The Danger of a Single Story

In 2009, a Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a TED talk called “The Danger of a Single Story". It is about what happens when you boil the stories of millions of complex human beings down into one single narrative. 

When I was a little girl, we didn't have cable. We had 5 channels, and other then Saturday morning cartoons (which I lived for), I spent a lot of time channel surfing. Since I refused to go outside, especially on nice days, and was even more averse to cleaning my bedroom, I ended up wiling away countless hours, stretched out lazily on our lumpy green couch succumbing to my fate. The World Vision one hour special. 

Looking back, I now realize that I spent an inordinate amount of time watching colonialism in action. An old, grey haired man strolls into a remote African village, where the people live in squalor, a bank of flies teasing their nostrils, climbing into their eyes and ears. This man (think Bill Clinton), looking particularly well-kempt in this setting, kneels in his khaki pants (always khaki!), one knee in the dirt, to reach the child's height. Placing an arm around the malnourished, fly-ridden body of the young person, he looks directly into the camera and asks, rather implores, for help. For the good of the child. For the good of the community. Because they do not have the capacity to save themselves. 

And so, with my spongey little nine year old brain, I learned that Africans are nothing more than the passive recipients of white benevolence and that Africa itself is an undesirable, poverty-stricken, heat-ravaged, fly-infested dust bowl of a place. 

Sadly, I held this conception for a long time, because nobody showed me another truth and I didn't take it upon myself to learn more. And this, my friends, is the danger of a single story. 

I now know that Africa is one of the largest continents in the world, comprising 54 distinct countries, which encompass more than 1500 region-specific languages and countless cultures, as well as a tremendous wealth of natural resources. It is home to a vast and fertile landscape, enormous rainfall, good soil and plenty of sought after minerals, like diamonds, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite and silver, in addition to a plethora of other resources like petroleum, cocoa beans, woods and tropical fruits. 

In the past, when I have conjured up images of Africa, they have been two-fold.

"Extreme hunger in drought-ravaged East Africa"

OR

African Safari

My own misconceptions, and my failure to examine my flawed belief systems, led me to see Africa as one homogeneous entity. This TED talk, "The Danger of a Single Story", shed some light on how we, as people, are prone to categorizing other people, places, cultures, religions, and more, based on our own black and white interpretations of what we THINK we know. Africa is not homogeneously poor - in the way I was led to believe. And things are not always as they seem. 

When I started writing this blog, I wanted it to be diverse, to showcase every aspect of my trip. But I also need to be careful about the way that I tell my own stories. For example, while police officers in Kuala Lumpur are notoriously corrupt, that doesn't mean that they ALL are - and even the ones who do fit this description aren't always all bad - one might shake down a refugee for every penny they have on them in the afternoon, and be home in the evening to sing their baby to sleep. 

As far as I'm concerned, there is a Jekyll and a Hyde, a good and a bad, in everyone and everything. And there are a million sides to every story. Understanding this is an important part of being human. There is no black and white. People are complicated, multi-faceted. One problem can have 10 different solutions, each one as good as the next. 

I have come to realize that it is my job to sift through all of the information presented to me - to identify the gaps and to do my own research, to find my own truth. That is what I aim to do in this internship, and outside of it. This life is meant for digging, And the deeper you dig, the more you will find :) 

Algiers (the capital city of Algeria) 

Abuja (the capital city of Nigeria) 

Snow in a small ski town in South Africa

The Danger of a Single Story