We Come as Friends

Imagine you are lost in space.

In a tiny cabin.

And when you slowly approach a rather hot planet,

your feet and your fingers are freezing.

Your spacecraft is a relative flying tin can.

It's a tin can with a motorcycle engine

and wings out of fabric.

You come closer to this planet, Africa.

This is where humans originated.

And much later it was discovered over and over,

and enslaved and dispossessed and colonized.

Colonized by foreigners who had invented maps and compasses,

engines, airplanes.

Now you may start feeling strange.

The strangeness penetrates you.

It enters your heart.

You recall some sinister memories,

that you'd prefer to forget.

From now on, you're a complete stranger.

You're an alien.

Dangerous.

There was this mighty queen named Victoria.

She had never set foot here in Africa.

With her finger on the map, she had drawn a line.

And in the distance, a line of steel would be cut into the sand.

The steel pushed straight south, into the continent's heart.

And along the tracks came the soldiers and their rifles

and the British flag.

But also, the queen sent her only god.

And set him up against someone else's god.

And so it went. And again, the war became holy.

You witness the end of Africa's biggest country.

It will soon no longer exist.

And you meet the two toughest warriors of this poor country.

The chiefs,

ultimate enemies from decades of civil war.

The man in black, Mr. Kiir,

will be president and military leader of the new South Sudan.

He's a freedom fighter, a war hero and he believes in Jesus.

Mr. Kiir is a really good friend of the US of A.

That's why George W. Bush offered him a cowboy hat.

The man on the right, Mr. Bashir,

is Sudan's mighty ruler.

He is a really good friend of China.

He believes in Mohammed.

Mr. Bashir is one of the world's most wanted men.

Wanted for war crimes, crimes against humanity,

and genocide in Darfur, which is nearby.

The nation's war machine can only be financed

through the exportation of oil.

And someone's finger, in some far away country,

cuts across a map.

No, no, no, no!

Imagine you can travel in space and in time.

Go backwards 100 years.

You are in a place called Fashoda.

Imagine it is 1898.

On the craters of the moon no spaceship had ever landed,

and no man had ever raised a flag.

Even here on the banks of the Nile, no flag had ever been put up.

The trees here would not stand in straight lines like soldiers.

There were no fences or gates.

Fashoda is the epicenter of the colonial scramble.

French and British armies have planted their flags here.

And at the same time...

two grand imperial dreams collide.

The British desire to connect the Nile to the Cape,

the north to the south,

and the French fantasy to possess Africa from east to the west,

from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

On set crossroads, the villagers must learn many things:

how to wear uniforms,

how to march in step.

The local people have to learn how to need money

and how to give up their ancestors' land.

The masters from London, Paris or Berlin announce

to "bring light into the darkness".

They draw lines into the savannah,

borders that separate resources from people.

Borders that divide cultures and tribes.

So then brothers and sisters would fight.

- Hello. - Hello.

That water if you... If you touch it, you're going to die.