The Gambian
Godfather
By
Hakeem Babalola
In the early 90's
shortly after the collapse of communism, Africans
started exploring another part of the world in order to
experiment whether the Central Europe would become
another haven just like the Western Europe where
majority of Africans considered as their second home.
Among these explorers were Steve Aboaba and Mufutau
Hassan. These two men wanted to remain in Hungary but
Foreigners' Police Office wouldn't renew their residence
permit, even though both had reasons to stay. Aboaba had
Hungarian wife, a daughter and a job. Hassan was then an
expectant father and an athlete. But they were told to
leave the country.
The two men's plight
seemed impossible to resolve until one man came to their
aid. Like almost every African living in Hungary they
turned to the man who is known across Hungary's vibrant
African community as a fighter for their rights. But who
is this man? He is Mr. Deen. (That is what they call
him). He is a Gambian, who is now Hungarian citizen, but
prefers African. One can describe him as the godfather
with passion for helping people though some see him as a
show father who loves blowing his own trumpet. Today,
although Aboaba has left the country, Hassan is now a
naturalized Hungarian, living with his Hungarian wife
and children.
Unlike most godfathers,
this one is not rich, he does not wear ostentatious
clothes or jewelry, and he does not kill or inspire
violence. Instead he is a fighter for human rights,
which is why he founded the Mahatma Gandhi Human Rights
Movements in 1992 with the aim of fighting injustice,
integrating with Hungarians and promoting African
culture. Gibril Deen, who turned 60 on February 17, is
also the organizer and team manager of Afrikai Star
Football Club.
Stocky in build with an
imposing presence, Deen left the shore of Africa when
many of us here were either in primary or secondary
school, or not even born yet. He came to Hungary to
study history and political science, and later printing
and graphics arts. Like most of his contemporaries, he
stayed after completing his studies. He then attended
courses on trade unionism and sport management. "I've
devoted all of my life to human rights activities and
I'll fight for anyone," he says.
And he had fought many
of those battles especially in the early 90's when
things were rough for Africans living here. For
instance, he secured the release of Austin, a Nigerian
imprisoned for drug related offenses. "Mr. Deen is a
superman," says Austin who is now in Canada. "He did
everything possible to get me out. May God bless
him."
The godfather's citywide
web of contracts had also helped students obtain
scholarships that allow them to stay in the country.
Abubakar Toure, a Liberian, whose parents were
reportedly killed in that country's civil war, describes
Deen as a good man. "When all hopes seemed lost, he
secured a scholarship for me. I will never forget him."
Although skinhead
attacks are not heard of these days, the Mahatma Gandhi
Movement was formed partly to combat discrimination by
some disgruntled youths as well as official
discrimination against Africans living in Hungary. "In
the 90s, political freedom encouraged the growth of
racism and helped trigger skinhead attacks," says Deen.
"They waged war against us and we had to defend
ourselves by peaceful means. We are living here, working
here, we have family here, and we have been given
permission to stay. But the nationalistic thinkers want
to drive us away."
According to Deen, more
than four hundred African students left Hungary in 1992
because of racist attacks. "Under communism it was safe
for everyone to walk the streets, whatever their colour.
During the 70s nobody disturbed you or asked what you
were doing here. People were sympathetic and friendly in
those days, although even now most people still are. But
integration into Hungarian society is not easy because
of the language, and partly because many Hungarians
still find it difficult to accept foreigners in their
midst."
Deen says police
prejudice against Africans is still there. Not even the
godfather could escape police brutality. He once stayed
two days in police custody because he did not carry his
identity card with him. Deen also cites the case of a
Nigerian who was reportedly beaten with truncheons and
planks and kicked until he lost consciousness by two
police officers at a detention camp. However, the
godfather admits some Africans engage in criminal
activities, but he believes this does not warrant such
hypothetical reasoning that all Africans living in
Hungary are the same.
The courts offer no
relief. "Judges don't judge things right," says Deen.
The godfather also frowns at the way the Interior
Ministry treats cases involving Africans married to
Hungarian women. "They don't respect intermarriage that
much," he says, adding that police seldom answer court
summons in such cases. "In fact, the foreigners' law is
still difficult for many foreigners to understand. Hence
they should always seek legal advice."
 |
Although
Deen has helped asylum seekers from Africa
and Middle East secure refugee status, he
claims many Hungarians "see us as economic
refugees", who should go back to their
different countries. Even with refugee
status, "you're treated as a second class
citizen". Deen thinks their prejudice stems
from ignorance.
