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An African’s Message for America: Help Yourself! | Op-Docs | The New York Times
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- čas přidán 6. 01. 2015
- This short documentary profiles a Kenyan activist who asks American student volunteers: “Why do you want to help us? Help your own country.”
Produced by: Cassandra Herrman
Read the story here: nyti.ms/14iMjCl
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An African’s Message for America: Help Yourself! | Op-Docs | The New York Times
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These volunteers are so young, they barely know anything about life in their own country yet. How can you possibly expect them to achieve anything in 2 weeks or even 2 months in Africa. What kind of African would listen to some fresh faced, rich American tweens? And even if anyone would listen: wat knowledge would they have to share? It is tough over there even for seasoned professionals to achieve anything.
The volunteers themselves may benefit from the experience, and there is nothing wrong with that. But I think it is important to be honest and realistic.
All the African guy is saying is that if they are serious about making any sort of change, it is more effective to start at home. That sounds not so exciting, but very honest and realistic to me.
Exactly. Charity begins at home. Americans need to help Americans if being American means anything to them.
"Clean out your own back yard before you go abroad." "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye."
Its like giving Tylenol to a man with a broken leg, it may stop the pain for a short period but the leg's still broken.
So true. Africa literally has the least amount of prejudice according to race and religion since people of different tribes often live right next to each other and get along peacefully. America likes to spread propaganda by focusing on the smallest problems of one African nation, and exaggerate it so much to the point that it seems like it’s a big issue that happens in every African nation. Not to mention every time an American person comes into Africa they just make it worse. There is war but it would be impossible for innocent civilians to die if only America and European nations didn’t supply the people with the weapons and ideology to do such a thing. Also a very important note is that in America, shootings and gang violence is literally an everyday occurrence and no one is fazed by it but if that were to happen in Africa, no one would be able to just stand and do nothing. I love this video because it literally speaks to me as an African who happens to be an American citizen.
He mentioned what's happening in Missouri. That wasn't racism. That wasn't the cps being abusive. That was a righteous and noble police officer that was doing his job exactly by the book. What needs to happen is that all those people need stop protesting and actually learn the facts of the case. Instead of "hands up, don't shoot" which didn't happen. His hands were not up. How about "pants up, don't loot" or "pants up, get a job"
#pantsupdontloot
#pantsupgetajob
American needs more help than any affrican continent right as we speak. Financial aid is desperately in higher demand SO my prayers for all the homeless the poorer class American heads up brace with everything you know and express yourself with love and wisdom that only comet from above.
Certainly let's conjure the energy to be involved at home, and not ignore the potential for irresponsible volunteerism abroad.
But maybe we can let the communities decide if they value the experience of having a foreign volunteer come share some time and learn with them.
Thanks for sharing james...I think this is an enormous conversation. I'd love to discuss next time we talk.
very intelligent
This does not have enough views. I wonder why?
2 things come immediately to mind: first, travel and learning about different parts of the world is good. It widens our perspective and deepens our understanding and connection. This is for those traveling from the US to Africa as well as a Kenyan traveling to North America. Second, are you going to tell me that an organization such as Doctors Without Borders ought to pick up and leave Africa and focus on the less acute problems of the "developed world?"
do you believe african countries cant function without doctors without borders
wow love the content in him so brave
Wow that's true
So true
Amazing 🥰
One incident does not reflect the whole professional view. Try to make the same arguments with the philantrophists and foreign investors in africa. Then you will know and understand why it's very important this thing with having lots of students and volunteers in africa and other developing/underdevelop nations.
hats off 10000 times to Boniface who told her to start from here home. every country has problems but we in Africa feel so sorry for USA ryt now.
1. drugs have rendered their people useless
2. killings of innocent black people
3. black people killing each other
4. innocent people and children being shot in school, churches and public places
5. moral degradation of society
6. homes run by single parents
7. incarceration of the young at jaw dropping statistics
8. terrorists Isis threats
usa has more problems than any country in the world at this particular juncture. the only problems that some countries are facing are
1. unequal distribution of wealth leading to poverty stemming from to bad governance/governments.- in many countries
2. civil wars but in less than 4 countries presently which means 50 countries don't have wars
3. lack of adequate healthcare
as of diseases and sickness its a common denominator in the US and Africa, in fact certain diseases (cancer, diabetis,heart diseases & diseases we never heard of in Africa since creation)are more prominent in the US while in Africa mostly its malaria and HIV(predominately southern and east Africa). realistically speaking HIV rates in the US are rapidly increasing, they are not pronounced because of good healthcare
as of women rights its not a continental problem and is highly subjective issue. it has to do with religions,faith and cultures. one thing for sure is countries dominated by Islam will not tolerate women's rights but how many of the countries in Africa are dominated by Islam???? culturally some women just believe men should be leaders and they don't want to play this role. a matter of choice and not obligation. "heavy lies a head that wears a crown"
What does he know about Ferguson? He's from Kenya.
