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
