Conall to give talk in Westport about his time in Africa
Conall O’Cuinn offers an illustrated retrospective on his time in Africa where he worked in three countries.
Westport Civic Trust will host a talk by Conall O’Cuinn on Tuesday, November 11th, at 8pm in the Plaza Hotel in Westport. Admission is free to members, otherwise €5 on the night.
Conall O’Cuinn, former Jesuit who lives in Westport, offers an illustrated retrospective on his time in Africa where he worked in three countries, Zambia, Cotes d’Ivoire, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He reflects on aspects of the history of colonialism as he experienced it in these countries - from the 1885 Berlin Conference, which carved Africa up among the Western colonising countries, with no African input whatsoever. The colonisation of the Congo basin, which is the size of Western Europe, led to a brutal regime under King Leopold of Belgium. Roger Casement exposed its injustices which resulted in a partial reform.
Conall will talk about his time in Lubumbashi, former Elizabethville, where he encountered traces of the Irish United Nations peace-keeping mission in the region attempting to suppress the secession of the Katanga region from the newly independent Congo. Later while living in Kinshasa, a city of five million people on the banks of the Congo River, he witnessed the last days of the Mobutu dictatorship, just before the city was taken over by a boy army led by warlord and later president Laurent Kabila I.
In his presentation, Conall will reflect on what it was like coming from a country that had a long experience of being colonised to a continent that is still emerging from colonisation. Africa since the days of independence in the early 1960s has undergone recurring coups, often dictated by the politics of the Cold War, where the proxy civil wars between countries were fought by the Eastern and Western superpowers. And during all this time those arbitrary borders set down by Berlin Conference continue to generate wars and disputes to this day.
Conall’s GP father moved often with his family - from Aranmore Island in Donegal, to Carna in Connemara, Athenry and finally to Dublin in 1973. He studied biochemistry in UCD, philosophy in Munich, theology in Dublin, and anthropology in Abidjan, West Africa. He has also worked in Chicago, New York and Boston. He now lives with his wife, Mary, in Westport. As a result of his travels, Conall speaks English, Irish, German, French, and some Tonga (a major language of Zambia).
