Africa's Future

AFRICA'S FUTURE

Two Opposing Views

Donald Regan:

(New York Times; July 18, 1986)

"Are women prepared to give up all their jewelry?"

"Where are you going to get your chrome for bathroom fixtures...?"

"Are...people prepared not to engage in any more diamond trade?"

"Industrial diamonds-things that we need for tools and so forth[must] we now have to go, if anywhere, to the Soviet Union?"

Carol Jevrem:

Africa is not a map

Not a blackened outline on heavy paper

It's a place

A sandstone pebble sliding down a mountain

The grit of the desert

in eyes and teeth

on a red afternoon

It is the sea

swirling and cold around bare knees

Algaeous mud between toes

Will these brown feet

feel Africa's body beneath them?

Will these fingers

point to the lion in the distance?

Will these eyes behold the pyramids,

these ears decipher

the sudden storm of antelope hooves

burning down the horizon?