thats the point hes trying to make everyone should make their own bed first
This guy is trying to stop people from victimising Africa and that's fine, but his logic behind criticizing people from volunteering abroad is just way too simplistic. Something does not have to be purely altruistic to be considered charitable or justifiable. Just because volunteering in Africa looks good on your resume, it does not follow that it is a selfish act, not does it mean that it is an inefficient way to help. Volunteering abroad is a great way for students to have a global perspective on humanitarian issues. More people need to be volunteering abroad to widen their cultural and political perspective - not less.
And don't tell me to focus on my own country's problems if they are nothing in comparison to the massacres, kidnapping, starvation, and child soldiers of South Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and any other place that needs help.
I just think this guy is not aware of the en masse complacency of the majority of people in Western Countries to developing countries. If a kid is not able to go to school, I don't care what country that kid is in, it should be considered our duty as citizens of the planet to help them out. And through no fault of their own, children in some countries need more help than children in other areas.
If you feel like helping out some cause in another country, go for it, don't listen to this guy criticizing.
Completely agree, couldn't have put it better myself
Yes and no. You don't just leave your country first thing to go and do work. It's best to start where you are first, and locally in the area before moving out to a bigger spectrum. You must start at home, and once you've gotten a grasp of that, then move to other places. This is how it should be. Starting where you grow is the most important step.
Let me repeat the quote "Until the lion learns how to write the story will always glorify the hunter".
True, no country is perfect and without issues. It is also true African nations have many problems ranging from division of people, to extremists attack their people just like in the middle east. But his argument isn't 100% bizarre as it sounds. There are billions of billions of people in the world. It is fine to start at home, if they were to help their own, and then branch out to other countries to do the same, then you would have people at home helping, and people from abroad, also helping. The connection between those two things would be more powerful than only one going abroad, or one staying. If those helping at home and those from abroad were to collaborate in a sense, to do what they do, they would learn more, be more effective. Then, it ultimately goes two ways. Now, i can see the Ebola argument. Ebola is something people already have, you and me have it, we are born with it. It' only becomes dangerous when you get someone else's strand of it. The thing is, Ebola isn't that serious compared to other issues. If you look at the map of Ebola the "outbreak" is this very small region. Nigeria had actually completely got rid of Ebola cases on it's soil before America even got there to help them get rid of it. Africans can help themselves, as long as they work together, and work at home. Also having some abroad is also good, as they are able learn some things that they may not be able to at home, and bring the knowledge back, just like how many Americans, Europeans, and Latin Americans learn at home and travel Abroad, and at home, doing both broadens the spectrum of learning, and keeping an open mind on issues.
***** I am sorry to butt in but America is/was Ebola free? I am pretty sure America just recently had its own cases of Ebola. I am sure you can find some kind of weird sickness outbreak from no-African countries and spreading to others countries if you go back in time, like the H1N1 for example that happened not so long ago, I will not be surprised if there are as many or more deaths related to the H1N1 outbreak that the Ebola one, also how H1N1 did spread? because of superstition and ignorance? I mean America has ''vast, vast resources'', so vast that Africans will not understand how vast these resources are. If even with these resources, H1N1 did spread like that, what do you expect of countries without ''these vast resources''.
Its more a case of people has their own way to live and its so happened that contaminated bush meat and boom Ebola outbreak. Any outbreak in any big city in any country will lead to many people caught the happening outbreak, specially when its a sickness that don't really spare people. If 4 countries couldn't control it, others countries in Africa DID but sure lets just look on these 4 countries and judge the whole continent [over 50 countries] because Africa is a country after all.
