The Angolan Nianga Lucau, the Congolese Serge Makanzu and the Senegalese Pape Babou Seck, although they are from different countries in Africa, have one thing in common: upon arriving in Brazil, Africans are called Angolans, regardless of their country of origin. For all three, this shows the lack of knowledge about the African continent, not only in Brazil, but in other countries as well. Ninga Lucau, during a debate at the Back2Black Festival 2023 – Tomaz Silva/Agência Brasil “There are still people who think that Africa is a country”, said Nianga in the conversation round Vida Refugiada: The cultural richness of African traditions in Brazil, in the first of the four days of the 11th edition of the Back2Black Festival, at Armazém da Utopia, on the Olympic Boulevard, in the port region of Rio, which started this Thursday (25th) and ends next Sunday. It is a cultural event that disseminates black culture and African origins. The journalist and writer, Tom Farias, who moderated the conversation, explained that of the 38,000 trips recorded to date by enslaved people brought from Africa to Brazil, most were from people of Angola, which perhaps explains the factor to identify Africans as Angolans. “80% of all these came from people in Angola in the colonial period. So, I think this confusion also runs through that, of being massively Angolan”, he said. Tom Farias mediates the debate – Tomaz Silva/Agência Brasil Chegada 32 years ago, Nianga came to Brazil with her family, who were fleeing conflicts in Angola. At the time, she was 9 years old. Here she graduated as a designer in the field of Fashion and is currently doing a master’s degree in Anthropology at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), in Niterói. Serge is a visual artist and has been in Brazil since 2016. He currently works in the service team at the Museum of Tomorrow, in the port region of Rio. He arrived in the country as a political refugee. Pape Babou Seck arrived in 2019. The Senegalese is a griot, a person who concentrates knowledge of a certain area in his community. His is percussion and dance with which he preserves the culture of his people passed down through ancestry. And it is this knowledge that he transmits as a teacher of dance and percussion in Rio de Janeiro. Pape Babou Seck is a griot in his community – Tomaz Silva/Agência Brasil Nianga said that when he arrived in Brazil he had a great impact in terms of culture, even though Brazil is a country that has a very strong connection with Angola. The racial issue also marked a lot because they felt like a minority. “Imagine me, 32 years ago. People had no idea where Africa is and asked: ‘How did you get here’? All this, at the age of 9, shocked me a little, also because people did not know my culture, ”he expressed. The Angolan said that even the issue of aesthetics provoked strangeness. She said that when she arrived it was not common for girls to wear braids in Brazil. “At that time braids were something that people didn’t wear and people questioned what I had in my hair, the colors and details”. In order not to lose her roots in the family, in addition to Portuguese, Nianga and her husband talk to their children in Kimbundu, the Angolan language. For the designer, the situation has changed and there is currently a worldwide search for knowledge about Africa. “I followed all these changes and it is fantastic to see that today people know Africa, however much it confuses us, [achando] everyone is from Angola, but we have evolved a lot”. In Brazil, the Congolese Serge Makanzu had to face the language barrier. In his country he spoke French and, without family or acquaintances, he had to “make do”. “Not speaking Portuguese was the first prejudice I experienced here in Brazil”, he said, in Portuguese, with a French accent, adding that he still faced the questions about the reasons for having moved to Brazil. The Congolese refugee, Serge Makanzu Kiala, tells that he had to “make do” with the language – Tomaz Silva/Agência Brasil “People don’t know the history of Africa. Brazilians know the history of slavery and think that the people who arrived here were those who lived in the forest, with monkeys, lions, snakes and that they had no culture. That’s what the Brazilian people have in their heads, but Africa is a large continent and within it there are more than 54 countries. And each country has its own culture”, he said. According to him, this is the message he usually sends when accompanying students who visit the Museum of Tomorrow, although he is a little sad with the lack of knowledge about Africa “I don’t know about Angola and other countries, but in Congo we spend many hours studying Brazil and, therefore, I wanted to visit this place. I arrived in Rio de Janeiro and fell in love”, he added. Brazil was not Pape Babou Seck’s destination when he left Senegal. Earlier, the griot went to Bolivia. After developing a work with music and having problems returning to Senegal, he decided to leave for Brazilian territory. Senegalese also had difficulty communicating, because their language was French, the basic language of Senegal. “I arrived here and had a language problem, but since I’m a griot and I play music, I started playing in the street, something I had never done in my country, where I played in music halls. Here, to start to enter society, I started to play in the street, until I started to know a little of the language, but there are still people who ask if I am Angolan or Haitian”, he said, noting that most of the enslaved people in the Senegal, was destined for America. According to Nianga, in addition to going through the prejudices that black people already suffer in the country, refugees still have to face the xenophobia of those who were born in Brazil and express their annoyance at having to compete for jobs with them. “It’s as if you were in that place taking away the opportunity from the person here. There is this awareness in people and we face this whole process of being an immigrant person.” “As much as I’ve been here for 32 years, I still face the consequences of being an African,” he said. Serge’s first job, in Rio, was at a car wash. After working for three months he left because he was called a monkey. “A black Brazilian called me a monkey. A person who had the same color as me, called me a monkey, then I rebelled, I wanted to catch that person, but I saw that I couldn’t lose my head. I went to the company manager and said that I would rather stay at home and starve than stay there. It was the first time I saw a person call me that,” he revealed. Two months later, he managed to put on an exhibition of his works of plastic art at the Museum of Tomorrow. From that, with the contacts he made on the spot, he got a vacancy to work in the cultural space. War Pape Babou Seck included the issue of wars in the debate and, once again, the lack of disclosure of what Africa represents. According to him, Senegal has several conflicts with wars and, however, this is not discussed worldwide. “Everyone talks about the war in Russia and other countries, but why don’t they talk about the wars in Africa, the people who die there, the mothers and fathers of families, the children who are left without a father and mother and nothing? Africa is the mother continent. Africa is the cradle of humanity. It all started in Africa.” In Serge’s view, the lack of interest in highlighting the wars in Africa is due to the exploitation of ores and metals. Tom Farias recalled that during a visit to a diamond processing company in Angola, he was astonished by the number of stones passing on the crowded conveyor belt. “I didn’t believe it was a diamond, it was a lot, but it was a diamond. Angola’s economy is oil and diamonds. There is no explanation why this country spent 30 years at war and is still poor in so many regions.”
Agência Brasil
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