The West African Metha and His (S)kin.

(Image. Congolese man, a “sapeur”, mocking the prevalence of the Awagas and the Afro-Saxons in West Africa. Sapeurism is a counter-cultural visual critique of the caricature that is the Awaga in the Congo. Severin Mouyengo (shown here) has been a sapeur since the 1970s. He poses in the entrance of his family house in the Bacongo neighborhood.)

There are two main types of the Mis-Educated Than His Ancestors (the Metha) who gallivant the vast terrains of West Africa – people who take a personal pride in dwindling down African resources every chance they get by transferring it to Europe. They all love European goods (even European prostitutes). In fact, they live and die by it.

From such places as Ghana and Nigeria, we have the Afro-Saxon, a special kind of Metha, who at the core believes, indefatigably, that he is by all accounts, a type of European (in particular, Anglo-Saxon) in African Skin. He wishes in this sense to escape his African Skin, and for that matter he wishes to be estranged from his own Kin.

The Afro-Saxon’s love for European goods, even his love for their soaps and prostitutes, is the way to shed his African Skin. You are likely to see this one in a suite and tie simmering under the tanning rays of the beautiful African skies. Although, the Afro-Saxon would rather live in London where he can hide from the Sun.

Then, in the colonies of the French, we have the the AWAGA (Africans With Acclaimed Gualish Ancestors). The acronym, Awaga, pronounced “Ogre”: this type of Metha is essentially what he sounds like, an Ogre! He is indeed gullish in every way, and he has read “Mes Ancêtres Les Gauloises” for so long, since he was but six years old in colonial French elementary school, that he actually believes that his Ancestors were actually not Wollof, or Hausa, but Gauls (some primitive tribe of western Europe ancestry).

The ways in which the Afro-Saxons and the Awagas behave are indistinguishable, except one loves his english barbarians and the other adores his french primitives. The Awaga, in particular refuses to speak any other language but the pagan french, except at his father’s funeral where he must bid his father farewell in Hausa and then proceed to live his gullish, frivolous, simple-minded, cowardly life.