Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah, is a deeply profound and monumental text, for those who understood it. It is titled an historical novel, however it really doesn’t fit into any of the european defined structures for books. The term ‘novel’ implies “fictional,” “untrue,” “made up” and the like. One critique agrees. “Indeed the term ‘novel’, though it appears clearly on the title page, sits oddly on a book so apparently remote from the existing novelistic models.” (Pg. 64, The Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah by Robert Fraser)
    2000 Seasons IS about actual accounts told from our oral tradition and only the exact names of people and places have changed. For those of us who know our connected history, it reads like autobiography of disconnectedness and reconnectedness. There have been some critiques that have said that there is no connection of Black people and that Armah’s history is off. I personally do not want to waste wrist energy typing that stuff but, for those interested, the text is Ayi Kwei Armah’s Africa by Derek Wright beginning on pg. 221.
    Beyond a literary critique of this masterful work, 2000 Seasons is a text that can help Africa’s children return home, return to ourselves and return to OUR WAY (OUR WAY). It shows possibly how we let the arabs and europeans into our societies and our lives. We were trippin’!!! We had started to get lax in performing rituals, in exercising reciprocity, in being connected Afrikan people. We did not listen to the Oracles, Sages and Prophetesses. We turned our backs on that which had sustained us. Is it possible that the last 500 years have been an Afrikan Ancestral Butt whippin’? Was it allowed so it could whip us back into Afrikans? Will it continue until enough of us faithfully and from the heart return to OUR WAY (OUR WAY)?

    The creator of this site felt exceptionally moved, not only by the text in its totality but also with the character of “Isanusi.” As you all remember, Isanusi was the older man who stuck to the traditions-at all costs. He saw what was coming down the pike, acted accordingly and was labeled a madman and banished to the fifth grove (beyond the third grove). After things got increasingly worse, the King sought him out to calm the people down, Isanusi still spoke the truth and he was sent back to his “prison.”
    This site especially reflects the warnings and teachings of Isanusi. I personally attempt to live my own life as close to OUR WAY (OUR WAY) as possible, however I am still growing, and am falling by the wayside on a few things, but that is expected with growth. ReAfrikanization is a life long process. We are constantly in a process of “becoming.” For those of us who are CONSCIOUSLY re-embracing OUR WAY ( OUR WAY), we already know this and are growing daily. What I would like to share now is part of the conversation Isanusi had with the people of Anoa and with the children who understood him. These words ring loudly to our situation today and I submit that we need more Isanusi’s around today to get us out of this present mess.

    “Have we forgotten the cause of our long wandering? Did we not learn near the desert how priests and warriors are twin destroyers, the priest attacking the victim mind, the warrior breaking bodies still inhabited by resisting wills?” “All honest people who have come to us have come because they sought to do themselves good among us, as part of our people, and they said so. These white men, they do not want to be part of us. But here they have come claiming they have crossed the sea from wherever it is they come from just to do us good. They are pretenders. They are liars. We have asked them for nothing. We should not have let them come among us. They have no desire to live with us. They will live against us.” (153-154)
    “’The whites intend a lasting oppressions of us’ . . . He told us in the town Poano he had heard a white man, a missionary whose white greed was so subtle it looked forward to the ending of the open trade of human beings, to the beginning of a subtler destruction. This white missionary thought there would be far greater profit in keeping the victims of the trade here on our own land, having the kings and courtiers use them to mine and grow whatever the whites need, then offering the product to the white destroyers . . . Isanusi said this white missionary would be busy finding ways to eternalize our slavery through using our leaders in a cleverer kind of oppression, harder to see as slavery, slavery disguised as freedom itself. ‘The whites intend a long oppression of us.’” (163)
    (The narrator) “Our choices in the life we were ready to begin would not be many: we could fit into existing arrangements, abandoning our dreams of that better world, dreams of our way, the way. Or we could try to realize the way. That would mean fighting against the white road, the white people’s system for destroying our way, the way.
    We listened to Isanusi. We did not know then the knowledge contained in his words was immediate, urgent knowledge. We thought we would have time to absorb it, time to adjust to its meaning. We had none.
    Isanusi tried to warn us but we misjudged him. We thought there was a distance between his words and reality, a space for us to manoeuvre in. There was none . . . . He warned us to stay completely clear of the new arrangements, the positions which had already become mere jobs for parasites.”
    (Isanusi)”The way things have become, if you do not want to be parasites you need time in which to think of what else there is to be. And above time, courage to do what you conclude you ought to do, which is more difficult . . . .”
    (Isanusi)”If you knew who you were, you would accept no invitations from[B]lack men who call white people friends. Such unnatural friendships are fed by bloody interests. You will live to be their victim.” (164-166)