The Masai PROPHECY

The Masai

PROPHECY

"The day the white one arrives, Aethiopia shall die" -(A Masai prophecy that had originated from

 the time when the sea that was about the size of France, at the location around where we have the Sahara today, dried up eventually, in about 3100 BCE).

 This was a time of hunger and mass migration of the people of Aethiopia. Aethiopia at this time meant present-day Sudan to the cape in the Southern parts of Africa and to the east and west. The present day polity of Ethiopia in east Africa derived its name from this ancient name for Africa(Afur'i ka) in 1929. It most be noted too that, around this time, Europe had not entered into history. The land existed but there were no settlements yet and no nations nor the barbarian tribal groups like the Magyar or the Saxons and Goths.

  According to Chancellor Williams in 'The destruction of black civilization', "this was a time when a bony looking mother will solemnly, carry her frail child, who was dying from starvation, into the bush, under the shade of a tree so the child could die peacefully." Crops did not yield and water became scarce on a land that was before then, a lush savannah region with a sea and lakes as well as plenty to support a large civilization. Archeological findings revealed a 'trail of bones' of people who died just wandering around for food, water and shelter from the elements, but all they could find was dust and sand. Groups fought over oasis and large population of people moved south, west and towards the Nile river, but none went north.... For foreigners had taken over the coastal regions that is today Nile delta, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Morocco. This had helmed-in the native groups, as they lost their homes, trading towns at the coast and began wandering, not building permanent shelters of stone as they used to, but constructing makeshift huts, that over time, became the traditional architecture of those groups that survived. One example is the Dogon people who moved away from the fighting in the Northeast to live in caves in the mountains of what is today south of Mali and North of Burkina Faso and later spread about.  The wars in the north, the dispersing and mass migration of people gave rise to the numerous languages in Africa today, according to Anthropological research. Some groups dispersed and met again, speaking different dialects but with similar cultures. Anthropologically speaking, the reason for the similarities in the cultures of Africans, the similarities in spices, languages, tools, farming techniques, implements, food culture, dressing, traditional architecture and so on, indicates the historical fact that, at some point in antiquity, all of Africa, except those that took over the northern parts of Africa, were well connected to each other in one way or another.

 This was a period when the Masai prophecy entered into oral tradition. And indeed the "white one" came ('white one' in this case does not mean the colour white, in the Masai language but it refers to the people which we came to know as 'whitemen' and can be translated thus).

"These tremendous victories of the 'white men' were not achieved by conquest. It was achieved by default, of a race, too preoccupied with the immediate present and less with its future... And a race, whose centuries of blind trust in the 'white man' surpasses all understanding " -(Chancellor Williams, 'The Destruction of Black Civilization'). According to Dr. John Henrik Clarke, "African's cultural and political naivety began in ancient times." And this had not changed at all. While Africans had a God of love and rebirth, the Foreigners were to 'create' a 'God' of Vengeance, who will destroy everything and anyone that stood at odds with him. The Arabs and the Europeans had sufficiently demonstrated the capacity for this sort of destruction on Africans, at different times in history. And yet, Africans remain naive towards these facts.

 Africans, through out all of her history, before the coming of people from western Asia, and later the Europeans, had no history of fighting and destroying each other over religion or beliefs, until the Foreigners came.

 In the 8th century CE, a group of Maghreb Africans and the Almoravids from the Senegal river, who had gone into Europe and taken over the lands of the Visigoths, knew of a similar prophecy (of the opening of a Pandora box), but went ahead to educate Europeans and founded and taught Europeans in the first university in Europe, the University of Salamanca, Spain, while ruling this region from 711 CE - 1485 CE. Oba Ewuare of the Benin empire, in what is today southern parts of Nigeria, in 1470 CE, revealed a prophecy that told of a time when foreigners from across the 'salt waters' will arrive and destruction and devastation will come to the empire. Oba Ozoluo(1481-1504 CE), who succeeded Oba Ewuare knew of this prophecy. But when the Portuguese arrived the capital of the empire in 1485, he received them with the warm, traditional African hospitality, and even gave the Portuguese room to build a fort at Sao Tome and Principe, where a few years later, the Portuguese began exploiting the Congo and Benin empire from there, offering nothing in return, except firearms and a book, the bible... as well as slavery. Commenting on this, Dr John Henrik Clarke reiterated, "no one would have expected that the welcomed guests will enslave the man of the house and the woman who cooked the meal."

 

Image: the burning alive of those who would not be christianized. This included Kings and Chiefs.