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[Click here for Episode 4]
She was astonished that the larger-than-life interviews and talk shows she used to watch back home were shot in this small but cozy studio. It was mostly empty except for a litany of television cameras that glared at her like gun muzzles on a battleground. They flashed and flickered and invited her to speak. Her voice would echo from this ten foot room onto millions of viewers across the world. She could feel her face freeze a little and her voice was a bit dry. She had spoken before her classmates at Stanford enough times to beat her stage fright – but this was CNN!
Her interviewer, the perky, plump, middle-aged Katie Mulligan emerged from the small door on the left. A wide smile covered her face and her short feet carried her with grace through the litany of cameras onto the seat next to Bella. She extended her arms as she approached, screaming a glamorous “Heeey Bellaaa!!” as she hugged her. The atmosphere was already pumped and gleeful. It was going to be not only a great interview but also an awesome, memorable moment.
A bevy of beauty specialists had attended to Bella a few minutes into the interview. They scrubbed her face as though to scrape off the melanin, but she had turned down their insistence to apply sixteen layers of makeup on her African skin. Not sixteen really, but with the concoctions and brushes they had, she was sure it would have added a few inches to her skin. She chose to go live before an audience of millions with her kinky Nubian hair and a skin freshly dipped in black berry juice.
“There is something happening in Africa. A wind of change, a breeze of freshness blowing across the black motherland – change that is being heralded by young people who are daring to change the status quo. These are men and women who have detected the season of the continent and are taking daring leaps to bring progress. Most times, we discuss these amazing young people in their absence, but today we get to hear from one of them - A young, vibrant daughter of Africa is here as our guest today on our program. Bellarine Alia– Bella – is living proof that nothing is impossible. Straight from the economics class at Stanford, please welcome our guest today on ‘She Rises’”.
The cameras turned on cue and glared at her. She was composed and ready to face them. That had been an amazing and honorable introduction, and she was going to live up to it. She let a smile flash through her lips, revealing her milk white teeth.
“Thank you very much, Miss Mulligan”.
“Kate. Just call me Kate” she interjected, smiling. She made Bella feel comfortable. She now knew exactly what she wanted to say and why.
The next forty-five minutes were spent discussing a range of issues from financial policy in her country to foreign aid and the plight of girls in the third world. Bella’s wealth of real life experiences growing up in the ghetto and the exceptional training she had received under her professors at Stanford came in handy. She talked with the maturity of an adult, the intelligence of a serious thinker and the innocence of a young girl. She executed the interview with grace, listening keenly to every question posed by Kate and then proceeding to do it justice with a detailed answer based on logic and creativity.
‘What are your hopes for your country?’ Kate asked ten minutes into the interview.
Bella stopped for a second, her eyes far away and her gaze fixated on the cameras in front. She was calm and yet alert.
‘Well,’ she began, enunciating each word as carefully as it should be, ‘I could say that I want us to be like the West. To build tall buildings like they do. To teach our children their language and make movies like them.’ She looked straight at Kate. ‘But that is not it. We are not the West. We can never be the same and therefore it would be foolish to copy what they do.'
She paused. Her interview wanted to interject, but Bella continued.
‘The beautiful thing about Africa is that she is untouched yet. Her potential is still hidden deep inside her, and no one can appreciate it unless they really understand her history. What I want for my people is that we will one day achieve the potential of our continent. Not for any other reason, but for our dignity and honor. That we will solve our problems in ways that are contextually sound. Enough of trying to copy Western ideas. It is high time that a thinking continent addressed her own challenges creatively and permanently.’
She went on to regale the dreams and hopes of the fathers of the continent, from Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana to Mwalimu Nyerere in Tanganyika and Nelson Mandela in South Africa. These had laid the foundation stones for our independence and progress, she said, but somehow improper leadership had steered us away from those ideals.
‘We need to go back to the drawing board. It cannot be business as usual if we hope to transform our nations. Africa is on the verge of transformation; the labor pangs are palpable – now we need leaders who are capable of taking on challenges to deliver the new Africa. History may not have been fair to us but we cannot spend the next century in self-pity and wishing our problems away. Right here and right now, we have the chance to remake our continent and rewrite her history. Our children can inherit an Africa that they are prouder of. And that work starts now’.
‘Some in the west have referred to Africa as the sleeping giant’, Kate noted.
‘Yes, they have. But someone should inform that the giant has opened its eyes, and is about to rise up. You know, the thing with sleeping giants is that they are still giants. Africa is rising’.
Bella leveraged her years of reading and her interactions with people of diverse cultures to paint a mosaic of how the world works, and the future of Africa in that context.
‘The West has been a major donor to African countries. We have seen large investments in relief funds into the growing economies. What is your take on that? Are the funds being utilized as they are supposed to?’
Bella took a sip from the glass of water before her.
‘The question is not whether they are utilized as they are supposed to, but whether they are needed in the first place’. She said.
Kate looked surprised. ‘What do you mean?’ She asked.
‘As I said before, the problem of Africa is the application of failed policies without a conscious consideration of their utility. Foreign Aid is one of those policies. I am not against capital injections into developing economies. But we do not need handouts. What we need are real opportunities for progress. And those opportunities are not in the West, they are in Africa.’
She straightened herself and looked straight at the cameras.
‘Africa does not have a money problem. She has a leadership problem, a capacity problem and a vision problem. The West can channel all the dollars into our countries, but until Africa has fixed her leadership, that money will never be accounted for. The same narrative will always repeat itself- money goes into the pockets of a few greedy leaders and never benefits the nation.’
The interview ended at eight in the night. Bella had become an African sensation.
She was appointed the African youth ambassador at the African Union Summit the next year.
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