The fact there are no roads in some place in some countries in Africa has so nothing to do with volunteering in Africa [with the whole I came to save Africa attitude that the most volunteers have] but because you bring it, because every country in Africa has its own issue, I will specifically talk about DRC [because I was actually there not so long ago], and there, in some places, there are no or really damaged road [thanks to long dictatorship, corruption and wars] even through they are building the country again, for example in Kinshasa the difference between Gombe district and Matete district is so big, one is so clean and newly renovated and the other not yet but like someone told me, you don't build a country in one day, so it will take time. That's why they are more looking for investors, locally and internationally. But how can they attract investors if the potential investors had a not so true image of Africa has a whole is just so bad and dirty and aids and starving kids, poor etc......
And I don't agree, Africa can help itself at macro level, so many countries in Africa had a really amazing fast growing economy recently. Also this thought that people that help Africa is what leaded to the actual drama. I suppose the reason that the american CIA and Belgian government helped to kill DRC first elected PM Lumumba [aka who the population chose] and installed and supported The dictator Mobutu for so many years [a really catastrophe for the population, still paying for it until now] was to help the country, right. And you can find cases like this in many African countries about how European and American governments ''helped'' Africa by deciding who should run the country or not, because Africa can possibly not go on without their ''help''. So no, its not an issue of self-esteem, they received way too many just-not-helpful helps that they just don't want it anymore.
Everything you know about Africa is wrong.
No, no, not you in particular. I'm thinking about a more general "you" -- the American "you," the Western "you," and even the 18- to 22-year-old "you" who enrolls in my introductory African history classes.
When I allow myself to think about it, it seems as though I spend as much time un-teaching African history as teaching it. This reason is simple. Most students come into my classes knowing next to nothing about the continent, and what little they know is wrong.
It's not their fault. They're very bright, they graduated from good high schools, and they're (usually) eager to learn. But the culture that surrounds them has filled their heads with images of Africa that blend myth with distortion. Many of them, like most people in the West, imagine that Africa is:
--an unspoiled paradise of people and wild animals, living in harmony with nature
--a primitive backwater trapped in a timeless, tribal past
--a place where dangerous diseases and even more dangerous men wreak havoc
--an exotic wonderland of bizarre and outlandish people
--a broken place of collapse, death, and decay
Some of these stereotypes are contradictory, yet all of them are pervasive -- so much so that Erik Gilbert and Jonathan Reynolds' Africa in World History, a widely used university textbook, devotes its preface to unpacking them. Anyone reading this post can undoubtedly come up with examples from American culture that reproduce and reinforce these stereotypes, from Disney's The Lion King to last night's report on CNN.
I'm devoting Part 1 of this series on African stereotypes to "Broken Africa," to tracing the geneology of stereotypical images -- especially photographs -- of African suffering, victimhood, and brutality, from the anti-slavery movement of 200 years ago to the blindspots and hubris of Invisible Children.
15 Blake Am-I-Not-A-Man-and-A-Brother-Abolitionist-Slogan
Josiah Wedgwood and William Hackwood or Henry Webber: Official medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society, c. 1787.
Before I get going, let me make a couple of quick points.
First, the "Africa" that I'm discussing here is not the actual continent, in all of its overwhelming diversity, with its nearly one billion inhabitants in over 50 countries. It's not the actually existing Africa that can't meaningfully be talked about as a single thing. That Africa is not one, but many. The "Africa" under discussion here is the one that floats through Western culture and lodges itself in Western minds.
The second thing to say about stereotypes is that they're not always wrong. Americans fly to Africa for safaris for a reason -- it really is the only place you're going to see lions, rhinos, and giraffes in the wild. And, without a doubt, far too many small African wars are killing far too many African people. Stereotypes do their damage not so much by lying -- although some do lie -- as by excluding. They can prevent us from seeing things in a broader, deeper, and richer context.
Third, older images that created stereotypes as well as contemporary images that reproduce them today aren't entirely bad. Take the image directly above. Its purpose was to build support within Britain for the movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. It goes without saying that this was one of the most important causes of the day. One of the first goals of the abolitionists was to convince Britons that Africans were their moral equals, not an inferior species of human being. Hence medallion and its slogan, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" Both were widely circulated -- in fact, the image became iconic. Within a generation, enough people answered the question with a resounding "Yes" to the medallion's question that the movement compelled Parliament to vote, in 1807, to end the overseas slave trade and, in 1833, to phase out slavery altogether.
16 william blake flagellation of female slave
William Blake: "Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave," copper engraving. 1796.
