During my first year of college...

During my first year of college, I started reading about Taoism (Daoism), Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism and Confucianism. Again, there were interesting elements and not so interesting elements. What path was I on and how would I know when I got there? Desiring to learn more about the African experience that I felt disconnected from, I transferred to another university for my second year to begin an African Studies major.

I studied black social scientists and historians like DuBois, Diop and Senghor in class, and revolutionaries like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Steve Biko, Walter Rodney and Amilcar Cabral, out of class. I started to get absorbed into the struggle; the plight of African and descendants of Africa in world dominated by Western hegemony. I revisited the injustices of the transatlantic slave trade and plantation enterprises in the Americas.

I compared the plight of Blacks in the United States with Africans living in post-colonial (neocolonial) Africa, and I was determined to unite the oppressed under a banner of pan-Africanism. Several friends and I founded a small group that we called, Africas Progeny for Global Power (APGP). We were devoted to enlightening and empowering our people around the world, the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia, and of course, Africa. We were sharp, results-oriented and focused.

I decided that I had to visit Africa in order to begin to actualize my dreams. I applied for a scholarship that I eventually won to study at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. A few months later, with no second thoughts, I was on a plane headed back to the motherland. People told me that living in Africa would change my way of thinking profoundly. I replied that my most fundamental beliefs could never change, but admitted that the superfluous activities would probably vanish forever.

What did I feel most committed to at that time? Ironically, I was committed to serving my Creator, but the difference between then and now is that I felt my own manner of serving Him was adequate. I thought I was left free to worship on my terms. Later I realized worship has to come on the terms of the Worshipped, not on the terms of the worshipper.

Imagine having a your slave tell you, yes master, I will serve you and commit myself to pleasing you, but before all that happens, let me go over here and handle some other business! It does not make sense at all does it? Imagine acknowledging that a Creator exists.