He argues that most
Hungarians have not met African
intellectuals, so they don't really know us
that much. Another reason, according to him,
is because of the negative reports on
Africa. "It definitely takes a strong mind
not to be swayed by constant false portrayal
of Africa by the Western media."
Unemployment
is one of many problems confronting Africans
in Hungary. |
Deen says it's difficult
for Africans to secure a reasonable job. Even if
Africans find a position, "we would be the first to go
in case of redundancy." Although he believes everybody
has a future, Deen doesn't see that future for Africans
who wants to work in Hungary. "Language," he says, "is
number one predicament." He suggests that new African
immigrants should "learn the language as quickly as
possible."
As a result of
unemployment, many Africans have resorted to
self-employment, ranging from forming their own Human
Rights Organizations to selling in the market to having
their own shops to forming musical bands. Perhaps it was
unemployment problems that prompted Deen to establish
Afrikai Star Football Club in 1994. However, one thing
is certain: He strongly believes sports, and football in
particular, is a great way to bring interpersonal
awareness. The Afrikai Star Football Club represented
Hungary in FIFA's Fair Play Football Against Racism in
Europe, which took place in Italy recently. "But
unfortunately many Hungarians do not like the fact that
Africans are representing Hungary in such competitions,"
he says with a little grimace.
Although Deen is admired
and respected by some, others dislike him for blowing
his own trumpet. Biodun Alabi, a pharmacist and former
member of Afrikai Star Football Club, says Deen talks
too much but sees him as an interesting, responsible and
a Saviour. "If Mr. Deen helps you, hundreds of people
will know.”
Williams Ejalu, a legal
practitioner, agrees with such accusation. He describes
Deen as an elderly that should be respected, but
unfortunately he seems to always chew more than he could
swallow. "He is fond of boasting that, he had helped
every African in Hungary,” adding that such behaviour is
not characteristic of an elderly person.
While some of his
associates see his self-promotion as a fault, Deen sees
it as a virtue. "They say I talk too much, but they
don't know it is part of my job," he asserts. The
godfather does not deny his love of publicity. "They use
me. They gain from me. Even they once accused me of
embezzlement, yet they want me to keep quiet. The
problem is African man doesn’t want another to progress.
That is our problem. If they can't thank me, they should
leave me in peace."
It does not end there,
as some even accused him of being naive. They alleged
that Deen often allowed himself to be used by those
involved in shady business like human trafficking. "Many
have exploited him," says Godwin Njoku, an English
teacher cum Human Rights activist. "Deen works a lot and
does his job with good heart but can’t keep a client’s
secret."
It’s certain the
godfather is now guiding against his name being dragged
into the mud. "Deen has done his best, and is now
protecting his name," says Peter Ihaza, Nigerian Union
President, adding that if Deen suspects someone is up to
something shady, he’s most likely avoid you. Uneasy lies
the head that wears the crown, they say. Maybe that's
the price this man has to pay for caring about the
plight of fellow immigrants in a foreign country.
posted 11 July 2007
Hakeem
Babalola is
currently teaching English Communication in Budapest,
Hungary. He loves writing, a vehicle by which he rides
to relieve himself of certain emotions. His articles
have appeared in Nigerian newspapers including
Nigerian Tribune,
Daily Champion,
Vanguard,
Daily Trust
respectively. He is also a contributor to several online
magazines like Nigeriavillagesquare.com,
Chatafrikarticles.com, voiceofnigerians and a
host of others. Hakeem is a member of Association of
Hungarian Journalists.
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Escape from Slavery: The True Story
of My Ten Years in Captivity and My
Journey to Freedom in America
By
Francis Bok
Seven-year-old Francis Piol Bol Buk was
living happily on his family's southern
Sudan farm. One day in 1986, he was sent on
errands to the marketplace. There, a slave
raid ripped him from his contented life and
threw him into a wretched existence serving
under a northern Sudanese Arab. After he
escaped at age 17, Buk made his way to Cairo
with a black market passport incorrectly
listing his name as Bok and became a U.N.
refugee allowed to settle in the U.S. in
1999. |
Although he found contentment in Iowa
among other refugees, the following year Bok decided to
work with an American antislavery organization, and
testified before Congress about the atrocities in Sudan.