And yet... Nothing is quite that simple. On the one hand, the end of the slave trade and later of slavery were thoroughly good things. On the other, the medallion carried more than one message. The morally-equal man in chains is on bended knee. Unable to help himself, he looks up with pleading eyes at white Britons and Americans for help. The medallion one of the sites -- one of many associated with the campaign against slavery -- at which stereotypes of both the helpless African and the white saviour were created. (It's worth noting that many slaves actually freed themselves, from the thousands of runaways, in the United States, to the revolutionaries of Haiti.)
There's more. As David Bindman has pointed out, "much of the power of this image... came from the precision with which it expressed the idea of the gratitude expected of the liberated slave, who would... ever afterward be a loyal servant to the white masters and mistresses who had liberated him."
Abolitionism, suffering, helplessness, gratitude -- it's quite a package, both productive and problematic. And neither those stereotypes nor their contradictions have gone away.
Panos Anti Slavery International John and Alice Harris in Belgian Congo 1910
Panos Pictures/Anti-Slavery International: The Reverend John (left front) and Mrs Alice Harris (right front) with a group of indigenous people on their visit to the Belgian Congo, 1910.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, news of outrageous atrocities, countless deaths, mass starvation, and ethnic cleansing began to leak out of the Congo Free State, the personal dominion of King Leopold of the Belgians. Leopold had acquired this vast domain (about the size of western Europe) by hook, crook, and brute force. His rights over it were confirmed by the great European powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85. (No one from the Congo was on hand to voice his or her opinion.)
Leopold claimed that by colonizing the Congo River basin, he would suppress the internal slave trade and bring the light of Christian civilization to those who lived in darkness. In fact, he was driven by greed, and in his zeal to extract the greatest possible profits from his colony, he and his many officials turned to forced labor. Men were imprisoned and sent to labor camps. Women and children were held hostage. The whip was freely used. The profitability of a given colonial outpost was directly proportional to the number of rifles it possessed. Rebels were hunted down without mercy. Notoriously, soldiers, who were expected never to waste ammunition, were ordered to return to their barracks with a human hand for every bullet they had fired. These are the real events that inspired Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which is not about African savagery, as people who have never read it usually think, but about European barbarism.
16a Alice Harris
Panos Pictures/Anti-Slavery International: An image of Alice Seeley Harris standing by the "Livingstone tree." The picture was printed in the Anti-Slavery Reporter publication (April 1915 - Jan1916).
Missionaries' and travelers' accounts of that told of these events and an official British report that confirmed them led to the formation, in 1904, of the Congo Reform Association [CFA]. The CFA's goals were simple -- to create a mass movement that would attack the atrocities by attacking Leopold, end them by ending his dominion over the Congo.
Two of the CFA's leading members were Alice Seeley Harris and her husband John Harris, Baptist missionaries who first went to the Congo in the 1890s. In the early 1900s, Alice Harris (that's her in the photo above) began to make photographs that documented the abuses carried out by Leopold's regime. Those photos became a vital part of what was probably history's first international multimedia human rights campaign.
16aa Anti Slavery Society democratic republic of congo, Equator District
Panos Pictures/Anti-Slavery International: Democratic Republic of the Congo. A young man and woman with severed arms. Mola's hands, seated, were destroyed by gangrene after being tied too tightly by soldiers. Yoka's hand, standing, was cut off by soldiers wanting to claim him [sic] as killed, c. 1904.
Alice Harris's photos (a few were by other photographers) were at the very center of the CFA's efforts to build a mass movement in Britain and the United States. Photography was still a relatively new technology, and most people believed that photos revealed the truth of a situation more fully and accurately than any other form of representation. The images, projected on a giant scale by magic lanterns before large audiences, packed a tremendous punch. People saw them as irrefutable proof of Leopold's crimes.
The photos also found their way into books and pamphlets. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of people saw them. Many joined the cause.
16b Anti Slavery International democratic republic of congo Nsongo District
Panos Pictures/Anti-Slavery International: Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nsala of Wala with the severed hand and foot of his five year old daughter murdered by Anglo-Belgian India Rubber company militia, 1904.
Working with a large, bulky camera, Harris could only capture the aftermath of atrocity, not the acts themselves. Sometimes she did this with a kind of clinical coolness; sometimes, as above, with obvious passion.
16bbb Harris Twain Congo
Anti-Slavery International: Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photographs of Congolese persons mutilated by rubber sentries, by Alice Harris and W. D. Armstrong, c. 1905. Reprinted from Mark Twain's pamphlet, "King Leopold’s Soliloquy."
