West African Bushmen Are Denied U.S. Visas
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Carlos Santos, Times-Dispatch (Richmond), July 03, 2008
Three West African bushmen recruited to build an authentic mud-hut village at the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia were denied visas because they are too poor and inarticulate.
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John Avoli, director of the museum in Staunton, said yesterday, “After a monumental effort, we identified three bush people who actually lived in mud huts. You can’t imagine how difficult it was to get them out of the bush and bring them to Lagos. We were heartbroken.”
The museum has been planning to build a mid-1700s West African Igbo compound to illustrate the history of the slave trade as well as the early American frontier. Many slaves brought to America and to Virginia came from Nigeria in West Africa.
{snip}
But Avoli said the whole point of recruiting the bushmen—who would of course be poor farmers with no English skills—was that they built and lived in mud huts and so possessed the skills to construct a real Igbo compound.
{snip}
Despite efforts by the Warner’s staff, the decision was not reversed. In her letter last week to Warner, Heien, wrote that Ikegbunam “has no regular income” and that Nkwuda “is a farmer who ekes out a marginal living” while Anigbogu didn’t fill out the application forms properly.
Material to construct the Igbo village is currently on its way to Virginia via ship, Avoli said. The material includes raffia palms for roofing and landscaping as well as pottery, tools and wood carvings that will decorate the mud huts.
An Igbo compound of the mid-1700s usually contained several houses enclosed by a fence of closely planted trees or a wall of compacted earth. Igbo houses were generally rectangular to square in shape, with walls of either solid earth or wattle and daub, and with roofs of palm or grass thatch, according to the museum.
Historically, the Igbo were yam farmers, and the compound of every successful Igbo included a yam barn where the harvested root crop was stored.
Avoli said that despite the setback, the West African village will be built. Umembe Onyejekwe, a former Nigerian government museum curator, will spend four months helping to build the village. She helped recruit the three bushmen.
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(Posted on July 3, 2008)
Comments
I’m surprised Jesse Jackson wasn’t out crying about jobs being given to foreigners… on the other hand, when has he ever cried about that except to take some job from whitey?
Posted by at 6:08 PM on July 3
This may just be the first step in Obama’s plan to populate the other “7” states with all the rich culture from his beloved “Mother Land”.
Posted by Bandmo at 6:29 PM on July 3
Really - how hard could it actually be to build these silly huts?
Posted by Fletcher at 6:30 PM on July 3
This is jut another attempt to bring in minorities from Africa. Maine and Iowa were deemed “too white” so they brought in hundreds of Africans and set them up in Maine, Iowa and Minnesota. We will be integrated whether we like it or not.
Posted by at 6:32 PM on July 3
This is only a guess but could it be that they were the “Pick to pry open the door” for a host of other craftsman. On a related note, I remember how all my life I loved to see Mexican craftsman presenting their trade. Be it Wrought Iron or Stone Work or whatever. They made the work look simple but the results were always tremendous. Now a days it appears every building I see looks like something done by the guys hanging out at Home Depot using materials bought from there. I don`t know why but I suspect it has something to do with paying a guy who just showed up 7.50 an hour to build your garden wall. Where are the real experts?!? The guys that have been around longer than their pickup. Know what I mean?
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 6:50 PM on July 3
Despite this “loss” to the Balkanization proponents of the country, our immigration policies seem to follow the freak show recruitment practices of P.T. Barnum more than anything remotely logical or beneficial to our nation.
Posted by ZKR at 9:32 PM on July 3
The Igbo (or Ibo, or Biafrans) are not “Bushmen”. West Africa is jungle country. South Africa is bush country. And the “Bushmen” are from south Africa: Namibia (the Namib Desert) and South Africa. The click-talking desert dude from “The Gods Must Be Crazy” was a Bushman.
Posted by Big Bill at 10:38 PM on July 3
Why didn’t they propose building pyramids?
Posted by Cassiodorus at 11:29 PM on July 3
huts. You can’t imagine how difficult it was to get them out of the bush and bring them to Lagos. We were heartbroken.”
