By the girl behind The Dreamer’s Pause
Yesterday, I was helping my dad fix something around the house. You know, the usual: passing him the hammer, the screws, pretending I know what’s going on when I really don’t. He was drawing some lines on the wall, about to attach a long piece of wood, and then he brought out this little thing — tiny cylinder, greenish liquid inside, black stripes around it, attached it to something shaped like a plank. He places it on the wall, squints his eyes, and goes, “Yeah, it’s straight.”
I blinked. I said, “Wait, what is that thing?”
He laughed. And then, with that proud-African-father voice, he said, “Tala Mundele!”
Now, if you’re not from the Congo, let me translate. Tala means “look,” and Mundele means “white person.” So basically: “Look at white people!” But not in a hateful way — it’s that tone of awe, of “wow, they really did it again.”
And I just stood there, holding the screwdriver, thinking — wait a minute. Why do we always say that? Why is it that when we see something clever, something well-designed, something that makes life easier, we instantly go, “Look at white people”?
Like… hello? We’ve done things too! 🙄
Let’s talk about this for real. Because every time someone sees an invention, or a new gadget, or a cool piece of tech, it’s automatically credited to “the West.” And when you’re raised in an African home, you hear it all the time. “White people this, white people that.”
But let’s be honest — most people don’t even know that black people have been inventing and discovering life-changing things since ancient times. I mean, I was shocked myself when I started digging. Me! The girl who thought Bluetooth was the only cool black-made invention (don’t judge me).
Then I found out… we literally built half the things everyone uses every day. 😯
Mathematics? Born in Africa. Astronomy? Africa. Coffee? Yup — Ethiopia. Blood storage? A black doctor. Laser eye surgery? A black woman. The light bulb filament? A black man. The refrigerated truck that delivers your ice cream? Black genius.
Tell me again how “we haven’t created anything”? 🤨
See, the problem isn’t that we didn’t invent. It’s that we weren’t credited. Our ideas were erased, renamed, repackaged, and sold back to us.
And now, generations later, even we’ve forgotten.
In my own Congolese community, the ignorance is wild. You mention a black inventor, and people look at you like you’re trying to rewrite the Bible. But we can’t blame only our elders — their education came from colonizers. Their minds were trained to believe the best things came from somewhere else.
But here we are — the 21st century.
No chains. No censorship. No excuses.
We have the internet, libraries, YouTube, documentaries, Google Scholar, everything. Nobody’s stopping us from learning the truth anymore.
So why are we still walking around with colonized minds? 😕
And don’t even get me started on the racists online — especially on Twitter. (Sorry, “X.” Whatever, Elon.) It’s the capital city of ignorance. You’ll see threads saying, “Black people never invented anything.” Like… huh? You’re tweeting that nonsense from a phone that exists because of black engineers. Reading it under light bulbs improved by a black man. Typing it from a house protected by a black woman’s home security invention. The irony is killing me.
But here’s the thing — I’m not here to bash anyone. I’m here to educate, to laugh, and to wake people up. Because racism isn’t only a white disease; ignorance lives everywhere, in all race. We’ve got to fix it from the inside too.
And maybe — just maybe — if we built a real museum, a physical one, dedicated to black inventions, maybe all the lies, the ignorance and lack of knowledge will come to an end. I’m talking about a museum with our faces, our names, our work. Not just “African masks” and “tribal art,” but real innovations. The things that built the world.🥲
We need to update our textbooks, our schools, our conversations.
We need to stop acting like history started in Europe.
Because it didn’t. 💯
So the next time someone says “Tala Mundele,” I might just respond,
“Tala na biso mpe” — Look at us too.
Because we’ve been brilliant. We just stopped acknowledging it.
And The Dreamer’s Pause?
I'm here to remind you.😁
🔥 Written by the girl behind The Dreamer’s Pause.
Where humor meets history, and ignorance gets schooled — nicely.
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