Awakened by a burst of light, I felt the floor drop beneath me.
I opened my eyes and focused on a glass of water hovering overhead.
With the ice and liquid still within, it suddenly dropped splashing down on my chest.
The ice slid down my shirt and cold water saturated my clothes.
Gasping as if being thrown into a cold river, I tried to orient myself.
With a crack in her voice, the flight attendant assured the passengers that this is normal activity, while whimpers and whines resonated from the seats behind me.
It was 3:00 a.
m.
and I was flying over the African Congo.
Now over the equator we entered a violent thunderstorm.
Heavy turbulence grabbed and shook the plane ferociously.
Sitting next to me was an elderly South African woman holding rosary beads.
The blinking light from the fasten Seat belt sign cut through the night reflecting off her lips as she silently prayed.
Our father who, Ahh! The plane dropped from under us and finally caught itself 500 feet below.
Losing the ability to hold myself in the seat, I quickly snapped the seatbelt around my waist and clutched the armrests.
Twenty-two hours had passed since I rolled out of my bed in New Yorks Hudson Valley.
Feeling slightly fatigued and cramped from airports and airline seats, pain began to well in my legs.
To pass the time and discomfort, I placed my mind on the earth below: thinking, what is Africa? Just as dogs hear sounds inaudible to humans, Africas beauty is equally undetectable to the human senses.
Her elegance overwhelms our narrow perception of beauty.
More complex and unpredictable than any other region on the planet, Africa is still a dark mystery to the vast majority of Westerners.
When most people think of Africa they visualize pygmies, lions and Tarzan.
However, in reality, pygmies have been all but extinct for decades, most Africans have never seen a lion, and many Tarzan movies were filmed in India, even going as far as attaching cardboard cutouts to Asian elephants ears in order for them to resemble their African relatives.
It is impossible for most to truly understand and respect Africa since they apply western standards to a land incomparable with any on earth.
To appreciate Africa, one must understand the endless relationships between life, death, beauty, and brutality.
Life cannot exist without death and its beauty can only be sustained through brutality.
Alone, Africa should be revered for its sheer size and true wealth: true wealth meaning natural and biological wealth.
Only true wealth holds its value regardless of any economy or human created demand.
Africa is four times larger than the United States; it contains twice as many people and spans seven time zones.
It holds the greatest untapped natural resources in the world and farmlands capable of yielding 100 times more than produced today.
If its present agricultural regions were utilized to their fullest, it could feed itself as well as all of Western Europe without clearing another acre.
Africa has one-third the votes in the United Nations and may someday be the battlefield for the worlds superpowers as the Middle East is today.
Africas diverse and abundant wildlife is unmatched anywhere on the planet.
It is generally believed that human life first began on this continent.
In the tree of life Africa is the root, supporting, anchoring and feeding the entire tree for some seven million years.
But to understand Africa as a whole one must see that within all its diversity, there is equal adversity.
Africas main problem seems to be the very things that make Africa so unique; cultural differences and linguistic boundaries.
More than six hundred and eighty million people make up about fifty nations in Africa.
They are divided into over two thousand tribes and ethnic groups, most having their own specific language or dialect, making the unification of the entire continent impossible.
For example, if this were the case in the United States, New York natives would speak an entirely different language than citizens of Connecticut.
Just as well, New Jersey and Pennsylvania would also possess their own language.
Thrown on top of this continent of babble is the end of colonialism and the growing pains of new government.
Many countries found their white colonial masters were replaced with black neo-colonial leaders more concerned with individual power and wealth than their nations development.
One such is the former president of Gabon in western Africa: an undersized man who wore platform shoes and banned the word pygmy from his country's vocabulary.
As his country lay at his feet starving and impoverished, he spent two million dollars on a house in Beverly Hills, California for his daughter and drove around in a gold plated Cadillac followed by a matching silver plated Cadillac ambulance.
Included in the equation is tribal allegiance.
When a president is elected, it is common or expected for him to fill all cabinet spots solely with members of his tribe or family.
In most countries this would be considered unacceptable; in Africa it is just good political sense.
One soon learns that nothing political in Africa stays unchanged for long.
Just as a lion battles for rule over the pride, the laws of the jungle drain into the cities and towns in a constant struggle for political power.
But Africa always seems to pick herself up, brush off the dust, and carry on.
What I witnessed in Africa reinforced the fact that the enormous majority of problems and complaints from my fellow U.
S.
citizens are nothing but the whines of a grossly spoiled child who does not get his own way and, above all, has no concept of reality.
Compared to the seasoned African native, we are very soft and feeble.
Becoming entranced with the oscillating drone of the engines, I stared into darkness, while watching the red wing lights blink over-top the raindrops dancing outside my window and faded back to sleep.
