Che who speaks to you is one of the first born of the twentieth century. So he lived a very long time and, as you would imagine, seen and heard a lot all over the wide world. However, he does not claim to be a master at anything. Above all, he wanted to be an eternal seeker, an eternal student, and even today his thirst for learning is as keen as it was in the early days.
He began by searching within himself, struggling to discover himself and to know himself well in his neighbor and to love him accordingly. He would like each of you to do the same.
After this difficult quest, he undertook many trips around the world: Africa, the Middle East, Europe, America. As a pupil without complexes or prejudices, he sought the teaching of all the masters and all the wise men whom he was given to meet. He obediently listened to them. He faithfully recorded their words and objectively analyzed their lesson, in order to fully understand the different aspects of their behavior. In short, he always strove to understand men, because the great problem of life is MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING.
Certainly, whether individuals, nations, races or cultures, we are all different from one another; But we all have something similar too, and that's what we have to look for in order to be able to recognize ourselves in the other and dialogue with him. Then, our differences, instead of separating us, will become complementary and sources of mutual enrichment. Just as the beauty of a carpet is due to the variety of its colors, the diversity of men, cultures and civilizations makes the beauty and richness of the world. How boring and monotonous would be a uniform world where all men, modeled on the same model, would think and live in the same way! Having nothing left to discover in others, how could one enrich oneself?
In our era so full of threats of all kinds, men must no longer emphasize what separates them, but what they have in common, while respecting each other's identity. Meeting and listening to others is always more enriching, even for the development of one's own identity, than conflicts or sterile discussions to impose one's own point of view. An old African master said: there is "my" truth and "your" truth, which will never meet. "THE" Truth is in the middle. To get closer to it, each person must free themselves a little from "their" truth to take a step towards the other...
Young people, the last-born of the twentieth century, you are living in a time both frightening by the threats it poses to humanity and fascinating by the possibilities it opens up in the field of knowledge and communication between men. The generation of the twenty-first century knows a fantastic meeting of races and ideas. Depending on how it assimilates this phenomenon, it will either ensure its survival or cause its destruction through deadly conflicts.
In this modern world, no one can take refuge in their ivory tower. All states, whether strong or weak, rich or poor, are henceforth interdependent, if only economically or in the face of the dangers of international war. Whether they like it or not, men are embarked on the same raft: a hurricane rises, and everyone will be threatened at the same time. Isn't it better before it's too late?
The very interdependence of states imposes an indispensable complementarity of men and cultures. Nowadays, humanity is like a big factory where we work in the chain: Every room, big or small, has a definite role to play which can condition the smooth running of the whole factory.
Currently, as a rule, blocks of interest clash and tear. It may be up to you, young people, to gradually bring out a new state of mind, with the advantage of complementarity and solidarity, both individual and international. This will be the condition of peace, without which there can be no development.
I turn now to you, young black Africans. Perhaps some of you are wondering if our fathers had a culture, since they did not leave a book? Those who were for so long our masters of living and thinking, have they not almost succeeded in making us believe that a people without writing is a people without culture? But, it is true that the first care of any colonizer whatever it is (at all times and from where it comes) has always been to vigorously clear the ground and to uproot the local cultures in order to be able to to sow your own values at ease.
Fortunately, thanks to the action of both African and European researchers, opinions have evolved in this field and it is now recognized that oral cultures are authentic sources of knowledge and civilization. Isn't the word, in any case, the mother of the written, and is the latter not something other than a kind of photograph of knowledge and human thought?
Black peoples who are not writing peoples have developed the art of speech in a very special way. For not being written, their literature is none the less beautiful. How many poems, epics, historical and chivalrous stories, didactic tales, myths and legends with admirable verbs have thus been transmitted through the centuries, faithfully carried by the prodigious memory of the men of the Orality, passionately enamored beautiful language and almost all poems!
Of all this wealth of literature in perpetual creation, only a small part has begun to be translated and exploited. A vast work of harvest remains to be done with those who are the last depositories of this ancestral inheritance alas disappearing. What an exhilarating task for those of you who want to devote themselves to it!
