Page 219 - A People Called Afrika

Ubuntu

robots to follow the pursuit of vanity, through unhealthy
competition for class and position – and preparing them for
a life of the same. The change that Afrika is looking for is
contained within her own decisions and choices. For if the
Doctorate and the Masters’ degree holders that we have in
Afrika have not found any solutions to our challenges for de-
cades, does it not mean that they will never do so and that
we are missing the real point of why we are a continent?

The way of mindfulness

There is a book by James Allen called “Mind is the Master” – it
is a collection of nineteen books in one. Samuel loves this book
to bits. If not for anything else but for the fact that a man (James
Allen) lived a simple life of love, compassion, mindfulness and
also masterfully captured in writing, his gracious lifestyle for all
people to see that a life of godliness is possible. One of the
books in this collection is called, As a Man Thinketh, which
is taken from Proverbs 23:7 (KJV), “For as he thinketh in his
heart, so is he…” Meaning that, what a man engages his mind to
think about is what he is and that therefore we all are what we
thought yesterday and will be tomorrow, what we think today.

We write these words to our Afrikan brothers with a single
question in our hearts. What is it that the fathers of this con-
tinent thought about or did not think about that brought us
into the mess we are in right now; and what it is that we in this
generation are thinking or not thinking that will keep us in this
mess tomorrow or get us out of it? We are simply what we
think about and that which we allow our minds to dwell on.

Samuel, on growing up in Nigeria, said “I grew up not liking
Afrika, especially Nigeria where I was born. And my reason

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