Africa Day creates contradictory feelings. On the one hand, we are the people who want to celebrate it as a holiday; going out on the street with a bus, chillabas and turbants, dancing djembé; time accompanies us in the case of the African diasporas in Europe. On the other hand, there are those who warn that there is nothing to celebrate, that the day must serve to reflect on the diseases that afflict the continent and the people of Africa, and on our individual and collective responsibility towards them. As in this life, it is a question of finding equilibrium (some people know they are exhausting).

They say that Africa Day was established in the collective memory of the Africans with the aim of perpetuating the date of the official appointment of the Organization for African Unity (OAU), the current African Union (AU), founded on 25 May 1963, and that it is the first pan-African organization to strengthen the Union, Solidarity and Cooperation among the States of the continent (I believe to see the photo of the moment). I don't remember there were women).

Since the establishment of African Day, the people and communities of the African diaspora have become a celebration and have broadened the objectives of the day to the people, communities and peoples of the places in which we live. Before the pandemic, in the region in which I live, as on other occasions, it was becoming a feast of the capital: the event opened by the authorities responsible for immigration and with the support of the local administration. It was a day to share aspects and elements of our ways of being and doing (music, literature, film, arts, gastronomy, folklore, fashion), although what we had at our disposal was little. We created a space of encounter, dialogue, exchange, knowledge and recognition, beyond the myths of identities; we created spaces that strengthened coexistence. In the gardens of the city, we placed the market of the associations, it was one of the activities of the event and the landscapes that were created remembered the remains of some plaza of Marrakech, Aaiun, Nuakchot, Dakar, Bamako, Ouagadugou, Lagos, Yaunde, Malabo or Luanda.

And the problem of the continent was present, both in the projects that the associations showed from their huts and in those that were going to celebrate the day in the gardens. The basis of societies and Governments should be that the human being should wear his intrinsic dignity, although in many parts of the continent there was no such dignity, the programmes based on that minimum on his statements and agendas. The fight against racism, which is now growing, unsustainable, perpetuated by the same mechanisms that had to regulate coexistence, was also the task of many associations.

The people who were going to spend the day in the gardens on that Saturday or Sunday came from different life situations: some lived in settlements or settlements, had also been denied basic rights; others were in an irregular situation; minors who because they were foreigners lived under the guise of the letter "E"; women victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation (who had been deceived, among other things, to escape from poverty or poverty, to search for new causes of fragility. All of them were direct witnesses to the paradoxes and questions that originated the continent (destruction of nature, armed conflicts, disease management, displacement, land and resources). And yet, nobody responded. And we were citizens without any responsibility.

Why wouldn't we enjoy that day of the year that we could do? Take the word, we acquire public space (what they leave us), we liberate our ancestors, we dance with others... The rest of the days are there for reflection, if necessary. Happy African Day!

*Ángela Nzambi is a writer, feminist and human rights activist.

He is a worker of the Refugee Aid Commission (CEAR) in Valencia (Catalan Countries)