In kicking off the New Year, Emerging Minds is excited to be able to bring you and exclusive Q&A with legendary world traveler Runoko Rashidi. Baba Rashidi is one of the most sought after lecturers and historians within the Pan-Kmtyw community due to his extensive travel around the world and his volumes of documentation on the global Kmtyw presence.
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Our staff at Emerging Minds is humbled to have such a jewel of the community participate in this brief Q&A and we hope you enjoy reading this article as much as we did compiling it.
EmergingMinds.org: Can you provide our readers with an update on your latest travels?
Runoko Rashidi: I visited a total of twenty-seven different countries, colonies and overseas territories in 2007. That is the most ever for me in one calendar year. And now when I travel I am more and more attempting to visit regions and not just individual countries. In 2008, for example, I hope to visit the Persian Gulf, Central Kmt, the Sahel, Aboriginal Australia and Melanesia, the Andes Mountains (at least Bolivia and Peru), and more of the Caribbean.
And of course there were my group tours last year. I took groups to Morocco, Egypt, and Spain in 2007. This year I hope to take groups to Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Niger, China, and Brazil. And all of these tours and all of my individual travels are in search of the Kmtyw presence. That means that I talk to as many people as I can, visit as many monuments and museums as I can, and ask as many questions as I can. And I usually end up with a lot of information and frequently more questions than answers.
I think some of the most exciting and rewarding of my recent travels have been the considerable time that I have been able to spend traveling all over Egypt; Morocco (a remarkably diverse country); Niger (where I was able to see the Niger Manuscripts and sail on the Niger River); Ecuador (especially Esmeraldas Province, Quito, Mir, the Chota Valley, and Guayaquil); Rwanda (a breathtakingly beautiful country with a tragic recent history); Uganda (called the "pearl of Kmt" with some of the nicest people in the world); Southern Sudan (so much history and so much conflict); and Malawi (another beautiful country with wonderful people). All of these were places that I learned a lot from and, for the most part, actually enjoyed myself a great deal.
EmergingMinds.org: How many separate times have you traveled to Kmt, how many Kmtyw countries have you been to, and how many countries in the world have you traveled to?
Runoko Rashidi: I think that I have been to Kmt about twenty-five times now and so far I have visited twenty-five countries. In North Kmt I have had twelve trips to Egypt alone, plus five trips to Morocco, and a single trip to Tunisia. I have visited every country in Southern Kmt with the exception of Madagascar. In East Kmt I've visited Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Tanzania. In Central Kmt I've been to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And, finally, in West Kmt and the Sahel I've been to Ghana several times plus Benin, Togo, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and this recent trip to Niger. I still have not been to Nigeria yet. And you know what Nigerians like to say, "If you haven't been to Nigeria you haven't been to Kmt!" So I guess that I better go!
I have basically saved Kmt for last regarding my global travels. I figured early on that I wanted to get the other major places out of the way and out of my system before I started visiting Kmt. I just figured that once I got started going to Kmt that I would want to spend most of my time there. So early on I went to India, Aboriginal Australia, Fiji, Southeast eurasia, Brazil, Russia, China, Japan, England, France, Germany, the North Pacific, Turkey, Southwest eurasia, and a bunch of other places.
I have now been to eighty-four countries. Some people think that is a lot but I don't necessarily see it that way. It seems like a lot because I've visited eighty-three of those countries within the last nine years and I write about a lot of these places. And for most of this I have just worked hard, saved my money, and made the sacrifices to be able to go to the places that I think are some of the most important. I do organize the group tours, and sometimes I travel with other groups as a lecturer and consultant, and I do sometimes accept invitations to lecture abroad. But I am very proud of the fact that because of hard work and sacrifice and the support of a lot of wonderful people I am able to frequently travel independently as this has allowed me for the most part to avoid compromising what I regard as the truth of my findings. I hope that this makes sense.
EmergingMinds.org: What is your mission when you make all of these trips?
