Our Town: The African king

Even African kings have cell phones these days. On a recent visit to Stanford for the campus' Africa Week, Paramount King (Omanhene) Shekhem Ur Shekhem Ra Un Nefer Amen I revealed that he is a thoroughly modern king--with the technology to prove it.

Shekhem Ur Shekhem--which translates as King of Kings or Priest of Priests--presides over the Ashanti tribe in the Agogo region of Ghana, West Africa. But he actually lives in New York, flying to Agogo only twice a year. His main job is to serve as a "goodwill, cultural and business" ambassador for Ghana and to raise money for his homeland from the estimated 500,000 ancestral Ghanaians living in America.

The slight, bespectacled king defied any stereotypes as he strolled into a room full of Stanford students to the beat of two African drums. Wearing a crisp linen suit, the only outward sign of his kingly role was a swath of brightly colored "kinte" cloth sewn to the breast of his suit in a traditional West African weaving style. Around his neck he wore a delicate golden chain bearing a symbol, which, he later explained to me, is an ancient Egyptian sign of male virility.

I don't know what I expected an African king to look like. Perhaps I expected more flamboyant tribal attire. Or perhaps I expected more aloofness. After all, this was the first African king to visit Stanford, we were told. He looked pretty down-to-earth to me.

But I realized that my out-of-touch racist stereotypes betrayed my own utter lack of knowledge and comprehension of how African culture works. My head was still filled with schoolbook images of tribal warriors wearing exotic jewelry and menacing looks. The reality, of course, is entirely different.

"Our culture has been very misrepresented," said Shekhem Ur Shekhem. "Our people didn't leave books about history; our history is in our genes."

"Everybody tries to talk about Africa for us," he said. "You have to look at Africa through the mind of Africans" rather than Europeans.

As a person of English descent, whose ancestors, according to Shekhem Ur Shekhem, waged war on the Ashanti tribe over possession of a golden throne, I decided it was time to hear the other side of the story. This is what I heard:

"People say Africans don't have a philosophy," Shekhem Ur Shekhem said. "That's true. Philosophy is a lot of yackety yack."

Shekhem Ur Shekhem has no time for Aristotle or Descartes. He describes himself as a diviner. A respected Egyptian scholar and author, he seeks the answer to life's puzzles through a culture infused with spirituality and ancient traditions. His own philosophy is symbolized by one of the first gifts he received when he returned to Africa, he said: a stool in the shape of a bird looking backward at its tail.

"In order to progress, we need to look backward, because the future doesn't exist," he said. "You don't know why you're here. ... You don't know what is truth or how to approach truth. Life doesn't follow a logical path: There's more to it than that. That's the African perspective."

One ceremony that the Ashanti tribe still holds every 40 days is the "Akwasida," he said. During that ceremony, 28 Ashanti kings gather in a mausoleum where previous Ashanti kings are buried to seek guidance from their spirits. The messages come through a talking flute. When Shekhem Ur Shekhem hears the flute playing, he said, the message of his ancestors becomes crystal clear.

Although these royal rituals might not go down well in England, where Prince Charles' revelation that he talks to his plants subjected him to ridicule, we might all learn some valuable lessons from Shekhem Ur Shekhem's message that preaches spiritual connections above material wealth--shaking the very foundations of Western culture.

"There are people out there whose sole purpose is to make money," he said. "Money never saved anybody. ... The solution to our problems is through spirituality, whether you believe in God or not."

I realized that there was much more to Shekhem Ur Shekhem than I had assumed at first glance. In spite of his outward trappings of Western culture--the cell phone and the linen suit--or perhaps because of them, this man was able to tap into a room full of students and reporters and show them the world through very different eyes.

I may know the minutiae of Palo Alto's budget or storm drain master plan, I may have read a lot of books on philosophy and history, but from my meeting with the African king, I realized that, in the grand scheme of things, I still have a lot to learn.

Vicky Anning is a staff writer at the Weekly.

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