While this is a remarkable story, its power is conveyed
most effectively through Bok's simple retelling. His
sincerity compels, especially when he describes the
decade of mistreatment he endured. After two failed
escape attempts, he's told he'll be killed in the
morning, and while bound, he thinks of the morning
ahead: "I would be dead and finally through with this
place and this family. My mind preferred death." Yet
when his master changes his mind, Bok immediately starts
plotting again. For all his emotional strength, though,
Bok remains humble. He thanks God and everyone who helps
him escape slavery. This is a powerful, exceptionally
well-told story, equally riveting and heartbreaking.
Although legal strides have been made, with the help of
people like Bok, the persistence of slavery in the world
makes this a work that can't be ignored.—Publishers
Weekly
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* * *
As a seven-year-old
boy growing up in the southern Sudan, Bok was caught up
in a raid on a regional market center when marauders
from the north set upon the market, killing the men and
kidnapping the women and children to work as farm
slaves. He went from a loving and supportive extended
family to the brutality of slavery in a strange land and
culture, dominated by Muslims who considered him a
Christian infidel. After enduring 10 years of slavery,
Bok escaped to freedom in Cairo, where he became a U.N.
refugee, eventually making his way to the U.S. at the
age of 21. Having learned Arabic in Northern Sudan and
English in America, Bok, with incredible determination,
became involved in the antislavery movement, speaking
around the country while seeking to earn a high-school
degree. Yet it is his simple account of being a child
cut off from his family and culture that shows the
inhumanity of slavery. Bok's saga provides another—more
contemporary—perspective on slavery for Americans
reckoning with their own troubling history of such
inhumanity. Vernon
Ford—Booklist
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|
Slave: My True Story
By
Mende Nazer
Born into the Karko tribe in the Nuba
mountains of northern Sudan, Nazer has
written a straightforward, harrowing memoir
that's a sobering reminder that slavery
still needs to be stamped out. The first,
substantial section of the book concentrates
on Nazer's idyllic childhood, made all the
more poignant for the misery readers know is
to come. Nazer is presented as intelligent
and headstrong, and her people as peaceful,
generous and kind. In 1994, around age 12
(the Nuba do not keep birth records), Nazer
was snatched by Arab raiders, raped and
shipped to the nation's capital, Khartoum,
where she was installed as a maid for a
wealthy suburban family. (For readers
expecting her fate to include a grimy
factory or barren field, the domesticity of
her prison comes as a shock.) |
 |
To Nazer, the
modern landscape of Khartoum could not possibly have
been more alien; after all, she had never seen even a
spoon, a mirror or a sink, much less a telephone or
television set. Nazer's urbane tormentors—mostly the
pampered housewife—beat her frequently and dehumanized
her in dozens of ways. They were affluent, petty, and
calculatedly cruel, all in the name of "keeping up
appearances." The contrast between Nazer's pleasant but
"primitive" early life and the horrors she experienced
in Khartoum could hardly be more stark; it's an object
lesson in the sometimes dehumanizing power of progress
and creature comforts. After seven years, Nazer was sent
to work in the U.K., where she contacted other Sudanese
and eventually escaped to freedom. Her book is a
profound meditation on the human ability to survive
virtually any circumstances.—Publishers Weekly
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 |
Alek: My Life from Sudanese Refugee to
International Supermodel
By
Alek Wek
"When I
cleaned toilets, I only saw it as work to
give me the means to achieve my goals. Of
course I hated it," the Sudanese supermodel
exclaimed. "Waking up at 4 a.m. when it's
freezing cold is not easy, followed by Uni,
coursework and my evening baby-sitting job,
but it made me disciplined and gave me a
huge sense of self-appreciation."
Born
the seventh of nine children Alek, meaning
'black-spotted cow' (one of Sudan's most
treasured cows, which represents good luck),
never dreamt of becoming a model. Both in
her motherland, where she was considered to
be inferior due to her Dinka tribe (dubbed
as 'zurqa', meaning dirty black) and again
in Britain when she arrived in 1991, she
faced hostility. |
Since being scouted
Wek has been in several high-profile music videos, done
ads for Issey Miyake, Moschino, Victoria's Secret and
Clinique, as well as strutted the runway for fashion
designers John Galliano, Donna Karen, Calvin Klein and
Ermanno Scervino - to name a few. The Dinka beauty who
was the first black model who didn't conform to a
Caucasian aesthetic also scored an acting role in 2002,
debuting in The Four Feathers as Sudanese princess Aquol.
. . .
"When I was granted
permission to re-enter the country and I had the
opportunity to revisit my old life, I realised that I
need closure because my life has transformed so much.
