallacy. It is true that the West is more developed than others but no one society or race has contributed all of the development that has led to the current state of the world. When African civilisation, technology and science was flourishing in ancient Egypt, most of Europe was populated by uncivilised cavemen yet when Egyptian influence reached Europe, the Europeans didn't cling on to their underdeveloped ways as a means of maintaining their ''culture''. They quickly embraced all the positives they could find in the African civilisation and suited the scientific, technological, religious, social etc. aspects to their ways of life and it is those positives that have laid the foundation for the science, religion, technology etc. of modern times. Europe would not have been able to transform itself from its state of backwardness to its current position if it had clung on to its culture of caves, huts etc. It realised that culture is dynamic and needed to change in order to develop. It is the same thing Africans need to realise. We need to throw away the notion that culture is stagnant and that our African culture is the rigid form of life  lived by ancestors. We need to take cognisance of the fact that culture is an evolving process and that technology is a tool to use in this process. We need to promote innovation. Take the example of the typical ''fanaal'' competitions. Innovation or creativity in coming up with new designs is not rewarded. It is rather the ''fanaal'' that most resembled the ones built by our parents and their parents that are rewarded. What is wrong with adding a category for the best innovation? A friend once jokingly told me that if ''kankurang'' was a Western phenomenon, people would not in this day and age have to go into the bush to cut ''jaffo'' and leaves. One would instead go to the mall and buy the costume ready-made and not have to worry about leaves and branches cutting and stinging one.
    This piece is getting long and I'll just cut it here. Before doing so, I would like to make an illustration. I visited a Swedish museum depicting the Swedish way of life some time ago and the similarities with the Gambian way of life are chillingly similar. The huts, the small sleeping cubicles in the huts where one would not fit if one is a tall person, the charcoal clothes irons, the baths in which the same water 
had to be shared by the whole family with the father taking the first bath followed by the mother and the rest in terms of age or position within the family etc. The Swedes are not hounding these aspects of their underdevelopment as  their culture. They are rather in museums to show the young generation how tough they had it in their days of underdevelopment. Would Sweden be in the position it is today had it obstinately held onto that period of underdevelopment and thoroughly identified with it? My belief is no. It is also my belief that the huts etc. that we portray as African or Gambian culture are but a state of our underdevelopment. In order to get past this state, we have to realise that culture is an evolving process that needs to use science and technology in order to progress and evolve.Thanks.
                                                                                                                                        Buharry.

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