The image above reproduces a page from Mark Twain's anti-Leopold satire, "King Leopold's Soliloquy." In it, Twain puts words into Leopold's mouth that acknowledge the damage that Harris's photos had done to his interests. As Adam Hochschild puts it in King Leopold's Ghost, his immensely readable history of "greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Congo," Twain's king "rages against 'the incorruptible Kodak. ...The only witness... I couldn't bribe.'"
16c Anti Slavery International Congo three sentrie
Panos Picture/Anti-Slavery International: Democratic Republic of the Congo. Three head sentries of the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber company with a prisoner, 1905.
In addition to victims, Harris's images offer glimpses of the perpetrators of the atrocities. Some of the perpetrators, that is, the ones who couldn't escape the camera. Those perpetrators were the Africans, many of whom had joined company militias and the Belgian Force Publique under threat of beatings, imprisonment, or death. The white men who gave the orders were nowhere to be seen. After all, if colonial officials said 'no," there was nothing that Harris could do about it.
16ccc Anti Slavery International Two British missionaries with Congolese men holding the severed hand
Panos Pictures/Anti-Slavery Society: Democratic Republic of the Congo. Two British missionaries with Congolese men holding the severed hands of two men (Lingomo and Bolenge) from their village, murdered by rubber sentries from the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber company, 1904.
Some of Harris's photo introduce new characters. Besides victims and perpetrators, we now have men who, at first glance, might be the colonial officials who served Leopold and gave the orders to kill and maim. The reality, as the captions make clear, is that they are the white men who will end the violence and save those who cannot save themselves.
16d Anti Slavery International Congo Swedish missionary
Panos Pictures/Anti-Slavery International: Democratic Republic of the Congo. Swedish missionary and a young boy mutilated by a rubber sentry in the employ of a "concessionnaire" company in the Upper Congo, 1904.
There is no doubt that Harris's photos helped to bring Leopold's savage rule in the Congo to an end. The CFA, which had indeed become a mass movement, exerted tremendous pressure on the British, American, and, indirectly, Belgian governments to do something about the Congo. Beset by diplomatic and personal troubles, a rapidly aging Leopold ceded the Congo to Belgium in 1908.
It was a hollow victory. Conditions improved very little in the Congo, and similar abuses -- if not quite on the same scale -- could be found throughout colonial Africa. At its root, the problem in the Congo, in fact, wasn't Leopold. The problem was colonialism, white supremacy, and predatory capitalism, as it ws throughout the colonized world. The CFA, however, couldn't address the root causes of the atrocities in the Congo without alienating the people and governments that it was trying to sway.
In the end, Harris's photos --- like the imagery of abolitionism -- were both productive and problematic. Sadly, the most lasting legacy of the CFA may well have been to lodge images of African villainy and victimhood, and of white saviours, deep in the Western imagination.
17 Smithsonian Africa Missionaries 02
Smithsonian Institution: Fianarantsoa (Madagascar): Léproserie Catholique [postcard], c. 1905.
Harris wasn't alone in creating this imagery. It was one of the most common ways in which the colonial world was represented to the West.
18 Smithsonian Africa Missionaries
Smithsonian Institution: Rencontre de deux Missionnaires dans la forêt [postcard], c. 1905.
Magic lantern shows, books, postcards -- all of these were popular forms of both entertainment and education. What people learned, of course, was a mixed bag.
19a LOC 01
Louis Dalrymple/Library of Congress: "Our foreign missions;-- an embarrassment of riches for the heathen." USA, 1900.
I'm including this cartoon simply to indicate that not everyone in the West was enthusiastic for the mission of "saving the natives." There was a significant body of opinion that felt that they weren't worth the effort.
20 Constance Stuart Larrabee Father Huddleston With Children 1948
Constance Stuart Larrabee/Smithsonian Institution: Father [Trevor] Huddleston With Children, 1948.
And I'm showing you this photo to acknowledge that any image can be read in multiple ways, some of which are completely off the mark.
One reading of this photo would see Trevor Huddleston as the archetypal Great White Father, in Africa to spread the light of the Gospel and save Africans from themselves. Huddleston had indeed come to Africa from Britain to save souls. But every photo must -- must! -- be read in the fullest context possible. Read this way, a very different meaning emerges.
