Africa is...a country?

 

Or what do Africa, Maths and Justin Bieber have in common?

When I make the statement, "Africa is…", what immediately comes to mind? Do you think of children with torn clothes and distended stomachs playing in the dirt or carrying jerry cans of water on their head? Or do you think of lions and zebras and giraffes and going on safari? Or do you think of poverty, famine, disease and 'too hard'? Any of these? All of these? Something else? (Hopefully you don't think it's a country).

I only ask this question because I am guilty, along with many, of generalising 'Africa' to become an assortment of stereotypes that de-humanise and homogenise a continent full of diverse climates, populations and cultures. Even talking about one culture as though it describes every person in it reduces the individual to a 'type' rather than a fellow human being who has a story and history unique from every one else on the planet.

There's a saying that I've used many times to explain what I see as the eccentricities of the world around me at the moment. TIA or This Is Africa, also used in the movie 'Blood Diamond'. I stumbled across something the other day that got me thinking about how easily I, who am living here, lump all my experiences into 'Africa', while really my experiences of Africa are in actuality, very limited. And I've been convicted on this.

I found a blog called Africa is a Country and it talks about this issue and particularly how Africa is portrayed in Western media. In an age where information is so freely available the argument that you don't know much about Africa doesn't cut it. You have access to more information than there has ever been about Africa - all of Africa. The child living in a Ugandan village without electricity, a computer or possibly even a school - they have an excuse to know nothing except the world around them.

But maybe that's the problem. We have so much information available. We know about famines and drought and disease and poverty. We have seen skeletal figures lying in the dust. We have watched nature documentaries. We have seen cultural dancing. Listened to world music. Can't all of that sum up Africa?

Back in the day, I studied maths. I learnt formulas and equations. It got to a point where I didn't actually understand what I was doing but as long as I had the formulas and could apply them, I could solve a problem. And that's fine surely? Isn't that the point? To be able to solve the problem? But eventually I needed to be able to understand why the formula worked so that I could work out when to apply it (and that's when I got 56% on a maths exam and decided that maths and I - never being close friends to begin with - should go our separate ways).

Did you know?

Click here to find out some interesting facts

Hope you enjoyed that!

I guess it just goes to show that you can know a lot about someone or something but still not know or understand them/it. And our worldview tends to be based on the information we get. So if all you know about Africa is wars, famine, disease, poverty, animals - then that is what you will understand Africa to be. And that is why when coming to Uganda, I got accolades. I was brave, selfless, inspirational. Why? I am not living in a mud hut in a village. There is running water at home. There is electricity. And there is a flushing toilet (possibly the thing I value above all other 'comforts').

This is not to say that there are no people here who live in mud huts, cart water or use paraffin lamps. There are millions. But each one is different from the next in the same way that where I am based here in Mbarara volunteering for HOPE is a lot different than if I was based in Kibogo village and certainly different from any experience in any of the other countries here in East Africa, let alone the rest of the continent.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to say this week. Maybe I'm trying to point out that trying to contain Africa in one general statement, like 'the problems of Africa', is degrading in that it reduces all Africans to a 'problem'. Maybe I am trying to say that we should be educating ourselves about Africa in a way that we are exposed to many stories not just the ones that Western media portrays, so that we have a more balanced view of things. Maybe I am asking if the aid we give is just in response to the images we see and the associations we have of Africa - I heard of a potential sponsor to an aid organisation decline to sponsor because she saw a photo which had the girl being sponsored in a hospital and in the background of the photo a lady was talking on a mobile phone - the potential sponsors response was that if 'they' could afford mobile phones were 'they' really that poor after all? It would be easy to condemn her except that the world view that it comes from is one that many of us hold. It is easier to give aid to the cute black kid who 'looks' really needy, so if the photo doesn't show the right thing it's best to take another one. Maybe I am confused by the many messages about Africa there are out there. Maybe I have met too many people who shame me with their level of understanding of the world when I have been happy to live in a white Western bubble. Maybe I was seeing the need to do something without seeing the someone. And in the world I come from to not see someone is to not value them. Working with young people in high schools I was surrounded by students who lived in misery because they thought no one 'saw them'.

And I guess that the idea of lumping Africa together is to also lump all it's people together and that's where my earlier conviction comes in. Because if I start thinking like that then I am forgetting that the God who created me and called me is also the one who created each individual I come across. When I do something for one of the kids we help it is not Africa or Uganda or Kitookye village or Nakivale HOPE Nursery and Primary School that I am doing it for. It is Ritah, Kiiza, Caleb, Joshua, Alex, Dan, Denis….

So take this collection of thoughts and do what you will with it. Just some of the things that go round in my head. Thanks for letting me share my thoughts with you. I have a feeling this is not really coherently written. More of a ramble really. But from this distance I am not easily offended if you decide to stop listening to me, so feel free.

 

		My Africa VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Have a blessed week

bron