The Omaha guide., 1947-06-07

BLANCHE ALICE RICH
our country. There are still many
dark places, it is true, and there
are still the sequestered forests
villages and the jungles and the
deserts. But there is today ar
Africa awake and alert to what
is going on in the world, and Afri
cans eager to have a part in those
goings-on.
Throuhout Africa the cry is un-
animous: they want, education
and industry" It is the voice Of
the people, from the village to the
city from the ignorant to the edu-
Gated, from the poor to the rich
from the worker to the ruler. II
s one and the same determination
to build a new continent in
Brightest Africa" Some people
still call Africa the dark or un-
known. The names Of a few mis-
sionaries, merchants or explorers,
the secret unhappy consciousness
of the evil slave traffic; that is all
most Of us know Of Africa, in fact
all that many Of us wanted to
know. The desire to communicate
now comes out Of Africa. Not one
voice but many must speak.
Africa has many returning vet
Grams who have seen the mechan-
lied and mental skill Of men who
are products Of our colleges and
universities. They now want to
see their country 60 forward and
progress.
We are only just beginning to
realize that Africa is a huge place.
1t is not a country, it is the Sec
ond largest continent in the world,
whose area is twelve million
square miles. It is not a land Of
savages. Neither i it a land Of
wilderness.
Everywhere is mystery. Force
your way through the forest think
ing you will find some solution,
and the jungle closes after you
pass, and now the mystery lies
behind you, as well a before. You
are swallowed up in it. This tro-
pical world teens with life, but to
you it seems unpeopled: You can
follow the windings of an Afri-
can trail from dawn until dark
and never see a living creature.
They peer at you through a wall
of green; alert and motionless. but
never a glimpse do you see of
them. They evade you. The very
birds that seem to call to you in
the distance will not await your
coming. They fly afar, bearing
on the wings of mystery that you
seek. Nature holds her breath as
you pass and the land is mute.
AS evening draw in and the
swift night falls you may hear,
the slow, measured, mysterious
throb of a drum. These barbaric
drum beats, relayed from town to
town in a strange language which
no white man has ever read. They
can, in a few hours bear a mess
age across Africa. Or it may be
the long, moaning note of a horn,
like the wrath of a sound, COM
ing from nowhere, and filling all
the distances with its sobbing
melody. But you will never see
the hand that smites the drum, nor
him who winds the horn.
But the mystery of Africa is
not unfriendly, nor is its silence
forbidding or sinister. Rather it is
inviting, alluring. 1t beckons you
on. Surely at the end of that
Jungle corridor it will wait for
you. Around the next bend in the
trail it will stand with smiling
greetings. And so men have been
lured on and on. No man who has
fallen under the spell of its peo-
pies can ever be but an alien and
a stranger in any other part of
the world. There have been many
business people and writer's who
went to Africa and now they are
building their homes there. I have
heard and read if you ever go to
Africa one time you always want
to go back.
There have been many outstand-
ing people who have contributed
much of their time and devoted
their lives toward the advance
ment of Africa, one of them is
Carl E. Ackeley. I just finished
reading one if his books, In