Unusually for his time and place, Huddleston was a man who could listen and learn from Africans, a man who felt no need to cast himself as the hero of other people's story. Outraged by the racial injustice that he found in South Africa, he became an ally of the liberation movement, a friend and supporter of the African National Congress. He understood that, in South Africa, blacks would free themselves.
This doesn't mean that he saw no role for himself (or whites more generally). In fact, he became a thorn in the side of the South African government, wrote Naught for Your Comfort, an international best-seller that was one of the first exposes of apartheid, was recalled from South Africa by his religious order (one step ahead of deportation), and for the next 30 years devoted much of his energy to the worldwide anti-apartheid movement. In South Africa, today, he's remembered as a hero.
Brendan Bannon This mother of six traveled by foot from Somalia to Dadaab
MSF/Brendan Bannon: This mother of six traveled by foot from Somalia to Dadaab. Her youngest child is malnourished and is being treated at MSF's hospital in Dagahaley. MSF medical staff are seeing not only children who have arrived at the camp malnourished, but also those who have become malnourished while staying at the camp.
I want to look, for a moment, at some contemporary documentary photography and photojournalism from Africa and at the ways in which they continue to be both productive and problematic.
Before I go any further, I need to say that I have a great deal of respect for organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières [MSF]/Doctors Without Borders and that occasionally I put my money where my mouth is. I also know and admire photographers who make images like the ones I'm about to talk about. I understand how difficult it is to to represent the problem without reproducing the stereotype.
Brendan Bannon An MSF doctor examines the mother of a malnourished child
MSF/Brendan Bannon: An MSF doctor examines the mother of a malnourished child in MSF's therapeutic feeding center at the Dadaab refugee camp complex. MSF is currently treating more than 2,400 acutely malnourished children in its outpatient therapeutic feeding program, 130 who are at risk of death in its inpatient therapeutic feeding center, and 5,047 moderately malnourished in its supplementary feeding program.
There's no question that the situation in Somalia has been catastrophic for the last 20 years. There's also no doubt that MSF has played an important role in bringing aid to some of those who need it the most -- often where no other aid is even remotely available. MSF workers do this at risk to their own health and safety.
Brendon Bannon's photos of MSF's work in Somalia undoubtedly prompted some of people who saw them to make much needed donations. No one can complain about that.
And, yet.
Brendan Bannon Dr Luana Lima works with patients at the MSF hospital in Dagahaley
MSF/Brendan Bannon: Dr. Luana Lima works with patients at the MSF hospital in Dagahaley. MSF staff are seeing high numbers of malnourished children, especially those living on the outskirts of the camp.
And, yet, the photos also reproduce and reinforce the stereotype of helpless African victims who need outsiders (not all of whom are white) to save them.
In this case, the Somalis in the photos couldn't in fact save themselves. But many people who see them will read them as representing Africa as a whole, not one particular country with its own unique history.
So the problem isn't Bannon's photos, in and of themselves -- I'm happy that he made them -- but the way that they fit into a larger history of representing Africa. The responsibility for understanding this history isn't just Bannon's (I'd guess that he understands all of this), it's the viewers' as well. We can't be passive consumers of what we see any more than we can simply accept what we read.
Nachtwey A young girl warily eyes a guerrilla fighter in the Lubero district Congo
James Nachtwey/VII for TIME: A young girl warily eyes a guerrilla fighter in the Lubero district, where a rebel group meets with U.N. personnel.
I'm going to end by taking us back to the Congo and to a photo essay that James Nachtwey shot there for Time magazine three or four years ago. I like it for a number of reasons. Most importantly, in this set of photographs you can see one of the world's finest photographers struggling to tell the story of devastating suffering in an African country, and, at the same time, break free of stereotypes and place events in a wider context.
The essay opens with an image of a child who, although she may not be in direct peril, is certainly in a dangerous situation from which she cannot free herself. The man with the gun is ambiguous -- doubly so, since we can't see his face. Is he friend or foe?
Nachtwey A young woman who was raped and burned by Congolese troops
James Nachtwey/VII for TIME: A young woman who was raped and burned by Congolese troops receives treatment in a hospital run by HEAL African in Goma.
Another photo -- classic Nachtwey -- forces viewers to confront and somehow deal with the circumstances of a woman who has been gravely and grotesquely injured in body, mind, and spirit. Through no fault of her own (or of Nachtwey's) it's almost impossible to see her as anything other than a pure victim.