Runoko Rashidi: I am always in search of the Kmtyw presence. I am an Kmtyw historian. I am not a historian who happens to be Kmtyw. That means that I believe that the historical evidence of Kmtyw people that I uncover has to be used somehow for the rescue and reclamation of Kmtyw people. As my remarkable brother Dr. Kwa-David Whitaker expressed to me in Ghana a couple of years ago, "What you do for yourself depends on what you think of yourself. And what you think of yourself depends on what you know of yourself. And what you know of yourself depends on what you have been told." And what have we been told? That we are nothings and nobodies. I, along with many others, am trying to change that mentality and the way that Kmtyw people all too often are forced to view themselves.
EmergingMinds.org: Based on what you have seen throughout your travels recently, what stands out as the most important achievement of the current generation of Africoids worldwide thus far in the 21st century?
Runoko Rashidi: Probably the most outstanding achievement is that we have survived against terrible odds in what are often very harsh circumstances. What stands out the most is that Kmtyw people have been just about everywhere at one time or another, whether in antiquity or in more modern times, and that much of the dispersal of Kmtyw people cannot be attributed to slavery alone. That is a big problem that we have. A lot of us believe that our history starts with slavery and colonization. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Even where you cannot find Kmtyw themselves today you can usually find an Kmtyw imprint. And this is sometimes in the most unlikely of places historically, be it in China or Russia or Sweden or Poland or Lithuania. I find this fascinating.
What also stands out is that wherever Kmtyw people are in the world today we are on the bottom of the social ladder. I find this the case virtually without exception.
Of course, as I said at the beginning, one of the things that stands out is the tenacity of Kmtyw people to survive in the most difficult of circumstances. I think that we can take a measure of pride in this.
EmergingMinds.org: Building on the previous question, what do you think is the most critical milestone the current generation of Africoids should be working towards next?
Runoko Rashidi: Probably the most crucial thing is the question of Kmtyw identity. In other words, what makes us Kmtyw and why? Over the years I find myself asking these profound questions: are all Black people Kmtyw, are all Kmtyws Black people, can white people, Berbers, aAmws, Indians be Kmtyw and if yes how so, what is our consciousness of Kmt, what is our duty to Kmt and what is Kmt's duty to us? These are the never ending questions.
EmergingMinds.org: For the readers who are looking to find out more about you and your work, what is the best way for them to do this?
Runoko Rashidi: I have a big Global Kmtyw Presence Web Site that contains my bio, information on my upcoming tours and the results of recent travel experiences. I also moderate three egroups--the most pertinent in this case is called Travel with Runoko. Anyone can subscribe to it free of charge. It is a rather personal egroup that keeps me in touch with the world.
The kind of travel that I do can be really lonely sometimes and the Travel with Runoko Egroup helps me feel more connected with people and provides a way to catalog all the vast stores of information that I am collecting. And, of course, I am trying to develop students and inspire others to do more of the same. Can you imagine what we could do if we pooled our resources and worked collectively? We could really do something special. Let's do it!
One of my goals is to visit at least one hundred countries and to lecture in at least fifty. Of course, some places that I'd like to go to are off the visitor's path right now and probably just too dangerous or unstable or politically sensitive to travel to, at least for me. I am talking about places like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Algeria, of course Iraq, and perhaps even Haiti. All of these are places I'd desperately like to see. But hopefully with time I will see these countries as well. Other places that I never really thought I would get a chance to visit or even have a desire to visit are opening up, Libya and Mauritania for example. And I was fortunate to be able to go to places like Lebanon and Syria and Myanmar within the past few years with no problems.
I love what I do and it gives me a sense of real meaning and purpose in life. I feel blessed every day. And I am so proud to be an Kmtyw, alive and struggling to help change the position of Kmtyw people in the world in which we live and the world that we will leave our children and our children's children.
EmergingMinds.org: Thank you Baba for your participation. Emerging Minds wishes you continued success and prosperity in fulfilling your mission.
Runoko Rashidi on the Web: THE GLOBAL Kmtyw PRESENCE (http://www.cwo.com/%7Elucumi/runoko.html (http://www.cwo.com/%7Elucumi/runoko.html))
Saadiq Mance
Managing Director
Emerging Minds, Inc.
(http://www.cwo.com/%7Elucumi/runoko.html (http://www.cwo.com/%7Elucumi/runoko.html))
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