Omar Bah speaks yesterday in Providence.

The Providence Journal Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — An immigrant who survived torture in his native Gambia to find intolerance in nearby Ghana yesterday urged Rhode Islanders to embrace cultural diversity in America as a strength.

“Migration and immigration — who belongs here, how they got here and how we live together — they are a critical topic in the United States,” Omar Bah told an audience of about 70 at the annual meeting of the International Institute Rhode Island. “I feel my experience with tribal diversity in Africa will serve as a good lesson or perhaps help generate discussion on living with diversity — the good and evil.”

Bah described the language-based division he found in Ghana after fleeing Gambia. In Ghana, the official language is English, but Ghanaians identify themselves by the tribal language they speak. Indeed, Bah was chased one night by a machete-wielding mob chanting, “Foreigner! Foreigner!” because he did not speak a local tribal language.

The predominant tribal language in Ghana is Twi, but residents of the region around the country’s capital speak another language, Gha. Bah once discussed with a friend which language he should learn. The friend suggested his own language, Gha. But Bah said he preferred Twi because he would be able to communicate with more people.

“My friend, an educated journalist, was outraged by my seeming rejection of his tribe and choosing the language of strangers,” Bah told the audience. “He openly threatened that if I spoke like that among the Gha people, I could be harmed.”

Bah said “selfish politicians and interest leaders” were to blame for the divisions tearing African nations apart. “They usually capitalize on the somewhat shallow education of the masses and indoctrinate them into having the belief that their tribes have to always prevail over the others and anything short of that should be unacceptable.”

Another example he cited of the petty level of the divisions was when he watched musicians perform on television and asked a friend what language they sang in. “If you don’t sing in Twi nobody listens to your music. People will not be interested. Everybody has to respect the majority and sing in our language or else your business closes.”

And he related his own close call with language-related violence.

“It is important to know a [tribal] language in Ghana because the anti-foreigner sentiments are so strong that one’s life can be endangered once it is known you are a foreigner,” he said.

One day, he ran into a band of vigilantes, armed with machetes, who were patrolling for robbers. The vigilantes ordered him to stop, but he did not understand the tribal language they spoke. “Because I didn’t stop, they knew straight away I was a foreigner. They ran after me, violently shouting, ‘Foreigner! Foreigner!’ Luckily, I was able to outrun them and lock myself in my room. I have no doubt that I could have been lynched like a common robber just because I’m a foreigner.”

But Bah said that lessons must be learned from incidents like these, or, as a professor who helped him escape from Gambia to Ghana told him, “Omar, don’t worry. At the end of the day, you will see to it that good can always come out of evil.”

Bah concluded his speech:

“These are just a small example of the intolerances of language diversity in Africa. And they are only a small example of the many intolerances that exist around the world. Sadly, sadly, I see hatred and prejudices existing even in this great country, the United States of America, that was built by immigrants from many, many different countries, languages and cultures,” Bah said. “I would like to see the U.S. rise up and live together with our diversity as a strength. We are a community of many tribes, but we are all together in one greater tribe that is the human race.”

pparker@projo.com