Hmm. So perhaps my minor stomach bug was worse than I let on. After collapsing in front of the teller at Barclays as I waited to have my US dollars changed to Kenyan shillings, Daraja’s fearless volunteer coordinator Andy escorted me to the Nanyuki Cottage Hospital. Several bags of IV fluid and a couple nights later, I find myself recovered enough to return to Daraja with Cipro and rehydration salts in hand. E. coli, the hottest new way to lose those pesky extra pounds.
I’ve been well-cared for at the Cottage hospital, and put up in what has to be their presidential suite; the plaque on the front of my door proudly reads “Mt. Kenya Pony Club Room,” with a well-stocked if entirely out of date bookshelf, private bathroom, three beds, three closets, and two sinks. My windows look out in three directions to view the aforementioned Mt. Kenya and the flowering tops of local tropical trees. Not a bad place to be, especially with traveler’s medical insurance.
In addition to hydrating, resting, and inadvertently making inroads to central Kenya’s autism community (right?), I’ve been devouring reading material. Wangari Maathai, Kenya’s first Nobel Prize winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement, has some compelling thoughts on the images used to depict Africa and their collective effect on aid-recipient culture on the continent. Nerd out with me, if you’d like:
The Image of Africa
Although in recent years the state of development in Africa has risen on the global agenda, the voices of Africans speaking to those challenges are muted in comparison with those of the industrialized world speaking about the needs of Africa.Unfortunately, this situation only reinforces the perception that African solutions for African problems don’t exist, and that Africans are not equally equipped to propose a vision for Africa’s development or provide concrete actions to bring it about.
Too often, Africa is still presented as a helpless victim of her own making. A representative image I saw a long time ago and that has stayed with me is that of an emaciated young girl with a distended belly on the cover of a UNICEF magazine. All of us have seen such horrific pictures. They prick our consciences, and may move many of us, including those with money or power, to try to help.
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A set of images has dominated the world’s view of Africa for centuries, some intended to excuse injustice against the peoples of the continent, others to elicit compassion and wonder. The continent south of the Sahara has been seen as a land of unparalleled riches, startling beauty, and extraordinary wildlife; as a place of strange and at times primitive tribal customs, civil disorder, and armed militias; of child labor and child soldiers, mud huts, open sewers, and shantytowns; of corruption, dictatorship, and genocide. These and other perceptions have framed the world’s response to Africa.
As someone who raises funds to support work in Africa, I understand the importance of images, and recognize that pictures of Africans in dire circumstances can, ultimately, lead to positive actions from those who are moved to want to help. However, on balance, I find these representations—and the associations they bring with them—demonstrably negative, perhaps even shameful, since they risk stereotyping all countries south of the Sahara as places of famine, death, and hopelessness. Because the children or adults pictured are rarely named, the people remain abstract, symbolic, and no longer individuals. That starving toddler or weeping mother or child soldier is “Africa.” This projection only makes the task more difficult for those of us on the ground trying to help Africans to help themselves.
In addition Africans themselves see these images of suffering and dysfunction on television, in newspapers, on websites, and in fund-raising appeals, and begin to internalize them. A dangerous and unfortunate psychological process ensues that subtly and perhaps unconsciously affirms to Africans their inability to be agents of their own destiny. Eventually, it may destroy the sense of confidence they should and must have to make progress.
Moreover, these descriptions fail to capture another reality which is that every day, tens of millions of African women and men go about their business, live their lives responsibly and industriously, and look after their immediate and extended families, even if they lack certain material possessions, higher education, or access to the range of opportunities and goods available to the wealthy in other countries, or even their own. These are the real African heroes, and it is these images the world should see more of.
I don’t believe that charities or celebrities are buying into the stereotypical images of African helplessness and suffering in an attempt to undermine Africans; the photos do, after all, represent a reality. Too many children are hungry in Africa or being forced to commit atrocities as child soldiers; or they are misusing drugs or sniffing glue on the streets of the continent’s cities or are abused and raped and unable to go to school. And certainly, African governments have not paid enough attention to the continent’s myriad problems, in part because in Africa they aren’t viewed with the same gravity as elsewhere, or because communities have become used to them (as may be the case with malaria and other preventable diseases), or because Africans are surrounded by so many challenges that the particular condition being highlighted doesn’t seem as problematic to them as it does to those in the developed world. To a degree, these governments may need to be shamed into taking on these problems.
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The challenge, therefore, is not only for the international community to use more positive depictions of Africa, but for Africans themselves to stop providing so many images of dysfunction in the first place. No one in Africa can be happy that a child with a belly distended from malnutrition comes to represent a particular country or the continent at large. Clearly, it’s incumbent upon Africans to project themselves better and more affirmatively, without pretending that underdevelopment isn’t real. They must recognize that these challenges exist, and then decide that they will work toward resolving them.
The governments must ask themselves what policies they can adopt and what commitments they can make, notwithstanding the availability of aid, so that the images of African children express a new reality: one not of malnutrition, but of health; not child soldiers or street children addicted to drugs, but hardworking students and intact families. This should not be because the hungry have been hidden away, or the street children thrown in jail, but because Africa has more achievements to display than famines to be covered up.
At the same time, development agencies need to present a vision of the Africa they wish to see rather than using images that undercut the very mission they are trying to accomplish. It should be possible for potential donors to respond to images of a functioning Africa that deserves support and not only give in response to the images that inspire pity and condescension.
(Source: Wangari Maathai, The Challenge For Africa: A New Vision)
Effectively refocusing my efforts, I can’t wait to get back to campus; to be surrounded by those same hardworking students Maathai invokes, and to get cameras back in their hands as they share their visions of themselves and their continent’s future.
In the meantime, here are a few great shots I haven't had a chance to upload before- shot from around campus during the past week.
