Black Continent

Not a good week for the Lebanese in Africa..

Amid a clear blue sky, a toy-like plane lands on a sunny landscape covered with cute Baobab trees only to be greeted by a smiley giraffe before taking off again. This is how a banner advertising OTV’s fundraising “road-trip” portrays the magical continent on the Tayyar’s website.

Unfortunately, not even friendly giraffes can sheer up the Lebanese in Guinea these days. Our compatriots there are so scared of the upcoming civil war they fled to Sierra Leone, the same country where the gory events in “Blood diamond” took place (A side note: This is also where Speaker Nabih Berri was born)

The Lebanese in Nigeria are not doing well either. After the alledged “escape” of Lebanese hostage Imad Saliba from his captors in oil-rich Port Harcourt, armed factions opened fire at two Lebanese construction workers killing a Zgharta native and injuring another.

Of course, things should be put in perspective. Africa is not one country as many Lebanese seem to think, although it does tend to have a bad image in the Lebanese collective memory (remember Cote D’ivoir’s war two years ago that drove tens of thousands of Lebanese away? Or the plane crash that killed dozens of Lebanese in Cotonou, Benin?)

I live in Ghana, which is somewhere between Guinea, Cote D’ivoir, Benin and Nigeria, yet life here is peaceful and prospering (thank god). Even in Nigeria (a country with more than 100 million people,) the Lebanese are generally doing very well. Why else would Michel Aoun want to send Gebran Bassil there? (Bassil, incidentally, was also hit by this week’s curse and had a “car accident” that forced him to fly back home for treatment)

Still, it wouldn’t be bad for all of us to reflect on the case of Joseph Issa, the electronic engineer who couldn’t make a living in Lebanon, who decided to flee to a remote part of Africa, only to return back as a cold corpse.