Debunking Personal Misconceptions about Africa

Recently in English, my class participated in an unexpected but nevertheless engaging activity. We each had to fill in a blank map of Africa using images and phrases that we frequently associate the continent with. To be frank, I wasn't surprised when I learned that almost every person had a majority of his or her illustrations relating to war, genocide, inequality, political corruption, or other kinds of calamities. Because I tried to jot down as many "associations" that I could think of, I didn't realize until after the activity was done that every single phrase and doodle that I had put on my map delineated a negative aspect of Africa, whether I had a group of horse-riding soldiers setting villages on fire to depict the genocide in Darfur or a couple of small stick figures carrying AK-47s in Sierra Leone depicting the obscene numbers of child soldiers in that area. 

From what I remember, the first time that I ever learned about Africa was during my early elementary years. Around that time, I got hooked up with the idea that Africa was a place completely ravaged by starvation, disease, and violence. You might expect that my current perceptions of Africa would not be as foolish as the ones that I had at such a young age, but I do in fact sometimes make Africa and issues such as extreme poverty synonymous to each other. 

I think that our negative perceptions of what goes on inside of Africa are constantly being reinforced by the media. Most of the articles that I've ever read about Africa have been about controlling disease, violating human rights, dealing with humanitarian crises, and other grim subjects. As a result, I have a hard time getting rid of what I've learned about Africa years ago. 

However, we're almost done reading a novel entitled The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It has focused mainly on the interpersonal relationships between the white American Price family and the Congolese natives. Kingsolver has made it clear to me that, at least in the village where the Prices lived, the Congolese didn't face hardships as calamitous as I imagined. They were definitely poor, but not in the context of their own society. What's really interesting is that Kingsolver blames the Price family for having their misconceptions about the unique culture, religion, and social dynamics of the Congolese. I need to remind myself that behind the facade of news stories and American stereotypes of African poverty, disease, and violence, there are underlying social and cultural intricacies in Africa as complex and developed as those in any other place that I cannot understand unless I actually physically go to Africa.