But culture is not just oral or written literature, it is also and above all an art of living, a special way of behaving towards oneself, one's peers and all ambient natural environment. It is a special way of understanding the place and role of man within creation.
The traditional civilization (I speak mainly of Africa of the savannah south of the Sahara, which I know more particularly) was above all a civilization of responsibility and solidarity at all levels. In no case was a man, whoever he was, isolated. Never would a woman, a child, a patient, or an old man have been left to live on the margins of society, like a spare part. He was always found a place in the great African family, where even the foreigner of passage found lodging and food. Community spirit and the sense of sharing presided over all human relationships. The rice dish, however modest, was open to all.
The man identified himself with his word, which was sacred. Most often, the conflicts were settled peacefully thanks to the "palaver": "to meet to discuss", says the adage, "is to put everyone at ease and to avoid discord". The old people, respected arbitrators, kept the peace in the village. "Peace", "Peace only! “, Are the key formulas of all greetings and traditional religions was the acquisition, by each individual, of total self-control and external peace. It is only in peace and in peace that man can build and develop society, while war destroys in a few days what it has taken centuries to build.
Man was also believed to be responsible for the balance of the surrounding natural world. He was forbidden to cut a tree without reason, to kill an animal without a valid reason. The earth was not his property, but the sacred deposit entrusted by the creator and of which he was only the manager. Here is a notion which takes on its full meaning today if one thinks of the lightness with which the men of our time exhaust the wealth of the planet and destroy its natural balances.
Certainly, like any human society, African society also had its flaws, its excesses and its weaknesses. It is up to you, young men and women, the adults of tomorrow, to let abusive customs disappear of their own accord, while knowing how to preserve positive traditional values. Human life is like a great tree and each generation is like a gardener. The good gardener is not the one who uproots, but the one who, when the time comes, knows how to prune the dead branches and, if necessary, judiciously carry out useful grafts. Cutting the trunk would be committing suicide, renouncing one's own personality to artificially take on that of others, without ever quite succeeding. Here again, let us remember the adage: "it may float, but it will never become a caiman!"
Be, young people, this good gardener who knows that to grow in height and extend these branches in the directions of space, a tree needs deep and powerful roots. So rooted in yourselves you can without fear and without damage open outward, both to give and to receive.
For this vast work, two tools are essential to you: first, the deepening and preservation of your mother tongues, irreplaceable vehicles of our specific cultures; then, the perfect knowledge of the language inherited from colonization (for us the French language), just as irreplaceable, not only to allow the different African ethnic groups to communicate with each other and to get to know each other better, but also to open us up to the outside and allow us to dialogue with the cultures of the whole world.
Young people of Africa and the world, fate willed that at the end of the twentieth century, at the dawn of a new era, you would be like a bridge thrown between two worlds: that of the past, where old civilizations They only aspire to bequeath to you their treasures before they disappear, and that of the future, full of uncertainties and difficulties, certainly, but also rich in new adventures and exciting experiences. It is up to you to take up the challenge and to ensure that there is, not mutilating rupture, but serene continuation and fertilization of one era by the other.
In the whirlwinds that will carry you away, remember our old values of community, solidarity and sharing. And if you are lucky enough to have a dish of rice, do not eat it alone!
If conflict threatens you, remember the virtues of dialogue and palaver!
And when you want to use, instead of devoting all your energies to sterile and unproductive work, think of returning to Mother Earth, our only true wealth, and give it all your care so that we can draw from it. enough to feed all men. In short, be at the service of life, in all its aspects!
Some of you may say: "That is too much to ask of us! Such a task is beyond us!" Allow the old man that I am to tell you a secret: just as there is no "small fire" (it all depends on the nature of the fuel encountered), there is no small effort. Every effort counts, and one never knows, from which apparently modest action will emerge an event that will change the face of things. Do not forget that the king of the trees of the savannah, the powerful and majestic baobab, comes from a seed that, at the beginning, is no bigger than a very small coffee bean...
