We are all Africans

I am swinging on the hammock. From my perfect vantage point on the top-most part of the roof terrace, I can close my eyes and feel the summer around me.

Don't you just love summer evenings? Don't you think the month of July in Malta is the best of the year?

As the pleasant, flirting breeze is gently swaying, I look about me, suspended, surrounded by flat roof tops; I can even make out the sea far away. I can hear the neighbours chattering away on their doorsteps, the soft billowing of the festa flags on their masts and the ice-cream van as it trawls the streets with its nostalgic music.

In front of me, the enormous Paola Church spires dwarf the slender minarette of the Islamic mosque farther on.

"All the differences we see in each other, they are all so minor," someone once said. It's a quote which keeps coming to mind but I can't remember who or where I came across it.

I have retired to the hammock in the pinkish-blue hues of dusk, to read. And reflect. Because finally we have the facts that should change our attitude to racism:

"We are all African", says The Economist.

Scientifically, we have a new understanding that should end our prejudice against Africans. The article is about 'The Genographic Project.'

This project was launched in April 2005 by the National Geographic Society and IBM. It is a five-year genetic anthropological study that aims to map historical human migration patterns by collecting and analysing DNA samples from hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. In short, the project traces mankind's journey out of Africa.

It is headed by the thirty-something American geneticist Spencer Wells (as an aside - but somehow it's important - he's not some dowdy intellectual in a white lab coat; he is Indiana Jones in Harrison Ford's heyday). Wells reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity.

And so our history is written in our genes: we are all Africans. We all originated in Africa. But then this should be no news, it's just confirming again what Darwin said all along. It's what our innermost psyche already knew.

Some years ago I travelled to Olduvai Gorge, commonly referred to as 'The Cradle of Mankind' because of its prehistoric importance. It is a steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley which stretches along eastern Africa. Here, nothing moves in the heat of the day - not even the Oldupaai wild plant, which has given the name to the gorge. Not even the dust moves.

Yet, there is something sacred about this place where human evolution sparked off. I can't exactly put my finger on it. How do I explain it? Perhaps it's the sense of ancient space. The sense that somehow, deep down you feel you're finally home.

And now we have genetic proof: Adam would probably have looked like a San Bushman of the Kalihari. And as a result, today the African continent bursts with rich genetic inheritance.

Africans are more diverse than the rest of humanity put together because they are drawn from the pool of humans who did not leave the continent, whereas every single non-African is descended from a small band of humans who crossed the Red Sea on rafts.

I'd like to know how Norman Lowell and his band of xenophobic followers feel about this. Actually I don't. I'm not interested in their ignorant arguments. But I wish the people who commented about Ahmed Bugri, the Ghanaian-Maltese interviewed in The Sunday Times, who has lived on the island for 18 years, would catch up on their Genographic Project reading.

Prejudices are abounding. Still, if some people can't grasp the concept that someone not born on the islands can become a citizen of Malta, I wonder what they will make of the honest truth that they are really Africans.

The summer evening has turned to night. I spot a shooting star. I think I'll make a wish: for all of us to accept the origins of our roots, and respect the brotherhood to which we all belong.