Nachtwey FDLR guerrilla fighters stand guard at the meeting in Lubero.
James Nachtwey/VII for TIME: FDLR guerrilla fighters stand guard at the meeting in Lubero.
Are these black men with guns dangerous or friendly? The photo and its caption provide too little information for viewers to make up their minds. The article that accompanied the essay tells the story. They were, in fact, perpetrators of atrocities, a danger to anyone who crossed their path.
Victims, perpetrators, and, in the background, the a blue-turbaned United Nations peacekeeper -- a saviour from the outside. We seem to be stuck with the same old story.
But -- in a different way entirely from the antislavery medallion -- it's not that simple.
Nachtwey A child's weight is monitored Congo
James Nachtwey/VII for TIME: A child's weight is monitored to track the effectiveness of supplemental feeding.
I don't think that I'm wrong when I say that, in recent years, Nachtwey has been making sure to signal to his viewers that many -- often most -- of the caregivers in crisis situations in Africa are members of local communities. That's certainly part of what's going on in this photo, and you can see it in many MSF photos, too.
Nachtwey A worker in Mongwalu sluices a streambed looking for fine grains of gold Congo
James Nachtwey/VII for TIME: A worker in Mongwalu sluices a streambed looking for fine grains of gold. Much of the fighting in the Congo is fueled by a desire to control its many valuable natural resources.
It's also clear that Natchwey has been searching for ways of showing his viewers that local conflicts are not rooted in mindless African savagery or ancient tribal hostilities, but have understandable causes that often implicate the West and, by extension, his viewers. Although the caption doesn't say it, the gold that's mined in the Congo doesn't stay there. It finds its way into jewellery, electronic equipment, and tooth fillings from New York to New Delhi to Beijing.
So in this brief essay Nachtwey managed to expand the range of African characters by including caregivers and to deepen the context within which suffering in the Congo is understood by indirectly including consumers in the West (and East).
But he couldn't avoid reinforcing the old stereotypes as well. That's not a criticism. It's the nature of the beast. Photos from crisis zones in Africa will inevitably be both productive and problematic. The best photographers, however -- and Nachtwey is by no means alone in this -- will find ways of broadening and deepening the stories that they tell.
I shouldn't make it sound like the burden rests entirely on photographers. Viewers -- that means all of us -- have a responsibility to be aware of the visual culture in which we live and to understand how images can reveal truths and still tell lies.
* * *
In Part 2 of this series, I'll look at the genealogy of stereotypes of strange, unknowable, and exotic Africa. Throughout the series, I'll be drawing on the work of many people who have thought, and are thinking, about similar issues. The final post I'll talk about the ways that African and more than a few non-African photographers and writers are moving beyond stereotypes to create a much more complete picture of Africa (in all its diversity). I'll also provide links and suggestions for further reading.
* * *
PS In a blog post for Foreign Policy magazine -- "Let's Stop Miscasting Africans" -- Christian Caryl talks about Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign and the video that went viral. Like me, he believes that it reproduces and reinforces stereotypes of African victimhood. He goes on to wonder why old habits are so hard to change. He concludes that the "sad fact of the matter is that we in the West... still prefer to imagine Africans primarily as victims and ourselves as their redeemers." One reason the Kony video "struck such a nerve" is that its audience "would much rather identify with the heroic crusader than the evildoer's depressing victims."
PPS I've written a piece about the relationship between Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, "The White Man's Burden," and Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign. It's not a cheap shot. I'm looking at things in a deep historical perspective. In a way, it's an extended footnote to this post. You can read it, here.
How can you help somebody else's home when your home isn't in order? The blind leading the blind. We need our people to help our people before anybody else.
Ben Kenobi America is in order
Lol I think it's funny because people go over there based on the propaganda showed on tv about Africa, when they are doing extremely well.
hi
If every African had this frame of mind, things would be very different. Most still need mental emancipation!
so true. Africa will never be the USA, but to say that you don't need US help is foolishness.
why do you insinuate we need help and USA is the saviour
Stupidity n laziness can not be help. I help by working my ass off to pay taxe to give these people welfare food stamp. America is the land of opportunity if u are poor is your fault. Those people in Africa or other places don't have help or opportunity like America so I rather help them. When we Asian came here from Asia we don't have anything n don't know much English. If we can make it u could too. It call working
321 thatch.. I understand what yr saying about welfare referring to black americans.. but it's not fare to pile Africans with them.. am african and we are very hard working people, and we are extremely ashamed of the black americans.. in my country we are raised in strict environments to respect, collage education is compulsory, and hard work is emphasised.. we are not as fortunate as America due to peverty, but we have alot of educated people and graduates in kenya .. our challah get is a limited job opportunity. . Pole graduate and sit home with their degrees. . So don't imply all black people are lazy
Africa can feed not just itself but the world is a bold assertion to make at a time when famine stalks part of the continent.
