Interview With Runoko Rashidi The Traveling Historian

[XXPANTHAXX]

Can you provide our readers with an update on
your latest travels?

I visited a total of twenty-seven different countries,
colonies and overseas territories in 2007. That is
the most ever for me in one calendar year. And now
when I travel I am more and more attempting to visit
regions and not just individual countries. In 2008,
for example, I hope to visit the Persian Gulf, Central
Africa, the Sahel, Aboriginal Australia and Melanesia,
the Andes Mountains (at least Bolivia and Peru), and
more of the Caribbean.

And of course there were my group tours last year. I
took groups to Morocco, Egypt, and Spain in 2007.
This year I hope to take groups to Egypt, Morocco,
Ghana, Niger, China, and Brazil. And all of these
tours and all of my individual travels are in search
of the African presence. That means that I talk to as
many people as I can, visit as many monuments and
museums as I can, and ask as many questions as I can.
And I usually end up with a lot of information and
frequently more questions than answers.

I think some of the most exciting and rewarding of my
recent travels have been the considerable time that I
have been able to spend traveling all over Egypt;
Morocco (a remarkably diverse country); Niger (where I
was able to see the Niger Manuscripts and sail on the
Niger River); Ecuador (especially Esmeraldas Province,
Quito, Mir, the Chota Valley, and Guayaquil); Rwanda
(a breathtakingly beautiful country with a tragic
recent history); Uganda (called the "pearl of Africa"
with some of the nicest people in the world); Southern
Sudan (so much history and so much conflict); and
Malawi (another beautiful country with wonderful
people). All of these were places that I learned a
lot from and, for the most part, actually enjoyed
myself a great deal.

How many separate times have you traveled to
Africa, how many African countries have you been to,
and how many countries in the world have you traveled
to?

I think that I have been to Africa about twenty-five
times now and so far I have visited twenty-five
countries. In North Africa I have had twelve trips to
Egypt alone, plus five trips to Morocco, and a single
trip to Tunisia. I have visited every country in
Southern Africa with the exception of Madagascar. In
East Africa I've visited Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda,
Malawi, and Tanzania. In Central Africa I've been to
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And,
finally, in West Africa and the Sahel I've been to
Ghana several times plus Benin, Togo, Senegal, Mali,
Burkina Faso and this recent trip to Niger. I still
have not been to Nigeria yet. And you know what
Nigerians like to say, "If you haven't been to Nigeria
you haven't been to Africa!" So I guess that I better
go!

I have basically saved Africa for last regarding my
global travels. I figured early on that I wanted to
get the other major places out of the way and out of
my system before I started visiting Africa. I just
figured that once I got started going to Africa that I
would want to spend most of my time there. So early
on I went to India, Aboriginal Australia, Fiji,
Southeast Asia, Brazil, Russia, China, Japan, England,
France, Germany, the North Pacific, Turkey, Southwest
Asia, and a bunch of other places. I think that I am
good for visiting maybe forty countries in Africa,
perhaps more.

I have now been to eighty-four countries. Some people
think that is a lot but I don't necessarily see it
that way. It seems like a lot because I've visited
eighty-three of those countries within the last nine
years and I write about a lot of these places. And
for most of this I have just worked hard, saved my
money, and made the sacrifices to be able to go to the
places that I think are some of the most important. I
do organize the group tours, and sometimes I travel
with other groups as a lecturer and consultant, and I
do sometimes accept invitations to lecture abroad.
But I am very proud of the fact that because of hard
work and sacrifice and the support of a lot of
wonderful people I am able to frequently travel
independently as this has allowed me for the most part
to avoid compromising what I regard as the truth of my
findings. I hope that this makes sense.

What is your mission when you make all of these
trips?

I am always in search of the African presence. I am
an African historian. I am not a historian who
happens to be African. That means that I believe that
the historical evidence of African people that I
uncover has to be used somehow for the rescue and
reclamation of African people. As my remarkable
brother Dr. Kwa-David Whitaker expressed to me in
Ghana a couple of years ago, "What you do for yourself
depends on what you think of yourself. And what you
think of yourself depends on what you know of
yourself. And what you know of yourself depends on
what you have been told." And what have we been told?
That we are nothings and nobodies. I, along with
many others, am trying to change that mentality and
the way that African people all to often are forced to
view themselves.

Based on what you have seen throughout your travels
recently, what stands out as the most important
achievement of the current generation of Africoids
worldwide thus far in the 21st century?

Probably the most outstanding achievement is that we
have survived against terrible odds in what are often
very harsh circumstances. What stands out the most is
that African people have been just about everywhere at
one time or another, whether in antiquity or in more
modern times, and that much of the dispersal of
African people cannot be attributed to slavery alone.
That is a big problem that we have. A lot of us
believe that our history starts with slavery and
colonization. Nothing could be further from the
truth.

Even where you cannot find African themselves today
you can usually find an African imprint. And this is
sometimes in the most unlikely of places historically,
be it in China or Russia or Sweden or Poland or
Lithuania. I find this fascinating.

What also stands out is that wherever African people
are in the world today we are on the bottom of the
social ladder. I find this the case virtually without
exception.

Of course, as I said at the beginning, one of the
things that stands out is the tenacity of African
people to survive in the most difficult of
circumstances. I think that we can take a measure of
pride in this.

Building on the previous question, what do you
think is the most critical milestone the current
generation of Africoids should be working towards
next?

Probably the most crucial thing is the question of
African identity. In other words, what makes us
African and why? Over the years I find myself asking
these profound questions: are all Black people
African, are all Africans Black people, can white
people, Berbers, Arabs, Indians be African and if yes
how so, what is our consciousness of Africa, what is
our duty to Africa and what is Africa's duty to us?
These are the never ending questions.

For the readers who are looking to find out more
about you and your work, what is the best way for them
to do this?

I have a big Global African Presence Web Site that
contains my bio, information on my upcoming tours and
the results of recent travel experiences. I also
moderate three egroups--the most pertinent in this
case is called Travel with Runoko. Anyone can
subscribe to it free of charge. It is a rather
personal egroup that keeps me in touch with the world.


The kind of travel that I do can be really lonely
sometimes and the Travel with Runoko Egroup helps me
feel more connected with people and provides a way to
catalog all the vast stores of information that I am
collecting. And, of course, I am trying to develop
students and inspire others to do more of the same.
Can you imagine what we could do if we pooled our
resources and worked collectively? We could really do
something special. Let's do it!

One of my goals is to visit at least one hundred
countries and to lecture in at least fifty. Of
course, some places that I'd like to go to are off the
visitor's path right now and probably just too
dangerous or unstable or politically sensitive to
travel to, at least for me. I am talking about places
like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Iran,
Algeria, of course Iraq, and perhaps even Haiti. All
of these are places I'd desperately like to see. But
hopefully with time I will see these countries as
well. Other places that I never really thought I
would get a chance to visit or even have a desire to
visit are opening up, Libya and Mauritania for
example. And I was fortunate to be able to go to
places like Lebanon and Syria and Myanmar within the
past few years with no problems.

I love what I do and it gives me a sense of real
meaning and purpose in life. I feel blessed everyday.
And I am so proud to be an African, alive and
struggling to help change the position of African
people in the world in which we live and the world
that we will leave our children and our children's
children.

Long live Mother Africa!

Runoko Rashidi Okello
Runoko@yahoo.com