But with the closure I was seeking, I also realised that
I had an open book to move forward. Once I returned to
my new home in Brooklyn, I had a burning desire to
transcribe my feelings into memoirs," she said. . . .
Maintaining her
Dinka traditions while living in the Big Apple, Wek
always speaks to her mother in their traditional
language and talks Arabic with her sisters. Wek lives
with her boyfriend of four years, Riccardo Sala, an
Italian who works in property but, most importantly, Wek
brings her past life to the kitchen table by cooking
traditional Dinka food such as okra stew and dried fish,
creating aromas from her small town in Wau in her East
Side, New York, kitchen.—Jamaica-Gleaner
|
Word, Image, and the New Negro
By
Anne Carroll
The
author's analysis of how the illustrations
amplify and create tension with the writing
and how they empower and sometimes
disempower their subjects is the first
critical work in this important area.
Generously illustrated. Highly recommended.—
Choice
In
tracing the formation of the idea of the New
Negro through the vital interplay of
literature, art, and social criticism,
Word, Image, and the New Negro
makes a superb contribution to scholarship
on the Harlem Renaissance, the history of
African American publishing, and modern
American culture.—Eric
J. Sundquist, author of
To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of
American Literature |
 |
The first detailed comparative analysis of the mix
of text and illustration in the major African
American magazines and anthologies of the 1910s and
1920s. It is a major advance in our understanding of
what amounted to innovative collage forms
articulated to race and politics. Carefully
theorized and rich with persuasive readings, the
book should appeal not only to literary scholars but
also to anyone interested in modernity and the
little magazine.—Cary
Nelson, author of
Revolutionary Memory
A very welcome contribution to the contemporary
rethinking of the period. By calling our attention
to the images that consistently and significantly
appeared alongside some of the well-remembered texts
of the Harlem Renaissance, Carroll foregrounds the
very modernity that the New Negro Movement sought
self-consciously to embrace.... Carroll's eye for
the particular will have both a helpful and
inspiring effect on readers who want to continue
building on the work she has done here.—Net
Reviews
This book focuses on the collaborative illustrated
volumes published during the Harlem Renaissance, in
which African Americans used written and visual
texts to shape ideas about themselves and to
redefine African American identity. Anne Elizabeth
Carroll argues that these volumes show how
participants in the movement engaged in the
processes of representation and identity formation
in sophisticated and largely successful ways. Though
they have received little scholarly attention, these
volumes constitute an important aspect of the
cultural production of the Harlem Renaissance.
Word, Image, and the New Negro marks the
beginning of a long-overdue recovery of this legacy
and points the way to a greater understanding of the
potential of texts to influence social change.—amazon.com
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 |
Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the
Making of the New Negro
By
Barbara Foley
A carefully argued,
nuanced presentation of the genesis of the
Harlem Renaissance. Foley's breadth of
knowledge in American radical history is
impressive.—American
Literature
Foley's book is a lucid
and useful one... A heavyweight
intervention, it prompts significant
rethinking of the ideological and
representational strategies structuring the
era.—Journal
of American Studies
Foley
does a masterful job of analyzing the racial
and political theories of a wide range of
black and white figures, from the radical
Left to the racist Right... Students of
African American political and cultural
history in the early twentieth century
cannot ignore this book. Essential.—Choice
In our
current time of crisis, when ruling classes
busily promote nationalism and racism to
conceal the class nature of their
inter-imperialist rivalries, one can only
hope that readers will not be daunted by
Foley's dedication to analyzing the
ideological milieu of the 1920s that
contributed to the eclipse of New Negro
radicalism by New Negro nationalism.—Science
& Society |
With the New
Negro movement and the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s
was a landmark decade in African American political
and cultural history, characterized by an upsurge in
racial awareness and artistic creativity. In
Spectres of 1919 Barbara Foley traces the
origins of this revolutionary era to the turbulent
year 1919, identifying the events and trends in
American society that spurred the black community to
action and examining the forms that action took as
it evolved.
Unlike prior
studies of the Harlem Renaissance, which see 1919 as
significant mostly because of the geographic migrations
of blacks to the North, Spectres of 1919 looks at
that year as the political crucible from which the
radicalism of the 1920s emerged. Foley draws from a
wealth of primary sources, taking a bold new approach to
the origins of African American radicalism and adding
nuance and complexity to the understanding of a
fascinating and vibrant era.— amazon.com
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updated 24September 2008
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