Same Script, Different Cast

We are God’s bits of wood!

One of the houses we lived in when I was young had a bookshelf in the dining room that went up to the ceiling. I loved that shelf, it kept a lot of my secrets. It is where I hid my homework book and pretended it was lost because I did not want to do it. My parents would then have to write a note to the teacher and apologize for any ‘inconvenience’ the ‘loss’ of my book had caused. That shelf also swallowed test papers that did not have the scores I would have liked my parents to see.

My most cherished memory of that shelf was the books it introduced me to, all before I had my first period. Now, I was not a studious child, I simply did not want to do my homework. In the process of hiding from my responsibilities, I got distracted. That shelf felt like an old tree woman with many wrinkles looking down on me as I immersed myself in foreign and ancient worlds to escape my reality. No longer at Ease, The River Between, Things Fall Apart, Coming To Birth, a collection of Shakespeare's work among others. My favourite of all time was Ousmane Sembene’s God's Little Bits of Wood. 

As I was mulling over the happenings in our country, as many of us constantly do lately, I thought about this book. A lot has not changed. We are still fighting against corruption, poor governance, over taxation. We are still fighting for liberation.

In my childish mind, I wondered why they would refer to themselves as bits of wood.

“She had brought forth nine of God’s bits of wood..”

I thought of the little sticks we would collect to build little homesteads in the grass. Every time I looked at them I said to myself, someone thinks ‘we’ are these sticks?

Later on, when I was older, it made sense to me. 

“No, no, don’t count us please!” Seni said, getting quickly to her feet. “We are God’s bits of wood, and if you count us our, you will bring misfortune; you will make us die!”

The superstitious locals believed that counting people would make them susceptible to bad luck, and perhaps even death.

God’s Bits of Wood is the third and most famous novel of award-winning author and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), who was born in Ziguinchor, Senegal, then a French colony. God’s Bits of Wood, a panoramic novel of social realism, chronicles a 1940s railroad strike on the Dakar-Niger line. Though several heroic figures, most notably Ibrahima Bakayoko, distinguish themselves at the head of the strike, the true heroes of the novel are the common people of Africa who rise against the colonial oppressors to demand their rights. Source

Almost a century later, most of Africa is still holding similar protests. It is funny how the script is still the same, the only thing different is the cast. Illegal imprisonment, police brutality, punitive laws, corruption and of course, religion still a tool in sanctioning most of it.

The Islamic priests or imams of Dakar are portrayed as supporters of the French colonial regime. One of the most memorable scenes of the novel comes when the prize ram of a sanctimonious district chief is unceremoniously butchered by his sister when it eats her family’s rice, touching off a conflict between local women and the police that escalates into a firestorm. Source

Someone suggested that colonialists used religion to pacify the Africans and reduce resistance. Turn the other cheek, obey your master, pray for your enemies, touch not my anointed are still used by oppressive regimes to date. How many times have we seen throngs of ‘shepherds’ dining with those they should speak up against? The arrogance with which they now preach. Claiming to be able to heal the sick and raise the dead. Gaslighting us into thinking our poverty is because of our doing while they spend billions of offerings and tithes living in opulence. I have said it before, the pulpits, altars, and microphones in these so-called places of worship are meant for activism and not for chasing imaginary enemies or sanitizing evil in the name of God.

Just like in Ousmane’s book, our liberators will be common people, you see them, rising. To be a witness to these happening is a great honour. To be amongst these heroes who do not care if you pray to a bag of cement, pieces of wood or a black stone. They who only respect justice, even the land acknowledges them. It has refused to swallow the slaughtered children, the water will not sink their dismembered bodies, and their voices will not be silenced even in death. They call out from the darkness. 

We are not amongst normal beings, we are amongst gods. They chant, sing and dance to liberation. African gods. 

And the men began to understand that if the times were bringing forth a new breed of men, they were also bringing forth a new breed of woman