Excuse me. How much do you agree with this article?
Suffering and Smiling….. Africa is hot. Why? …..So we can save it? …. Western views of the continent.
A few years ago, I was sitting on a plane when one of those ads came on. You know the type: some Sally Struthers wannabe standing next to a mud hut with sad folks huddled in the doorway. We’ve seen them a million times, and these days every celebrity seems to want to jump on the Save Africa bandwagon. (See Ricky Gervais’s take.) Because that is how most people in the West see Africa: A problem to be solved. By us.
My problem with this scenario is that, during several years living in and traveling through East and West Africa, I never saw anyone (without some deformity) who looked as miserable as the people on those charity shoots. As I walked past my neighbors’ huts, people yelled greetings, smiled, waved, laughed, asked what my news was, asked me for money and laughed when I said no. Then they invited me in for tea, killed a chicken, made me stay for three hours, eating till I was stuffed. But this warmth and generosity and humor are nowhere to be seen in those ads. They flatten the place I knew into a caricature of misery.
In Vanity Fair’s new Africa Issue, Binyavanga Wainaina, a great writer who broke out with a Caine Prize-winning travel story, (and who I interviewed last year for Tin House) makes much the same point in his article, Generation Kenya. “As I sit here in Upstate New York, and read the New York Times, or watch CNN,” he writes as current writer-in-residence at Union College, “Africa feels like a fevered and infectious place….This habit—of trying to turn the second largest continent in the world, which has 53 countries and nearly a billion people of every variety and situation, into one giant crisis—is now one of the biggest problems Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Ghana face.”
Not to mention the other 49 countries.
Wainaina’s piece is easily the best in the magazine, chronicling the story of Kenya in the 1990s, a time of protest and reform and economic rebirth and technological advance. Mostly his country was (and is) a place with hope, not because aid was pouring in, but because initiative took root. “We have learned to ignore the shrill screams coming from the peddlers of hopelessness,” he writes. “We motor on in faith and enterprise, with small steps. On hope, without hysteria.……”
I forgot to add that the article can be found on http://www.worldhum.com/speakers_corner/item/suffering_and_smiling_vanity_fair_does_africa_20070626
Thanks snaffle. You know what? I really hold the opnion that happiness is not only for some and can be found if one looks/searches in the right places.
Shut the fuck up DEE. You heard me!! I don’t know you so you better save your attacks for some body else. You are not gonig to patronise me. I hope you understand that. Thanks for posting my statements a second time. I hope they sank in well while you were doing it.
DEE you are the fool. Not me.
Thanks Jethro but I honestly think it’s about them wanting people to help us BUT not only that, there’s more.
snaffle says:
September 1st, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Because we have ’stuff’. ‘Stuff’ is hugely important to us and we think if other people don’t have ’stuff’ they must be miserable and lacking. The thing that I see when these places is show on the television (I have no personal experience) is that these people are smiling, and happy and have a true sense of community and belonging that we will never have. They may not have ’stuff’ but they have a love and happiness that we never will have and we just don’t get that.
** The happiness thing: We in UK tend not to work within the same community as we live. therefore we go to work and have a work community. We come home and have a family community. We don’t really see the neighbours because they do the same. We share different communities than our husbands, wives and children, there is no one big community here anymore. We have such a fixation on money=happiness, but we are missing out on the reality of true happiness in the heart. We may have constant access to food and water 100% of the time, but we have no community to sit and enjoy it with or give thanks for it with. We may not die of hunger, we are more likely to die of obesity, but I do not see the African people fleeing over here to help us by taking food away. We have little knowledge of how to grow our own food, but keep spouting the “give a man a fish” line, that we must ‘teach’ these people to be self sufficient when that is the very thing we are not.
Fireball226 says:
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:54 am
its there even though you missed it..
DEE says:
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
EXCUSE ME!!!!!!!
Who the hell do you think you are saying
“So stop the generalisation and always trynig to cast us Africans in a bad light just so that you can free yourselves from the responsibiltiy of past wrong doings.”
CLEARLY YOU ARE ANOTHER NARROW MINDED FOOL TO SAY THAT STATMENT ABOVE.
WE DO NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT RESPONSABILITY FOR NOTHING BEACUSE IT WAS NOT US WHO DONE THOSE THINGS OK!!!!
NO ONE CAN CHANGE THE PAST BUT PEOPLE LIKE YOU HAVE BO RIGHT SAYING WE SHOULD PAY FOR THINGS WE DID NOT DO.
GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE AND ACCEPT THAT THE PAST IS THE PAST!!!!!!
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The African countries that carry out that behaviour that abuse that they call “female circumcision” are in the minority. Uganda doesn’t do it, not Mozambique, Congo-Kinshasa, Congo- Brazaville, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Tchad, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Cameroon , Central African Rebuplic etc. etc.
So stop the generalisation and always trynig to cast us Africans in a bad light just so that you can free yourselves from the responsibiltiy of past wrong doings. The African chiefs that sold their brothers and sisters were wrong just like the slave traders that took over the slaves and treated them in the worst manner humanity has ever treated a fellow, living human being. The best strategy is to accept the mistakes of those that are long gone and stop painting a bad picture of Africa inorder to make right what went wrong.
Another thing is that as the saying goes “people will only see what they want to see”, if you want to always for that which is bad in any culture you will always find it. I have some examples in my head right now like, child molestation(paedophilia, sex tourism that involves small, innocent children), animal sex with for example dogs or horses, prostitution, extreme sadism in sex, etc. etc. etc. If many of us came here to focus on the negative the we know about different cultures or behaviours how mature would that be? But we don’t do it – at least not that often. Reach within yourself to find the answer why. Why demonise Africans all the time yet many people ho have come in contact with us know that Africams are some of the warmest and friendliest people in the world . There is both good and bad everywhere.
These are people, these are people:.
Jethro bodine says:
September 4th, 2009 at 10:50 am
the press always twist thing to to the view they want us to see. i guess they figure if we see a smiling African chilling by a mud hut we might not get our emotions stirred up and open our wallets. and they want us to think that all Africans are dumb as rocks, as if you could survive in the bush that is full of dangerous animals and even more dangerous people.
dt says:
September 5th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
good point! Did you write this? It’s good. This makes me also wonder if that money ppl send in is really being used as it is said.
D.B Cooper says:
September 8th, 2009 at 5:46 am
It’s an exploitation scam.
The First World sends aid. The warlords intercept 80% if it. They turn around and use that aid to fund their own greed. They withhold or destroy it to keep the locals in line.
The First World sends food, and a million african farmers are now out of a job.
The First World sends clothing, and another textile mill will never open in Africa.
The First World lets the smartest Africans receive an education, and a “brain drain” has been created. Many do not return home.
The average african woman may have approximately 8 children in her life. That has worked for centuries because half didn’t make it to adulthood. The First World brings their cures for smallpox, polio, and other diseases. The african woman no longer needs to have 8 children because most will now survive. The First World does not bother educating these women. Result, Gross overpopulation.
The challenge for blacks living in the first world who say they are the technological equals of the other two races: ARE BLACKS WILLING TO MOVE OVER THERE AND FIX THAT PLACE?
You put me in charge of any african country, and I can turn it into a first world country with 20 years. You may not like my methods, but it can be done.