What a wonderful video! Over the past couple of years I have been reading more and more accounts of black Americans in Africa--as well as watching my own son's reaction two years ago. For many,
Africa has been imagined to be home. It seldom turns out to be that simple, though many have made themselves at home there, sometimes for most of their lives.
That would seem to describe Pete O'Neal, who in 1970 left the U.S. for Africa to avoid arrest on "trumped up charges." Members of the Black Panthers were in fact jailed and killed by U.S. authorities in startling and troubling numbers. Tanzania offered something of a haven.
Yet O'Neal and the film about him are both decidedly unromantic. He admits that he felt uneasy getting off the plane in Tanzania with his young wife: "we are in for a different kind of life." Even as he moves farther from his African-American roots, he never feels that Tanzania is really home. The culture is similar but different. Malaria takes "too much of a toll on our bodies." He lacks the sort of friendships he used to have until a former Panther, finally released from prison, moves there.
O'Neal's secret seems to be his determination to care for others, the devotion that he and Mama Charlotte, his more easy-going spouse, have for people near and far. The most moving section of the film comes when O'Neal reflects on the lives of people he destroyed as a young hustler in Kansas City, in his pre-Panther years. Helping others in his middle and old age "is for my salvation."
Film Website
No comments:
Post a Comment