We spent half his life, with different information from different sources and different countries. And this information makes each one has their opinion respecting the realities of other countries. In Africa, our vision of Europe, which we glimpse and glimpse into the imported series, documentaries, films, what we read in books, which tell us which have migrated ... We are influenced. And so many Africans see Europe as an El Dorado, a land of light, a panorama of green mountains that are looming on the horizon, well-dressed, exuding comfort. Although many times the information is censored, because you never see people smoking or bed scenes, what we get is a rich and attractive Europe.
I had always thought that here in Europe, the idea they had of Africa was that of our daily reality, overwhelming Africa, with its bikes, its air polluted, noisy markets, their smiles, their colorful fabrics ...
But
I was wrong. Once
from my couch zapping Europe, I saw a documentary on Africa. I was shocked to see half-starved children with flies around his belly swollen, and others suffering from Kwashiorkor, rickets crying with a trickle of high-pitched voice and odd. I froze, frowning at the impressive amount of trash, mountains and mountains of shit, with people around in the most natural routines. Girls squatting with his hands on his chin, lost in thought, not innocence. I was shocked to see poor markets earth-colored, with men carrying et sad women, all dressed in rags, people with houses of clay, and children with top-tails. I'm excited to see old men pulling loaded like mules or donkeys starving cows. I saw no structure, nothing. My heart ached at the thought that there were still people living well in Africa, people living in horrible and dire conditions in the whole country.
It hurt and I waited all these people, humanitarian aid and may have disconnected me from the pictures if you think all these people come out of this poverty. And suddenly left me and went back to frame reality. The voice-overs, with a hint of sorrow and bitter grief, with a tearful tone and washed by the suffering and grief said the name of my country. He said it was my country. My country? This was not my country.
Where are the pictures of my city? What about my people? Where are the streets and the paved roads that ran through me every day to go to school? Where? Where are the men to hurry on their bikes, cars and women with their multi-colored costumes and extravagant designs? Where is our dignity? This was not my country. Where are the markets in Boiling? What about the children dressed in the latest fashion similar to that of black Americans from the beginning of last century? This style is for us all a waste of glamor and finesse. Where are the chubby child with a warbling voice anticipating a jet associated with successful feeding of corn, beans, rice, soybeans, powdered milk, smoked fish and egg shells? Where are the tacky buildings with light signals? And those streets every night atmosphere buzzing noise from the crowd? And, it is that people are not like cities, but this was not my country, in the poor peoples of Dahomey, people smile. Where had they taken these landfills were whole acres of shit?. This was not my country.
wondering why I was surprised they put these images and not the other, the people in their daily routine, going to work, partying like every night in Cotonou, images of local overflowing with people drinking and chatting and in the bars of the Gran Vía Why are you, not even a glimpse glimpse modernization and social progress, but a life of endless poverty and without any future? This was not my country. I had never gone through those sites I saw on the screen. And walk that I have reviewed the various corners of my land.
My country is not the country of children stunted and Kwashiorkor and does not enter into our vocabulary. We have malls, we have schools, we have people who dress pants and shirts, women in miniskirts and matching belts, hair salons filled, we have buses, we have taxi-bikes, have water and electricity service, we have government offices, fashion , film festivals and theaters, banks ... And forgive to list things as banal but is that the documentary could not get any of this. We have all this, though not as modern technology, as here. Sure. But in that film came out only a picture of a sad Africa, unrecognizable to the Africans themselves. An Africa not only poor, but finished and crushed under the weight of virulent diseases and poverty unhealthy. and this fills me with rage.
maybe I put these pictures to encourage the NGOs or the sensitivity of people to donate to humanitarian aid, but I was not eased the anger. I thought well, maybe it was the only way I had to sensitize the people here that there was much to do in Africa, but not anger me relief. I thought that maybe this was really in my country, but not anger me relief. I thought, reflection, meditation, brooding, thought, I reasoned I was relieved but not rabies. A dull feeling of rage that I rose from the depths of my heart, like when you lie and you know, like when you can not do anything to respond to a humiliating insult. My country is not. What need is there to stop an entire country reduced to this picture? A continent minimized this. There may be other ways to raise ... What? Does that help or sponsor not do so if they did not see pictures of this guy?
is that for many reasons that put him to justify this documentary, I could not get out rage and anger. And I remembered CAD PRODUCTIONS with his documentary on immigration, when Phillipe told me they wanted to sensitize the people against the immigration problem and not to the same long documentary in which blacks are in boats, with dry mouth or working in the fields, but a different picture because " people who come here and live, work, and is listed as living here." Why do such as CAD, a documentary on different countries Africans with our everyday reality?, so anyone who goes to Africa is not expected to fly, so that anyone who sees an African, do not think that is another "cheapie" that comes from Botswana or a jungle tribe with top-tails and flies. In Africa there are people living not only wealth there is poverty there. Africa is only related death, disease, poverty, decay, war ...
In Africa there is poverty, there are diseases and there are people who have nothing and who lives with many shortcomings. I do not even talk about the war-torn countries or those who have suffered endless conflict. It is true and irrefutable. But there are other things. There are a lot of people sleeping in beds with mattresses, that get up every day with alarm clock radio, shower with water that is potable and take your car, or bike to go to work. People who have a life, a second home for feasts on Sundays with his family and his dog. People like my neighbor, my neighbor, my teachers, my friends, the people of that neighborhood, there, and this, and this one ... People running, clean, happy, to be washed every day and you eat each day. What is not normal is that living in 2010, still has people wondering if there are universities in Africa, if there are schools, if we have TVs, if you have electricity, if you have Internet ...
And I remembered that sometimes my city, my friends, we saw wearing white shirts torn, dirty and worn. We did not understand because they came with clothes and people and to watch them go says "Look, poor whites." Many are in Africa wear clothes because they know that there's nothing there and that they are no longer around to the locals. I never understood why white tourists in Africa came with desgastadísimas propaganda shirts and trousers with holes. Now I understand. They have seen many documentaries and t think that any dirty or broken by this, for us it was a godsend. I can not imagine my friend Nadia getting a shirt worn by very "gift target "that is, to jointly with their stilettos. Of course, we accept it for a "serpillière" anything goes.
The European broadcasters transmit a one-way information of the black continent. Just explain how we die every day, such as poverty begrudge us from within. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said, Nigerian writer and winner of the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction British "... Too many people have told that Africa is dying and how little African lives." Africa I lived, not the one I saw in that documentary. I know Africa is not Africa of malnourished children, or an Africa of flies and garbage, or huts and top-tails. I lived a boiling Africa with thousands of motorcycle, car, family, Sunday Mass, walk to the beach ... When will we stop viewing a stereotypical Africa to look at a real Africa?
I left disgusted with this film and I felt cheated. I know that everything has a reason but this was not my country.
But hey ... If this is the image of Africa that want to have them fester, I already know that I have Africa on my mind and I have within my heart.
http://yaivi.blogspot.com/
This is a video made by Africans for the web.
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