The feeling is not like those who first sailed the seas and “found” the continent on behalf of kings and empires and the Church, and who first lit those matches from which so many African fires still burn. The feeling is not like that at all.

For now, in Amsterdam, I sit quietly and somewhat stoically in seat 35A, having just boarded an Airbus A330 operated by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, listening to the former King of Pop sailing the speakers with “The Girl Is Mine.” Because she’s mine/the doggone girl is mine.

It was only two decades ago when Michael Jackson’s empire of popular music seemed “world without end.” But alas, nothing lasts forever – except the rotation of his hit songs, apparently. Whatever lay ahead, whatever will happen on my first venture into Africa, whatever knowledge is to be discovered there, the journey is already being soothed for friendlier and easier consumption. Good God, what a relief.

High above land, suddenly, and there’s no going back to Kansas. I couldn’t worry about it if I wanted to: the first snack and beverage will be around soon. I adjust the air-flow nozzle to the level of cool I prefer. Later, I will choose – from the individual media console in the back of the chair in front of me – which movie I’m in the mood to see and when I want to see it, or if “The Office” reruns are worth the strange looks I’ll inevitably receive because of my laugh. The movie selections, in particular, are dizzyingly diverse, but I’ve already ruled out “Coming to America,” obviously.

I stare out the window for awhile and imagine colonialism’s extensive, pervasive song possibly hitting its last musical note at an exact point in time in the future history of Africa. Another horizon emerges, and of course I am dreaming. My head is in the clouds, after all. But Eden looks stunning and serene from 30,000 feet, and I can’t help the longing – even if certain sins on the ground are always in perpetual “current rotation.”

The French philosopher Michel Foucault has said that knowledge is never innocent, and I am inclined to agree. The day before I left for Uganda, a friend of mine made it a point to say he would like to give me a gun before I leave. I think he mistook my attending a theological conference and experiential field trip for a scene out of “Black Hawk Down.” Or maybe he thought I was naively hurdling myself straight into the miserable crisis that is Darfur.

I could tell by his eyes, however, he was dead serious. So here’s what I heard: “You’ll need a gun. And you might have to use it, because, as you know, they’re all killing themselves over there.” Either way, Mogadishu or Darfur, Freetown or Kigali, Kampala or Nairobi, they are all lumped together in one big pile with a yellow post-it note that reads “Africans.”

To be fair, we’re all guilty of this fearful yet comfortable socializing maneuver every now and then, which, I think, is evidence to Foucault’s observation about knowledge and its lack of innocence. Notwithstanding, I was half-tempted to respond sarcastically, “Yeah, no problem, I’ll take a gun, and while I’m over there would you mind if I told the ‘Africans’ that all Americans fornicate and commit adultery?”

I touch down in Entebbe, Uganda, at night, and the poetry of the arrival is pitch-perfect: most of what I know about Africa is dark, mysterious, unknown and – like me – waiting for dawn. I disembark off the plane and onto the tarmac directly, walking toward a severely understated terminal entrance. The warm air hitting my face, mixed with the wafting aroma of something burning, doesn’t bother me in the least. I have wanted to come here for so long.

I look up. These are African skies, aren’t they?

Out of the dark and into the soft light of the terminal, my eyes barely get the chance to adjust. A tiny newsstand/bookstore greets me along the right, like a kiss to the cheek. I am altogether too willing to glance. Almost immediately, I see it – or, rather, him – on the third shelf, featuring in the window. Seemingly only 100 steps from where I landed is a copy of “Your Best Life Now,” by Joel Osteen.

Naturally (or unnaturally), Osteen is preening on the cover. He really looks happy to have his book in the airport in Uganda. It is, indeed, a bizarre but memorable way to be welcomed into Africa – that permanent smile and that book’s ever-promising title juxtaposed against the realities no doubt I’ll find in the morning. In that window and in that location, Osteen seemed like an extremely enthusiastic tour-guide. But I wasn’t buying.

Later, as the bus leaves the airport, bouncing and jostling toward Kampala and then through Kampala, soon after the auto mall, in fact, and the Domino’s pizza shop, and right before the Coca-Cola bottling plant and the neighborhood market with cell phones and digital cameras hanging by the goat meat and green bananas, the narrative in which to place “Your Best Life Now” becomes self-explanatory: Western culture, for better or for worse. In the words immortalized by that 20th Century conqueror who would be King of Culture everywhere, “It’s a small world after all.” Which is slightly disappointing, to tell the truth.

The bus ride to the hotel, by the way, was longer than they said it would be. TIA – This is Africa. Or perhaps it is me, just eager for the morning, hoping to hear a new bird or two and to find out their names.

Later, after a cold shower, as sleep begins to overtake my body, and with the BBC news playing in the background, I realize there is still dirt on my hands.

Nathan F. Elmore visited Uganda and Kenya for two weeks in May 2007 to participate in the Amahoro Africa gathering. http://www.amahoro-africa.org

8 June 2005