Speeches

Consul General Brian L. Browne
Remarks
Commemoration Speech In Honor Of The Establishment Of The First Library In The Delta Niger

Warri, Delta State
November 22, 2005

Thank you for inviting me to join you today for this ceremony celebrating the establishment of the first community library in the entire Niger Delta. I am honored to help the people of Oporaza mark this great moment.

I stand before you to say that two sets of special people deserve special commendation for making this celebration a reality. On one side, there are the members of the Global Citizen's Journey. The Journey is an American grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing understanding where there has been none and to bringing peace and hope to places where conflict and despair have taken residence for too long. This organization is truly global. Many of the members live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Because of their love of humanity, they traveled thousands of miles, thousands of miles from the comfort of their lives on the Pacific Coastline to join us here in the Delta to help improve the lives of people they do not even know and who do not know them.

Their journey into human compassion represents the best of the civic spirit that has made America the country that it is. Even more so, their journey represents those attributes which the human race exhibits from time to time when it is ready to advance the cause of human progress.

To the members of the GCJ, I know your trip was long and at times you may have entertained doubts as to your purpose or ultimate effectiveness of this trek, but we are proud of you. We are proud of the courage and compassion that you summoned which has overcome those understandable doubts and fears. Your visit here is worthwhile.

On the other side, I would like to applaud the work of the Niger Delta Professionals for Development. In terms of miles, your journey has been a short one. This is your home after all. However, in terms of the social and political distance you have traversed and the personal risks and possible ostracism you have risked, your journey has been a long one fueled by an enviable brand of heroism, vision and devotion to community. Social change is hard because, in essence, you have to tell people that what they think is best may not be right and what they thing is wrong may be closer to being right. Often it is easier for an outsider to reveal these ironies. People often denigrate the familiar face that has the courage to state the uncomfortable truth. Thus, to the members of the Niger Delta Professionals, I salute you.

I'm very glad to be here because I look at this event as a multiple celebration. At its most obvious and visible level, we commemorate the building of a library, the first of its kind in the Delta. The first of its kind in the Delta.

This means the coming of this library is long overdue. If it has taken so long to raise a library, it means our attention and our efforts have been distracted from where they should have been, to other things that were less salutary and less productive.

This brings us to another level of awareness at which we should view at this project. Here I will say something somewhat jarring so I ask that you listen closely as I do not want you to misunderstand the point I make.

In a fundamental sense, it is immaterial that we celebrate the creation of a library. It could have been something else - a school, a clinic, a house, a table - a flowerpot. I don't care. I would have come to be with you regardless. In this environment, where there has been too much division, in this environment where there has been too much destruction in recent years, the very idea that people of a different ethnic groups, of different walks of life came together to build anything is perhaps more important than the something they actually managed to build.

Two important and positive thought processes had to be nurtured in order to make this a reality. First, people from different ethnic and economic stripes had to realize that they not only could work together, but more importantly, that they should work together. Isn't it a joyous day when the lamb can lay unharmed at the foot of the lion?

The second point in this regard is when people are busy building or creating something they have no time to destroy or tear down something else. One cannot be a builder and a destroyer at the same time. The two no more go together than peace can be war or darkness can be light.

Our library may not be a multi-storied building of high-tech instruments, but it is something that you, the community built, I exhort you to let the psychology of building and creativity that make this endeavor infect each and every one of you here.

Further, I ask you to spread this healthy infection among your family and friends. For this infection is the best cure for the diseases of destruction and conflict that have plagued your community. Thus, while the project you established is a library of books and other learning material, it also stands as a healthy dose of social tonic for the entire community. Continue to give your community this life giving treatment. Be good healers unto your neighbors your brothers and sisters, no matter what tribe they are from. The more you create, the less you destroy. The more you work together, the less eager you are to tear yourselves apart. What I say is not new. It is a fundamental lesson of history. It is as old as the first instance of man's contact with his fellow man. Let those who have eyes see and those who have ears let them hear.

