Of ostriches, prawns, and hooded cloaks; a look at Africa’s countries
For many of us here in the U.S., Africa feels very far away. There’s the geographic distance, of course, but also a deeply fragmented understanding of the continent that makes up a staggering 20% of the world’s total land area.
Myself included. When I think of “Africa,” I’m met with a hazy collage of photographs, sounds, and films absorbed over years, mostly by osmosis. I’ve seen David Attenborough-narrated clips of Serengeti wildlife and Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1969 “Contras’ City,” an incisive portrait of post-colonial Dakar. I’ve been serenaded by the recordings of Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke and the sentimental, dreamlike strings of Malian kora instrumentalist Toumani Diabaté. And I was of course raised on near-weekly viewings of “The Lion King,” Disney’s “‘Hamlet’—but with lions.”
But with a population of over 1.5 billion people living in 54 countries, speaking 2,000 different languages (with more than 520 in Nigeria alone), and living in large metropolises, mid-size cities, suburbs, and rural villages, it’s a wonder we often consolidate our notions of Africa into a single, monolithic image. Perhaps my earlier attempt to “think of ‘Africa,'” misses the point altogether.
Narrowing things down only slightly, when I “think of ‘sub-Saharan Africa,'” the first thing to come to mind is Cameroon, thanks to being assigned the Central African republic when each student in my 4th-grade class was tasked with researching a different African nation. The Sao civilization, from the Lake Chad Basin, was the dominant culture in the region now known as Cameroon when Portuguese ships first landed on its shores in the 15th century. Observing the tidal estuary of the Wouri River, the foreign explorers noted its abundance of shrimp, naming the territory “Rio dos Camarões,” or “River of Prawns.” (Some may note the similarity to the Spanish word for shrimp, “camarón,” which originates from the same Latin root.) Germany colonized the area—calling it “Kamerun”—in 1884, followed by a takeover by the British and French, who divided it into “French Cameroun” and the “British Cameroons.” The country gained independence from France Jan. 1, 1960, and Ahmadou Ahidjo was established as the first president of the République du Cameroun shortly thereafter.
Just to the south, in neighboring Gabon, it was the Portuguese who again christened the area, this time from “gabão,” meaning “hooded cloak,” due to the curved horn shape of the coastline’s Komo River estuary. Under French rule from 1885 until the country gained its independence Nov. 28, 1958, the French-speaking citizens of Gabon still call it “République Gabonaise” today.
Algeria, in the North, is Africa’s largest country, named for Algiers, the city chosen by France as the capital when they invaded and colonized the region in 1830. The city was titled centuries earlier, following another usurpation, when Berber leader Buluggin ibn Ziri established the municipality on the ruins of the Phoenician city of Icosium in 950. “Algiers” arrived from the Arabic “al-Jazāʾir,” meaning “the islands,” so called for four islets in its bay. The singular form, “al-jazīrah,” might sound familiar as the media network whose name references the Arabian Peninsula.
Eritrea, adjacent to Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, is separated from the Arabian Peninsula by just a couple hundred miles of the narrow waterway known as the Red Sea. Long contested by many powers, including the Ottoman Empire, the Egyptians, and the Sultanate of Adal, the area gradually came under Italian rule in the mid- to late-19th century, culminating with the founding of the “Colonia Eritrea” in 1890. The Italian name harkens back to the ancient Greek word for the Red Sea, “Erythre Thalassa,” from “erythos,” the Greek phrase for “red,” tracing its roots to the Proto-Indo-European “reudh,” also the origin of the English term for the color.
Still in East Africa, just south of the equator, the continent’s second highest mountain rises high above the landscape, its tallest peak reaching 17,057 feet. The land mass was called “Kīrī-nyaga” in the local Kikuyu language, with “nyaga” implying both “ostrich” and the bird’s white patch of feathers, so deemed for its snow-capped peaks. “Kīrī-nyaga” was translated into the Kamba language as “ki nyaa” and was eventually recorded by German missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf as “Kenia” when he became the first European to encounter the mountain in 1849. The appellation would define the larger region when the British Empire established the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya in 1920, dominating the area until Kenya gained its independence on December 12, 1963.
Leaping off the page
Now with a few more bits of ephemera, my mental collage of the continent grows more defined, but remains distant, flattened to words and images on a page. To begin to understand a place nothing can replace being there, bringing it closer, allowing our preconceived notions to leap off the proverbial page and, if we’re lucky, be replaced by our own experiences.
Category: Real Estate
