Mother Africa (Companion)

I am the One who rocks the cradle of humanity. I am the One who has given birth to many nations and the blood of my heart and the milk of my bosom flows in my children who walk on every continent.

I give you plentiful resources, diamonds, and iron ore, gold, platinum. I give you diverse and beautiful wildlife. I give you the oldest hominid, Lucy, who connects us all.

I want you to cease exploiting my children, my resources, and my wildlife. I want you to find cures for diseases like AIDS that ravage my children. I want you to stop the outrageous selling of my people into slavery and the genocide, and forcing children to be soldiers in wars of which they have no stake, no control and no understanding.

I want you to recognize the beauty and brilliance of my people. I want you to honour its multi-faceted cultures and customs. I want you to not be fearful of those who take pride in their heritage.

Notes: This SoulCollage® contains a 1986 lithograph by David Driskell (b. 7 June 1931) called Spirits Watching. Driskell, renowned Distinguished University of Maryland Professor Emeritus of Art, is an artist, art historian, collector, curator, educator, and one of the most recognized and respected names in the world of African American art and culture who aided the Clinton White House in choosing the first work of an African-American artist to hang in the White House. The work chosen was Henry Ossawa Tanner's Sand Dunes at Sunset.

Spirits Watching depicts five individuals. These impassive faces, vacillating between human and mask, represent the collective power of omnipresent ancestors. Time and space collapse in this image. According to Driskell, the spirits from the immediate and distant past not only watch and protect, they anticipate the future of the earthly as ancestors.” (David Driskell, interview with Adrienne Childs, March 23, 2005, Hyattsville , Maryland; http://www.driskellcenter.umd.edu).