Surprisingly, the government and people of Liberia gave Bai Tee a funeral befitting his memorable contributions to the development of our culture. The Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs, and Tourism took his mortal remains to the National Cultural Center, his brain-child, for one night's wake, at which friends and fans paid tributes to his memory. Traditional musicians sang the fondest Liberian songs accompanied by diverse, indigenous musical instruments; Zoes performed sacred rituals; cultural troupes and masked dancers including those of the Dey, Gola, Vai, Kpelle, Gbandi, and Gio tribes, staged spectacular exhibitions. The casket of the fallen cultural hero was subsequently convoyed by troops to Centennial Memorial Pavilion, where presidents traditionally take their oaths of office, for another night of wake and a state funeral. Bai Tee was finally laid to rest in his village of Dimeh on the Monrovia-Tubmanburg highway, the setting of his novel, Murder in the Cassava Patch, the best known of his literary works.

Before Bai Tee's involvement with his country's cultural affairs, the Liberian elite had created the impression that everything African was embarrassing, outmoded, and incongruous with modern civilization. Captivated by the dazzling and widespread technological achievements of the West, like most other peoples of the developing world, they considered Western culture the legitimate culture of the civilized world. Western dress was our national attire. Western diets and drinks were the staples at state dinners. English became our national language. Indeed, Liberians shunned all conventions and traditions that had given meaning and coherence to their lives for ages—perhaps the most significant contributor to the nation's collapse and disintegration.

To reject or deny the reality and authority of Western civilization is suicidal, for no nation can survive without it. We especially in the developing world need Western technology to speed up our economic growth and development. With time against us, it would be an exercise in futility should we attempt to reinvent the automobile, the telephone, or the airplane, simply to have contraptions bearing an African imprint. Rather, we should employ the vast and ready store of knowledge and expertise the West maintains in every conceivable field to hasten our progress, for there is nothing like a pure civilization. Western civilization itself is a composite of knowledge and skills assembled from all nations and ages. But, as the West has done, we should make our own whatever we borrow from them! We may wear Western clothes but carefully selected and designed to suit our own taste in dress and the prevailing demands of the climate and circumstances in which we live, although it is vitally important that we retain what we already possess once it serves our needs and purpose.

Whenever the argument to return to our African roots is advanced in Liberia, the elites, with their Western education and culture, usually consider it a call for reversion to our primitive past. Although many of them claim to be holders of terminal degrees in anthropology, psychology, history, philosophy, and other social sciences, they cannot perceive the possibility of a people maintaining their national character and still becoming modernized. Westerners have distinctive characteristics that set them apart from each other as can be seen in the diversity of their languages, arts, music, architecture, diets, dress codes; and they maintain their unique characteristics with pride and relentless fervor as if life were impossible without them.

The best tribute we can pay to the memory of Bai Tee is making our culture part of our daily life, for culturally we are dressed in borrowed robes. Unless we replace these alien garments with ones of our own making, we will continue failing in all our attempts to build a society that can meet our needs and aspirations. People pursuing such a venture cannot afford to be motivated by mere curiosity; they must live and think culture and, as such, risk appearing absurd in society. But it is their courage and sacrifice that will make our culture respectable in world community.

My own sobering experience in living our culture occurred in the seventies at the funeral of a friend's father. The Old Man's death dismayed me as if he had been my own father. Grief-stricken, I lost my appetite and crossed streets without watching the traffic flow. Color-blind, I wore the first suit I put my hands on for the funeral, which happened to be green. My fellow funeral marchers, who were dressed in black, watched me at once with curiosity and contempt.

“Why you na wearin' black?” they upbraided me repeatedly. “Makin' country man civilize' ain' natin' small,” they would add scornfully.

Inquisitive glances and humiliating comments were my lot all day long. But I endured the biting reproofs by consoling myself with the belief that, in funeral matters, African culture required empathy and not the color of clothes; besides, I earnestly believed that my friend, a deputy minister of culture, was at least one person who understood my predicament. But even he accused me of betraying his trust and friendship for wearing a green suit at his father's funeral.

Even though returning to our roots was a major motif for our wars of independence, Africans today take pride in importing western knowledge, goods, and services to Africa rather than thinking and making things for themselves. Ironically, Westerners often ask them the embarrassing questions, “Who are you? When will you learn to think and do things for yourselves?” Unable to answer such questions satisfactorily, they embark upon the unrealistic pursuit of protesting against western imperialism, impressing the world with the importance of being black and African, vainly searching for their non-existent roots in Western libraries and museums, and engaging in vicious propaganda that holds the white man responsible for all our problems. Some turn to the East simply to learn that even the East does not have answers to our many problems.

