The African Quarter
Seven years ago, I visited the African Quarter in Berlin for the first time. As part of an empowerment workshop for BIPOCs, we took a guided tour of this exciting neighborhood.
Before arriving, I was expecting to find a neighborhood that was bursting with African restaurants and Afro stores. Accordingly, on the way from Kreuzberg, where our workshop took place, to Wedding, I thought about what African food I could buy. Plantains were definitely high on my list. We got off the train, walked up the subway station and saw: "nothing". No Africans, or African restaurants, no AfroSops and no African or cultural atmosphere, "nothing". Instead: "A housing estate?" - I think to myself, completely astonished.
An elderly black man greeted us.
I was delighted and remembered how my grandpa, who sadly passed away when I was 14 years old, used to greet my brothers and me. Very similar: stately, proud and always with a certain seriousness behind his friendly smile.
Mr. Mboro explained to us that we would be talking about Germany's colonial history.
"The colonial history of Germany?" I think to myself. "But I thought the Germans hardly had any colonies and they weren't really active on the African continent, were they?" We didn't learn anything about the subject at school because Germany entered the race for Africa very late and lost its colonies after a short time. Accordingly, the influence on the African continent was hardly noticeable. At least that was the information I had picked up over the years.
Wrong, everything is wrong.
I learned something completely different that day.
In reality, Germany was the third largest colonial power on the African continent. People were enslaved, abducted, tortured and murdered, and the colonized territories were exploited. Raw materials, art and also the bones of the African population were at stake. The justification for these atrocities were races into which humanity was divided. Africans were thus dehumanized so that colonization and missionary work could be driven forward. Regardless of losses. In addition, the same power structure could be introduced worldwide.
Paradoxically, we still feel the racisms of that time today. We think them and live them every day. And yet there are hardly any words that make the complexity of this man-made system of power tangible.
Racism is not something we can put on and take off. It is our way of thinking, our assumptions and our self-image with which we go through the day, the world and life. Because skin color is not the color of a person's skin, but the color of a group of people. Beautiful is not what we think is beautiful, but what we think is normal and the rest, namely not the clear majority of the world's population, is "different", a minority or not? And Africa is just a country where only poor and pitiful people live who need to be saved, or was it a continent?
The African Quarter is not what the name suggests. It does not manifest the beauty and cultures of the vast continent, but reminds us of the time when Africans were dehumanized and dispossessed. When we walk through the African Quarter, it is not just a journey into the past, it is a journey into ourselves. Our values, our humanity and our desire to do better and to change or positively influence the future come to the fore.
And one day, when the former colonial actors are no longer honoured in the city's street atlas, colonies are no longer romanticized and colonialism is no longer a blind spot in Germany's history, then the neighbourhood will also remember the Africans who fought for the independence of their territories and the liberation of their families and friends. The names of Anna Mungunda, Rudolph Manga Bell, Cornelius Fredericks and the Maji- Maji Uprising will live on in the mouths and minds of the people and we will not forget. One day. And until then, we as the "decolonial city tour" team will guide anyone who has an open ear through the neighborhood and pass on the stories of resistance. Because we also carry hope within us. Hope for a fairer world.