Good News From Africa [1]
by Rose Skelton
|
This article is written in response to an article published in the Guardian on February 27 2004 by Bob Geldof on the new Commission for Africa. In it he suggests that in 2005, when Tony Blair will chair the G8 and Britain will be president of the EU, that London be the "intellectual capital of the world", that there be a "fundamental rethink…of the cultural, philosophical and psychological framework that has defined our relationship with Africa". He asks that the "thinkers and writers, the development geeks and economy wonks, the cultural gurus and activist freaks" consider this relationship with the "powerless, mute and denied". This, as a writer, is my contribution.
|
"Why don't Guineans do something about their situation?" an ageing relative asked me this week when I tried to describe, at his request, what it is that people "do" in Guinea Bissau. My mouth made odd, useless motions and I dropped the subject. Trying to explain these things to someone who has no means by which to understand the lives of those far, far away can be incredibly frustrating. I am tired of trying to convince individual by individual that the people who live in Africa are not just victims of a cruel world that we should pity and mother but that actually there are plenty of people, despite political, environmental and economic hardships, who live ordinary, happy lives, just like us. Eventually I told this relative to suspend judgement until he'd read my book.
On paper (or some types of paper, I should say), the picture in Guinea Bissau is dismal. But there have been enough accounts of Guinea Bissau's political history, of its crippling relationship with Portugal from the beginning of the fifteenth century until 1974, of its troubles since independence, and this needn't be another. All that is left to do, it sometimes feels, is to throw our hands up in the air and say, once more, "What can we do about Africa?"
But I would suggest that this is a part of Africa's problem, that we, those with financial and political power, perpetuate this attitude that Africa is something we must do something about. I agree that aid can be vital, that money goes a long way towards helping people who have no way of rising above the problems they are faced with. But essentially, this money is a short-term fix and only a tentative solution when nothing more effective will be done. Aid often comes loaded with conditions that in the long run, once the money's been spent, can help to weigh down an already struggling economy and give the upper hand to the donor. Wouldn't it just be better to cancel the debt and let countries like Guinea Bissau start from a positive platform, rather than a negative one that must be supported?
I certainly don't profess to have the solution, and I don't claim that a lot of the work being done in Africa isn't helping (although, haven't we proved time and time again that we don't know best for Africa? Wasn't it the good-hearted intentions of David Livingstone, who claimed that "commerce, Christianity and civilisation" would provide the solution to Africa's slave trade, which resulted in the opening up and consequent carving up of the continent? Wasn't Hutu, Tutsi and Twa "ethnicity" in Rwanda fluid and relatively trouble-free before Belgian colonisers issued identity cards that fixed ethnicity and created a divide that eighty years later fuelled the massacre of 800,000 people?). No, this isn't about solutions; our solutions often can't, or don't, work. (Guinea Bissau once had a solution - Amilcar Cabral - and he was assassinated by the Portuguese before he could help his newly independent country through its infancy.) I think the ordinary man on the street can do better than ponder from a distance over what is to be done about Africa.
I am tired of the way Africa is portrayed in the media, as a continent of helpless starving children and fighting savages. I veered off going to Africa at all until I happened upon a research project at university which necessitated a month in Senegal, and I will never forget the moment I entered the plane at Lisbon and was faced with hundreds of black people staring forwards at me. I have never been so scared in all my life. "This dark continent" I thought, "is going to eat me alive". Because that was all I knew about Africa - what I had read in the papers, seen in the charity leaflets, read in the history books - that Africa was something to be feared.
Now I know differently. What I found in Guinea Bissau was a veritable tropical garden, main city streets rolling with hard little mangoes, islands with white beaches and warm, clean, still waters, carnival parades that bring out every drop of creativity from children who are being brought up to respect the community and its elders, to speak multiple languages, to share with others, to stay away from drugs and rudeness, to do the best they can in life. I want to use my experiences to help those who have no other way of knowing what it is that I see in this strong, resilient and gorgeous continent. I want people like my ageing relative to be able to see that Africa's problems haven't come about because of laziness or "a genetic disposition towards corruption", as another once put it. Yes, things are very hard, but people don't just let things happen to them. People mostly have no choice, and it is often because of a lack of generosity on our part.
If we, individuals who periodically throw our arms in the air in resignation over the subject, want to do something about Africa, then I suggest, as well as what is already being done, that we be a little more generous. More generous with our money (why not buy African Fairtrade products), more generous in our Parliaments (why not lift unfair trade restrictions), more generous in our streets (let's not always assume the worst).
We could be more generous in our thoughts, remembering that every time we hear about something horrific going on in Africa that this isn't the whole picture. We could be more generous in our media (readers: try to source constructive material, about the ways in which Africa is positively moving forward, and writers: haven't we reported enough on the carnage? Why not write something different?). We each of us could be more generous in our attitudes towards immigration (find out the facts from a trusted source, not from the newspapers of doom that imagine Britain sinking under the weight of freeloading immigrants), towards immigrants themselves (many, but not all, African people you see here have left a family and a home, work hard at the jobs we wouldn't accept ourselves, are often the ones doing volunteer work, and are single-handedly keeping a family supported somewhere on the continent, a continent which has in the past and present supported us with cheap raw materials and now, cheap labour).
But more than anything, we have the ability to be generous in spirit. Stop thinking of Africa as a place of decay; stop feeling sorry for it. How can Africa ever do anything but live up to what's expected of it? Try to look towards something a little more positive. Perhaps if we stopped thinking about Africa as a problem we must fix and more about it as a place of ordinary people with needs, wishes, desires and hopes just like us, people that we are able to help out, as equals, in the most generous way possible, then we might actually have a fair chance of "doing something" about Africa.
I am a freelance writer and am working on Good News Africa, A collection of short stories, essays and reports that reflect the positive side of Africa and Africans. In doing so, I hope to be able to show that it's not all misery and hunger, that as well as the necessary reports of famine, war and disease there must also be reports of music, generosity, dancing, food, happiness, hard work, celebration, religious and cultural tolerance, humour and beauty. It's the best way that I know how to "do something" for Africa.
-
–
Rose Skelton, Music and Travel Writer
Rose has been a freelance travel writer since 1999 and has been writing
about Africa since a research trip to Senegal in 2002. She studied
Religion and History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies
in London, focusing on African religious studies, including politics, art,
music, literature and history. She is currently working as a publicity
writer with African musicians and dancers as well as working on her own
project, Good News Africa.
|
|