The black American writer James Baldwin once stated that a people's experience is the only basis for their salvation. Thus, Africans must accept their own experience with all its bitterness, trappings, darkness, contradictions—and place it under the scrutiny of intelligence to make it yield solutions to their many problems. This cannot be done if we continue regarding our culture as a museum piece meant for diversion—as seen in our portrayal of its exotic and bizarre manifestations. The protagonist of the African novel is traditionally careless, erratic, childish, quixotic. Known as “the noble savage”, he frequently engages in suicidal forays that accomplish nothing but disaster. His nobility consists in living a reckless life in an ancient environment far from modern society, which presumably leaves its members in mental and emotional shambles. This “innocent”, “happy”, and “peaceful” life of the jungle should never be invaded by skyscrapers, railroads, telephones, vehicles, refrigerators, radios, or televisions, in order to preserve its simplicity and serenity. But, entangled in disease, superstition, poverty, and self-immolation, it is far more perplexing and ruinous than modern civilization.

Bai Tee's effort to redeem, develop, and popularize our culture did not enjoy much support. Liberian culture remained in the shadows as it had been before his intervention. In the sixties, when he was Deputy Minister for Culture at the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs, and Tourism, the government undertook the revitalization of the nation's culture, a project which saw the establishment of the National Cultural Center at Kendeja near Monrovia, where dancers, dressed in native costumes, performed traditional dances for the entertainment of tourists and government officials and their guests.

The young musicians and dancers usually demonstrated remarkable skills in their performances, sometimes with classical twists. Regrettably, neither the government nor any institution significantly recorded or analyzed these exhibitions to improve their quality. Studying and writing our music and carefully analyzing the works of our artisans could have increased the value and appreciation of our art. Because Liberian art lacks adequate development and explication, it has not taken its rightful place in world civilization.

Our medical practitioners, for instance, possess knowledge of a wide variety of curatives, but such knowledge is clothed in superstition, causing it to have no credibility in modern society. Our psychiatrists are known as witch-doctors, our herbalists as charlatans, our folklorists as anachronisms—simply because their practices are non-literate. Cast in the mystique of fear and apprehension, even the ordinary universal practice of performing rituals at graves in Africa to honor the dead is condemned in the modern world—and with justification; although such practices have redeeming qualities, they terrify, perplex, and even ruin those engaging in them. Respect for the dead is perfectly acceptable, but when that respect imputes to them powers over the living, it no longer serves any useful purpose. Indeed, African culture needs refinement, analysis, and explanation in a language the modern world understands.

For such efforts to succeed, we must abandon our uncritical acceptance of any unfavorable definition of our culture, which assails our integrity and betrays our race. For instance, “black” is considered a symbol of death, tragedy, evil, hell, and the devil. Over the years, the collocation of “black” with adversity has created the fallacy that black people are bad—a belief that wields universal credence because black people make it legitimate by wearing black clothes for funeral and mourning. Inexplicably, they are surprised when despised on account of their color.

Colors are neutral and assume only the meanings people assign to them. If the meaning assigned to a particular color proves damaging to a whole race of people, I see no reason why they should accept it. Realizing the religious, social, and psychological injury the identification of black with the dark side of life has done to the image of black people—incidentally, some yellow-skinned people consider black people as devils—black people should substitute white for black at funerals, which makes more sense.

The expression of grief and joy at funerals is one important lesson the world can learn from Africans. Joy and sorrow are so intermingled at African funerals that the unwary foreign observer might find it difficult to determine whether they are occasions for grieving or for rejoicing. Instead of expressing their sorrows by wearing black clothes or sending bereaved families messages of sympathy on fancy cards, as it is done in the West, Africans identify with the bereaved family and share responsibility for the funeral.

Friends, relatives, and acquaintances of the dead weep openly, sing and dance boisterously, wear rags, paint themselves with mud or ashes, shave their hair, and make financial contributions towards expenses for the burial. But Westerners, especially missionaries, consider excessive emotional involvement with death irrational. To them death is a solemn affair which calls for quiet and sober reflection. The Judeo-Christian tradition they cherish, however, admits of such a contradiction: Jesus wept on his way to Lazarus' tomb (Jn. 11:35), and St. Paul admonished Christians to rejoice always whatever their circumstance (Phil. 4:4). Convinced that positive attitudes can replace negative ones, western psychologists recommend that whenever you are overwhelmed by sorrow or grief, rejoice! Whenever you are confronted by the stark reality of death, affirm life! And whenever life proves dreary, dismal, or disappointing, hold a vision of a better future before your eyes! How could such be if the bereaved are forever preoccupied with a symbol that represents their irreparable loss?

Besides the psychological injury involved, wearing black for funerals and mourning is inconsistent with Christian faith. For the Christian, death is not the end, but a transition from mortality to immortality. This faith is buttressed by Christ's resurrection. Thus, obsession with what symbolizes it is lack of faith in the Son of God who declared and proved that he is the resurrection and the life (Jn. 11:25). It is better for Christians to wear white for funerals and mourning since it is universally considered a symbol of peace, joy, purity, holiness, and even heaven.

The present human tragedy that threatens the utter annihilation of Africa derives from patterning all our institutions and development initiatives after those of the west. Constantly do we revise our political, religious, and educational institutions to meet western criteria, a costly mistake that has virtually replaced our sacred heritage with an alien one which refuses to take root in our consciousness. It is sad that the African elite scarcely see connections between our current tragedies and our failure to respect our culture. Unless we take urgent measures to address this inexcusable negligence, the progress of the continent will always hang in the balance.