WOODEN BUILDINGS

 

Wood is scared to pre-colonial West Africans (our kith and kin), and traditional colonial wooden objects were sacred to our craftsmen and builders here. The spirituality of wood was so powerful that wood sculpture (for which Africa is so famous) was forbidden during slavery. But the wood used in colonial wooden architecture was sacred too--just in a different way. The wood has a memory in its rings. That memory is of past much longer than ours. It remembers the environmental circumstances of the planet in a way that needs remembering now. 

 

Other places revere wood aside from Africa--Japan has an amazing ancient wood culture, for example--but Africa has wood reverence no less impressively than anywhere else. Africa's wood culture is not second rate (any more than anything else African is second rate ) on the global scale.

 

When you destroy wooden buildings, you destroy earth memories, and the compassion, wisdom and gentleness, those memories embody. Then you replace it for seemingly safe and durable concrete. But the concrete is hard and merciless. And when you cover up the land with concrete the people become hardened and merciless too.