Ghost cities

As time rolls down its adventurous journey, inevitably more and more add to the list of what can be called, ghost cities. We have our own, Sri Jayewardenepura, Kotte that may fit this title more, "the city that grew on top of itself". Beneath lies the ancient city and its hum of life that galvanised it, still echoes in the waves of Diyawanna, the picturesque waterway that snakes around it. Just now, technical and aesthetic imagination breed many an innovation to capture the sight seer's attention.

The process of my musings, in itself winds its way like a mysterious staircase that descends down into the underworld. What made me think of ghost cities? The provoker was a whole long list of countries belonging to the African continent that flashed in the mini screen recently, aligned to some program by the Aljazeera. Then in my subsequent mental wanderings my mind settled on Pretoria, that I came across in a log book of a school in distant Balangoda.

"Madam. Just read the queer entries made in the 1880s when this school was started by the BTS (Buddhist Theosophical Society) under the patronage of the Balangoda Ratwatte family," invited the headmaster. That was just sweet music in my ear and I stopped at Pretoria.

I remember reading that the school was closed today (That particular day) since Pretoria of the African continent was attached to the British Empire.

It could even read "since Pretoria gained her independence from the Empire" but still the phase of British colonies or any colony orchestrating Independence attempts had not begun so early as the 1880s. So either I had bungled in my reading or the headmaster had bungled in his "logging". Anyway my first "academic" acquaintance with Africa was in the JSC or Junior School Certificate (year lost in the dim past) form when the last thing in our minds, minds of a set of female adolescents, was this Continent.

History

Our history teacher was one of the dullest on the staff. Did the subject as taught then make the teacher dull or did the teacher make the subject dull, is a moot point. Anyway one day she joyfully astounded us by writing Rape of Africa on the blackboard in big letters. Rape? This word was as distant to us, the convent girls as the continent of Africa. I don't think anyone in our group, all cocooned in respectable backgrounds was ever subject to this ordeal.

Malala, the Afghan girl now making world headlines, put it succinctly when she said that the British children take their privilege of education, for granted. Likewise how many lucky elements in our own lives, we take for granted and sob over the negative aspects!

Back to the dull history guru. She surprised us more that day by adding on a map that demonstrated The Rape of Africa. Perhaps she herself had got a recent lecture at a seminar on how to make the subject of history a more living and palatable subject and not go into a coffin along with it.

Shrouding the cruelty of the act of rape, the map demonstrated a tapestry of vivid colours. To make things clear what was illustrated by the various colours was the colonisation of Africa by different European races. Each race had earned a bright colour that was emblazoned on the map-red, green, yellow, mauve and blue.

Belgian states I remember, distinctly was all yellow and German states, all green and they included the Cameroons. The colours crowed to the world that these races had successfully trespassed into the lands of other races and massacred their identities beyond recognition.

The teacher, of course brainwashed by the glory of Western imperialism went on to eulogise these captors. Africa was an uncivilised country, she said and these conquests really parachuted them to a much higher level of civilisation.

Education

Despite being a bookworm, my education on Africa stopped at that point. One does not keep gloating on one particular subject, especially when a 1000 subjects keep mushrooming as years grow on you.

Observing on the mini screen, the list of African states now gained freedom from colonial bondage my mind did a more than half a century flash back to this map.

The states focused on, had trod the same path like us from colonial status to independent State.

But the imperialist disdain (a result of education in a colonial fortress) plus a bigoted sense of national glory (derived from readings and what not) were implanted in me too and I found myself thinking, that they were much more uncivilised states at the time the colonial bondage began.

As though to thwart this line of thinking, recently I came upon an article titled Ghost Cities. The Ghost city happened to be in the Republic of Mali, an African state, today rid of the shackles of French rule. Had the Western masters retrieved Mali from the doldrums of poverty and despondency? You have only to read that article to get into a newer frame of mind.

The Westerners risen to the rise to the apex of glory subsequent to the Industrial Revolution and all that certainly, had submerged these states almost into nothingness. But beneath the new cities that colonialism bred, pulsated the glory of ancient civilisation.

According to that article, from a start in the third century BC (sounds familiar) the city - Jenne Jeno (perhaps then the prime city of Mali), had by AD 800 grown to support many thousands. Mysteriously abandoned 600 years ago, Jenne Jeno lay forgotten for centuries.

This land locked city in West Africa according to that piece had been originally colonised by immigrants from the Sahara region with whom they continued cultural and religious links.

When was our own last capital abandoned? 462 years ago when king Dharmapala fled to Colombo surrounded by his Parivara and protected by Ferenghi guns. Now another city has grown on top of it.

Let us get back to Mali and its ancient city of Jenne Jeno. A husband and wife team of archaeologists in 1975 had excavated the old city after responding to legends that a once vibrant city lay underneath.

Getting down to work, they had actually come upon a tantalising evidence of a buried city composed of a maze of eroded house walls, surface littered with potsherds, glass beads, stone bracelets corroded metal.

There had certainly lain an advanced society vibrant with elegant craftsmanship, productive agriculture and far reaching trade.

What if researchers were to dig up our own Kotte city braving the consternation of present owners or renters of houses enjoying the utmost of creature comforts in ultra modern comfort? They would encounter much more exotic debris of human living than in the city of Mali.