I met two of these “heartbroken” types in CDG airport in Paris. They are missionaries (idiots) an elderly couple just going back stateside accompanied by 2 young black girls they had just “adopted” from Nigeria, they already had 3 of them at home and intended to bring more ‘adoptees’ I wondered at the time, why only young girls?? I also wondered WHY at all?
Posted by Skip at 12:29 AM on July 4
Big Bill, the term “Bushman” can be used broadly to include any primitive person who lives in the bush.
“Historically, the Igbo were yam farmers…”
Well, you know what they say, “you can take the bushman out of the bush but you can’t take the bush out of the bushman”. In other words, “I yam what I yam”.
Posted by jewamongyou at 1:01 AM on July 4
I can’t believe the State Department would stand in the way of this priceless recreation of advanced African architecture.
It just illustrates just how culturally arid and barren these faceless (and heartless!)bureaucrats truly are. A national disgrace!
Posted by john at 6:46 AM on July 4
I’m a bit confused about this. Aren’t the Igbo a Nigerian tribe? What have the Bushmen got to do with them?. The Bushmen are San people, not Bantus at all, they have red hair, Asian features and light red skin, they were pretty much all over South Africa until the advent of first the Northern Bantu Tswana people,the Dutch and BritishI didn’t know the San built huts, much less for the Igbo people.
Incidentally, Cecil Rhodes colonised and administered Botswana(Bechuanaland) where the San people removed to and ensured that the majority Tswana didn’t enslave the San as was their want. When the British left they ensured that the Kalahari Game Reserve was formed to ensure that the San people could continue their foraging and mobile lifestyle in perpetuity. The current African government of Botswana is trying to remove the San so that they can mine for minerals.
There is something very odd about this story. Why didn’t their sponsors ensure they had sufficient funds to last them for the few months that it would take them to build the Nigerian huts?
Very odd indeed.
Arc.
Posted by Arcadian at 9:56 AM on July 4
Why can’t they simply go back and build them in West Africa?
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 12:01 PM on July 4
Why not go a step further. Create display of noble Africans roasting a dead enemy warrior over their campfire for the evening meal.
sfunny how studiously the liberal institutions will go to any effort to IGNORE all the unsavory aspects of “African culture.” Like cannibalism. Like harvesting body parts of freshly murdered children for voodo rituals and making magic charms.
With lifesize photos of necklacing, female circumcision and other neat African cultural practices also — aimed at giving ALL Americans a better understanding of the African way of life — past and present.
Posted by Fed Up at 1:46 PM on July 4
So this guy Avoli is “heartbroken” because he was denied an opportunity to guilt-trip whites in my state? It’s the best news I’ve received all week.
As for that missionary couple of whom Skip speaks, they represent the worst of Christianity — all emotion and no head, possessed of the need to create a sacrament of unity. Don’t cut them any slack just because of their piety. Break their hearts.
Posted by Carl at 1:47 PM on July 4
The slave trade never got near the bushmen’s settlements. The blacks who forced other blacks into slavery brought them out to the trading forts to be sold.
Posted by at 3:24 PM on July 4
When I tried to bring my wife’s sister over from SE Asia to help with the birth of our first child, the local Embassy would not grant her a visa. So, Good - let’s enforce the laws. If my sister-in-law is not good enough to visit the USA, these pygmies aren’t either.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 8:30 AM on July 5
Any projects in the U.S. would suffice I should think. After the Africans have been there for a little while, they are authentic replicas of authentic African bush habitats.
Posted by Skip at 6:04 AM on July 6
So we can land a craft on Mars but cant build a stone age hut? Riiight.
Posted by the way at 9:37 AM on July 6
No money? Was the museum planning to not pay them for their work?
Anyway, in West and most of Africa hut and barn building, like farming and other hard physical labor was and is done by women, including the 8 1/2 months pregnant, handicapped and aged.
Posted by at 2:07 PM on July 7
If they did give them the visas, as soon as they got here they would have just disappeared and joined the tens of millions of other people who illegally overstay their visas every year and remain in this country illegally.
Posted by White American at 11:01 PM on July 7