I opened my eyes and focused on a glass of water hovering overhead.
With the ice and liquid still within, it suddenly dropped splashing down on my chest.
The ice slid down my shirt and cold water saturated my clothes.
Gasping as if being thrown into a cold river, I tried to orient myself.
With a crack in her voice, the flight attendant assured the passengers that this is normal activity, while whimpers and whines resonated from the seats behind me.
It was 3:00 a.
m.
and I was flying over the African Congo.
Now over the equator we entered a violent thunderstorm.
Heavy turbulence grabbed and shook the plane ferociously.
Sitting next to me was an elderly South African woman holding rosary beads.
The blinking light from the fasten Seat belt sign cut through the night reflecting off her lips as she silently prayed.
Our father who, Ahh! The plane dropped from under us and finally caught itself 500 feet below.
Losing the ability to hold myself in the seat, I quickly snapped the seatbelt around my waist and clutched the armrests.
Twenty-two hours had passed since I rolled out of my bed in New Yorks Hudson Valley.
Feeling slightly fatigued and cramped from airports and airline seats, pain began to well in my legs.
To pass the time and discomfort, I placed my mind on the earth below: thinking, what is Africa? Just as dogs hear sounds inaudible to humans, Africas beauty is equally undetectable to the human senses.
Her elegance overwhelms our narrow perception of beauty.
More complex and unpredictable than any other region on the planet, Africa is still a dark mystery to the vast majority of Westerners.
When most people think of Africa they visualize pygmies, lions and Tarzan.
However, in reality, pygmies have been all but extinct for decades, most Africans have never seen a lion, and many Tarzan movies were filmed in India, even going as far as attaching cardboard cutouts to Asian elephants ears in order for them to resemble their African relatives.
It is impossible for most to truly understand and respect Africa since they apply western standards to a land incomparable with any on earth.
To appreciate Africa, one must understand the endless relationships between life, death, beauty, and brutality.
Life cannot exist without death and its beauty can only be sustained through brutality.
Alone, Africa should be revered for its sheer size and true wealth: true wealth meaning natural and biological wealth.
Only true wealth holds its value regardless of any economy or human created demand.
Africa is four times larger than the United States; it contains twice as many people and spans seven time zones.
It holds the greatest untapped natural resources in the world and farmlands capable of yielding 100 times more than produced today.
If its present agricultural regions were utilized to their fullest, it could feed itself as well as all of Western Europe without clearing another acre.
Africa has one-third the votes in the United Nations and may someday be the battlefield for the worlds superpowers as the Middle East is today.
Africas diverse and abundant wildlife is unmatched anywhere on the planet.
It is generally believed that human life first began on this continent.
In the tree of life Africa is the root, supporting, anchoring and feeding the entire tree for some seven million years.
But to understand Africa as a whole one must see that within all its diversity, there is equal adversity.
Africas main problem seems to be the very things that make Africa so unique; cultural differences and linguistic boundaries.
More than six hundred and eighty million people make up about fifty nations in Africa.
They are divided into over two thousand tribes and ethnic groups, most having their own specific language or dialect, making the unification of the entire continent impossible.
For example, if this were the case in the United States, New York natives would speak an entirely different language than citizens of Connecticut.
Just as well, New Jersey and Pennsylvania would also possess their own language.
Thrown on top of this continent of babble is the end of colonialism and the growing pains of new government.
Many countries found their white colonial masters were replaced with black neo-colonial leaders more concerned with individual power and wealth than their nations development.
One such is the former president of Gabon in western Africa: an undersized man who wore platform shoes and banned the word pygmy from his country's vocabulary.
As his country lay at his feet starving and impoverished, he spent two million dollars on a house in Beverly Hills, California for his daughter and drove around in a gold plated Cadillac followed by a matching silver plated Cadillac ambulance.
Included in the equation is tribal allegiance.
When a president is elected, it is common or expected for him to fill all cabinet spots solely with members of his tribe or family.
In most countries this would be considered unacceptable; in Africa it is just good political sense.
One soon learns that nothing political in Africa stays unchanged for long.
Just as a lion battles for rule over the pride, the laws of the jungle drain into the cities and towns in a constant struggle for political power.
But Africa always seems to pick herself up, brush off the dust, and carry on.
What I witnessed in Africa reinforced the fact that the enormous majority of problems and complaints from my fellow U.
S.
citizens are nothing but the whines of a grossly spoiled child who does not get his own way and, above all, has no concept of reality.
Compared to the seasoned African native, we are very soft and feeble.
Becoming entranced with the oscillating drone of the engines, I stared into darkness, while watching the red wing lights blink over-top the raindrops dancing outside my window and faded back to sleep.
Source...