But this is precisely the claim made by Kanayo Nwanze, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), a specialised agency of the UN. Nwanze gave a forceful intervention at Monday's emergency meeting in Rome to discuss the crisis in east Africa, where, according to the UN, an estimated 11.6 million people need humanitarian assistance in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.
Nwanze drew a sharp contrast between Gansu province, in northwest China, and parts of Africa that cannot feed itself. He said like many parts of the world, Gansu suffers from frequent drought, limited water for irrigation and severe soil erosion. Yet despite the weather and the harsh environment, the farmers in the Gansu programme area are feeding themselves and increasing their incomes.
"I met one farmer whose income had risen from only $2 (£1.20) a day in 2006 to $35 a day last year," he exclaimed.
So when asked why this could be done in China but not Africa, Nwanze said the vital difference was government policy.
"What I saw in Gansu was the result of government policy to invest in rural areas and to reduce the gap between the rural and the urban and stem migration," he said in a telephone interview. "It has a very harsh environment, it has only 300 millimetres of rain annually, compared to parts of the Sahel which gets 400-600 millimetres, but the government has invested in roads and electricity. We found a community willing to transform their lives by harvesting rainwater, using biogas, terracing mountain slopes. There are crops for livestock, they are growing vegetables, wheat and maize, and generating income that allows them to build resilience."
While Somalia is a worst-case scenario, Nwanze continues, in Ethiopia and Djibouti there has been a lack of long-term investment that makes them vulnerable to climate change. "It is not enough to wait for crisis to turn to disaster to act. The rains will fail again, but governments have not invested in the ability of populations to resist drought."
Nwanze argues that Africa is facing the fallout of decades of neglecting agriculture, a fault that lies with African governments and aid donors.
"There was a shift in paradigm from agriculture to industrialisation," he said. "That's fine, but not to the extent where you neglect food and we are now facing the consequences. Even where farming is practised it's seen as a poor man's occupation. It is not seen as an attractive profession."
The figures back him up. In the mid-1990s, global official development assistance to agriculture reached $20bn before slumping to just $3bn in in the early 2000s. It is slowing rising again, reaching $9bn in 2009. In a recent report, ONE, the advocacy group, gave two reasons for the decline: complacency for the world's food supply after the dramatic improvement in food production in the 1960s and 1970s in Asia and Latin America, and the development doctrine that insisted developing countries dismantle state-owned and state-run enterprises, including agricultural research.
But, after decades of neglect, agriculture is fashionable again in development circles. Jolted by the surge in world food prices in 2009, the G8 group of rich countries and other donors committed to provide $22bn in funding for agriculture and food security. Those donors have some ground to make up to meet those pledges in the agreed three-year period, but agriculture is firmly on the international agenda. In June, G20 agriculture ministers agreed a plan of action in Paris that restated their commitments to the 2009 L'Aquila pledge and cited the importance of small farmers.
Nwanze, who welcomed the plan of action, sees small farmers as Africa's great hope. Agriculture, predominantly on a small scale, accounts for about 30% of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP and at least 40% of export value. In a number of small countries in Africa, agriculture plays an even greater role, representing 80% or more of export earnings.
The Ifad president says Africa could easily increase the use of fertilisers without making a dent on the environment, because current usage is so low. And he cites the potential to increase irrigation - only about 7% of land in the whole of Africa is irrigated, compared with more than 30% of land in Asia - and the scope for farmers to use improved seed varieties that would dramatically boost productivity.
If this seems pie in the sky, Nwanze cites a number of countries that are seeing success by focusing on agriculture - Tanzania, Rwanda and Ghana - whose governments, helped by the private sector, have made a big commitment to farming. "The potential is huge," said Nwanze. "With a little investment, Africa can feed itself and it has the potential to feed the world."
Pretty simple stop all refugees from africa stop helping them . They seem to be doing better lol