THIS IS AFRICA

One of the things that over the course of my stay has truly bothered me is; the perception of Africa in Europe and North America. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not specifically any of our fault it’s just that that’s the way were taught because that is HOW THE MEDIA portrays Africa to us. A similar example to this would be the perception of beauty- which has been completely destroyed by the media. The perfect women is tall and skinny with rather large boobs and the perfect man is tall and muscular preferably with a 6 pack! But how much of our population actually looks like that? A very small percentage. 

When we hear the word Africa, I would not be surprised if the typical “World Vision” commercials play in our heads. When I think back to the day’s before I got to experience Africa for itself, that’s exactly what I think. Some of us might picture Africa as the starving children with the popped out malnutritioned bellies, people living in damaged mud huts with no electricity and very limited supply of water and elephants walking around. Other individuals might picture Africa as a place where millions of child soldiers walk around with AK-47’s shooting everyone they see. And yes, for some parts of Africa this might be true, but let me set this straight. 

Africa is a rather LARGE continent, just like Europe and just like North America. You can’t just judge a book or in this case a continent by its cover, or how the media likes to portray Africa in our countries. Most African countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa among others are extremely developed. They have electricity, flowing water, tall buildings, roads, schools, internet, especially television, shops, food from different cultures, shopping malls etc! The list goes on. I’ve personally been invited by a woman into her mud-house and you would be surprised how spacey it is and how modern. She had electricity, beds and even a television. Fancy, Fancy eh? 

Since I personally got to experience Addis I would like to talk about that. First of all, a funny fact. I live in a very Asian populated city – but I’ve never tried Korean food. Here in Addis there are 3 amazing Korean restaurants and in my first 2 weeks here I went for Korean food 3 times! Just to let you know about the diversity of cultures you see in Addis.

Addis Ababa is a city, with 5 million inhabitants. Ethiopia has a total of 80 million counted, but 90 million believed inhabitants. Addis had taxis, busses and is even working on a Skytrain similar to cities such as New York and Vancouver. 

You can buy anything here from Nutella, Snickers, Tide Laundry Detergent, Nailpolish, Handmade paper, Leather ANYTHING. People might think, I’m going to Africa I must bring packaged food. WRONG. You can buy anything here, the only thing I couldn’t find was Advil haha, but I did find Aspirin!

The best part of Addis is the fresh fruit that comes from the South, which is absolutely fine to eat. Every night I eat salad made with fresh vegetables and in the morning I eat Mango’s and Bananas! For dessert we sometimes have doughnuts covered with chocolate and when we go out I even eat Ice crème, because it’s perfectly safe to eat here. 

It just makes me mad to think that these people don’t have anything, or are underprivileged when they’re perfectly happy and certainly on the fast track to become very VERY developed. I don’t think we have the right to look down on these people at any point, instead we can learn from them. Of course there are some things that can be worked on, but if you look at the development of these African countries in just the last 5 years you would be absolutely mind blown.  

I want to make sure that Africa, and especially Ethiopia is no longer portrayed as this crippled, dangerous country, because it’s not. It’s developing fast, and one day it will catch up to us. We might be ignorant now but one day we will see. 

As you can see I’ve fallen in love with Africa. By making my voice heard I hope you understand a little more about this resource rich, rapidly growing continent and that you too can one day fall in love with Africa.

T.I.A (This is Africa) everyone.

Céline