Nous avons passé
toute notre vie, avec des informations of divers et de diverses sortes pays. Ces informations et chacun de nous font that is attached fait par rapport aux Réalités idée des autres pays. In
Afrique, nous avons s vision de l'Europe est celle qu'on nous laisse glimpse and glimpse into the imported series, films, what we read in books, and we explain those who emigrated ... The image that comes to us is that of a Europe attrayante.Et rich and that is why many Africans see Europe as a city of light, a panorama of green mountains looming on the horizon, a Europe well-dressed people who exude the well-being.
I have always thought that here in Europe, the idea that people have of Africa is that of our everyday reality, an Africa stifling, with its motorcycles, the polluted area, markets boiling, smiles, colorful fabrics addition, vast savannas, its vigorous and hospitable people ...
But I was wrong.
One day, half-reclining chair in my European zapping chain after chain, I came across a documentary on Africa. I stood dazed before the images of starved children with flies all around, stomach bloated, sick some of Kwashiorkor, rickets and other, all crying with a dash of high pitched voice and bizarre. I stood stunned, with his brow furrowed, before the impressive amount of waste, mountains and mountains of trash, with people all around, in more normal routines. Girls crouching with hand on his chin, lost in their thoughts, without innocence. I stood petrified before the markets clay, with sad women and men burdened with packages, all dressed in rags. Whole villages of earth roads "sixteen" and children with gender as the only cover held. Any emotion, I saw men, old, loaded like mules pulling lean and hungry asses. I saw no structure, no cement house, nothing. I was sick at heart thinking it was still in Africa, people living in such conditions. All a country in an endless and horrifying poverty.
I wanted there to be humanitarian aid to all those people and thoughtful, I am disconnected images in mind if one day all of them come out of this poverty disease, if one day Africa would end with all its problems. And suddenly I'm back to reality. Off the voice with a slight accent transformed by grief and desolation, with a maudlin tone and washed with the grief and anger, saying the name of my country. My country? My country? It was not my home.
Where are the pictures of my city? And those of my village? Where paved streets and paved paths that I walked every day to go to school? Where? Where are the men pressed on their bikes, and women in their car and their clothes in a thousand colors and extravagant designs? Where is our dignity? It is not my country.
Where are the markets in turmoil? And children dressed in the latest fashions, such as black Americans from the beginning of last century? This style is for us an explosion of glamor and finesse. Where are the chubby children, with their chirping already predicted that a flood of votes related to the proper diet based on corn, Bambara groundnut, rice, soybeans, milk powder, smoked fish and egg shells? Where are our real bright? And the streets every night ambiancées that buzz because of the crowd. I agree that our villages are not like our cities, but this country that I saw on screen was not mine.
In Dahomey, in villages, at least people smile. Where have they released all those bins which were acres and acres of waste? It is not my country.
I stood mouth agape, wondering why they spent the images on TV and not the other, the real images from us. Images of people in their daily routine, going to work, or leaving the night in Cotonou, Yaoundé and Abidjan, images boxes and bars filled to overflowing as in bars of any European country . Why do they put these pictures that do not suggest a hint of social modernism, if only an infinite poverty?
me I'd never seen these places they showed in the documentary. Ever, after almost two decades in my homeland.
My country is not the country of children with rickets and kwashiorkor does even in our everyday vocabulary. We have supermarkets. We have schools. With us, there are people who dress with pants and shirts, girls with mini skirts and belts Enco, hair salons. We have buses, we have taxis, motorbike taxis, we have a public electricity and water. We have seats of government, fashion shows, film festivals and theater; We have air conditioners, we have banks ... And excuse me for stating things so basic, but because in the documentary that I have it, there was none of that. We all, not as modernized as in Europe, it is clear, but we have it. This documentary gave only a sad picture of Africa, an Africa African unrecognizable to own, an Africa not only poor, but over and crushed under the weight of virulent diseases and poverty.
And I am filled with rage.
I thought maybe they put these pictures to encourage NGO's or to educate people to do humanitarian aid, but this did not allay my rage. I thought maybe it was all really in our country, even though I had never seen, but it appeases not my rage. I thought, I thought, I meditated, I brainstormed, I considered, I reasoned, but it did not allay my rage. A dull feeling of rage that got me into the depths of my heart, as when we lie to you and you know, like when you can not do anything to meet a humiliating insult.
My country is not like they want to see. What do they need to reduce a country to this image? An entire continent downplayed that. There must be other ways to raise awareness. But for more reasons that I sought to justify this documentary, the more I infuriates me. And I remembered CAD PRODUCTIONS and their documentary on immigration, when Philip told them, they wanted to raise awareness on immigration, but not with the same coverage as always, that show black canoe, dry lips or working in areas of agricultural crops. But rather a different picture "because there are immigrants who come to Europe, who work, pay taxes and have a life like anyone else here"
Why everyone does not like those CAD PRODUCTS? A report on the different African countries with our reality each day. For anyone who wants to go to Africa do not expect to see anything that flies, so that people stop to think that Africans are "starved," we all come from a tribe Forest Botswana and we all live with loincloth and in shacks. In Africa, it is not just poverty. There are also wealth. It's sad that today Africa is directly linked to the death, disease, poverty, the decadence, war ...
In Africa, there are poor people, there are diseases, Some people have nothing and who live in need the most absolute. In Africa there are countries that are at war and others that are submitted in an endless depression. That's true. It is an irrefutable truth. But there are also other things. With us, there are tons of people who sleep in beds with mattresses. People who get up every morning with their radio alarm clock, who shower with clean water, and taking their cars, their bikes to work. In Africa there are people who have a normal life, a house with a garden and even a second home for Sunday picnics with the family. People who have pets as in any other country. People like my neighbor, my neighbor, my teachers, my friends, people in this neighborhood, people out there, this one, this one ... Normal people, clean and happy, who wash every day and eat every day. What is not normal is that full-XXI century there are still people who wonder if there are African universities, where schools, if we have TVs, if there is electricity, if we have internet ....
And I remembered that sometimes in my hometown with my friends, we see spend badly dressed white T-shirts with holes and faded. Many tourists go to Africa with clothes lay in the hope of leaving it to the natives. This is not surprising because after seeing documentaries like the one I've seen, they must think for ourselves, any folder, same old is a godsend. I can not imagine my girlfriend Nadia, combined tops of faded "yovos" with her high heels. But then we, we accept these gifts, because in all cases, as cloth, anything is valid. The European television
transmit information one way of the black continent. They explain how we'll die day after day, and as we gnawing poverty. As said Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian writer and winner of the prestigious British Orange Prize for Fiction "... Too many people died as Africa explain and too little say how Africa is living ..."
Africa than I j ' I lived is not the Africa that I saw in this documentary. The Africa that I know is not the Africa of undernourished children, nor flies, garbage and loincloth. The Africa that I have experienced is a boiling Africa, with its dense traffic, its families, its Sunday Masses, its outputs the beach, his music ...
When we stop to view a stereotypical Africa to see a real Africa? I was disgusted
by this story and I felt cheated. I know that everything has a purpose, but that it was not my country. But hey, if it is the image they want of Africa, too bad for them. I know in Africa that I have my memories and that I carry with me deep in my heart.
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