Previously, I said, that at one level, it was perhaps immaterial that we are celebrating a library. However, on another level, that we are opening a library is perhaps a most appropriate thing. You see a library is more than a repository of books. If you look at it as a mere warehouse of books you are likening it to a funeral home or a morgue. Instead, it is a factory of learning. Like any factory, this library should be active and vibrant. We all have a stake in making it a success.

Thus, I am glad this partnership chose a library as their first joint project in Nigeria. Public libraries are uniquely American institutions, and public libraries like the one to be commissioned in Oporoza represent our common quest for knowledge, for engagement with the peoples and cultures outside our local communities, for exploring new ways of thinking and perceiving and learning.

Public libraries represent an important theme from American history: access to education and knowledge for everyone, for men, for women, for children, for our elderly, for immigrants, and for visitors and guests. They represent our common desire to grow and develop as human beings, and to help develop the communities and societies in which we live.

A fountain of knowledge and wisdom, this library also will be a weapon unto all who seek to promote your own social and economic welfare. Yes, there is nothing wrong with admitting that your own welfare is your primary concern. Please I do not want any confusion here. My speech is not to get you to sacrifice your well being to better someone else's. What I am trying to do is to get you to sacrifice your biases, prejudices and the destructive actions born of these awful parents so that both you and the people against whom your biases are aimed will be better off.

You must understand that the best way to improve your situation is not to constantly fight someone in order to make sure they do not get that which you want. Don't you know there is no material thing so precious that there is only one of them? If your neighbor has a fever, does that mean you cannot get one? Thus, why do you get angry if he has a car? Does him having one prevent you from owning one?

I tell you the best way to improve your lot is to not fight people for the little that you see. If so you will be fighting every day. Your lives will be one ceaseless bleak struggle where the little you won today will make you afraid that your enemies will gain strength and wrest it from you tomorrow. Thus, you will spend your time and energy on how to take and to keep what you have. You will sleep with one eye open and one foot on the floor. By constantly fighting and struggling, you and your opponent will break and render useless the very things you fight over. Sadly, the more you break, the more desperate the fight becomes as the items that remain of any value become less numerous and thus more precious.

However, with wisdom and understanding, you can find the door out of this trap. The best way to improve your lot is to seek what? - is to seek to build and create more items of value. The more things of value you create, the less contention possession of any one of them will be. Additionally, you must encourage a system where your former adversary can create and share in the possession of something valuable. As you change your mentality, you will change your outlook on your relationship with other people. Life is not all competition and conflict. It is also concord and cooperation. If you do this, your former adversary, may in time, become your good neighbor.

One of the ways to achieve this new mentality is through the knowledge and ideas that are alive and waiting in this library. So do not look at the library as monument but look at it as a dynamic tool that may help you usher in a new period of creativity and development in your community.

I also want to commend you for making this a truly public and open library. It is good that people from neighboring towns and villages can take advantage of this institution. It only makes sense. Does an Ijaw man read a book one way and an Itsikiri read it upside down? We must use this institution as an example to all on the need to foster development that touches and helps the entire community not just our family and friends. After all, does hunger taste different in the Urhoho mouth than in the Ijaw or Itsikiri. Does a mother from one group worry more for her sick child than a mother from another group?

Of course, people and ethnic groups have differences. But differences does not necessarily mean enmity. Differences require understanding. For in the end, we must strive to lie together for in living together, we encourage the best in all of us. But if we are always balling our fists at each other, we bring out the basest part of each of us. Into that mirror, no one should want to look for what will stare back is not appealing.

Thus, let us join hands to celebrate this event, this library. But let us realize that this is not an end, but a beginning. This library represents but a small step along a difficult but necessary path. The path may get narrow at times, but you will make it. It may get steep sometimes, but you will make it. Detractors will throw stones and try to dissuade you, but keep going. Do not let the loud voices of those who are weak in courage and compassion dampen your resolve. Continue to build on the vision that led to the building of this library. If you do so, you represent the best hope of your community and you will make that hope a reality for yourself and the coming generations.

Thank you.

 

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