I just got done reading a blog post by a woman on a 4.5 day missions trip in Ethiopia. I was so excited when I saw Africa in the title, hoping I might have found a new friend with whom I could reminisce and compare stories of cultural faux pas. But when she wrote about how everyone in Africa is full of joy and how Africa has "changed" her, I got seriously irked.
I know four months isn't anything to shake a stick at, but I didn't exactly take a vacation when I was in Uganda. I wasn't there to take in all the development pornography and check a bunch of my boxes on my "Good Christian To-Do" list. I was there to live.
So if you have any intentions of continuing to read my little rant, I apologize in advance for my judgmental attitude, my condescension and my pretension. But I'm annoyed.
Here are some truths straight from the mouth of an Africa snob:
1. AFRICA IS NOT A DAMN COUNTRY!!!!!
So stop referring to it as though every African is one in the same. Like every country shares the same culture and customs. Say it with me, folks: Africa is a continent.
2. Not all Africans are full of joy.
I met some wonderful Ugandans during my time there four years ago whom I still consider friends. Friends who made me laugh, friends who eased me into the cultural differences, friends who were wonderful, faithful, God-fearing individuals. But believe it or not, some Ugandans are assholes. There I said it.
Just like some Americans, Colombians, Australians and/or Russians are assholes. Stop painting every African out to be some hopelessly naive, singing, chanting, drum-circling, oblivious to the realities of life, kind of novelty. These are real people. People who have equal capacity in their hearts for good and evil. Just like the rest of us. Stop exalting the disenfranchised to relieve your own guilt and discomfort at the reality of the poverty in which most of them live.
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| One of the joys of Ugandan living: Permanently dirty feet and infected mosquito bites |
3. After a day, Africa changed you?
I already covered the Africa-is-a-continent thing, so I'll bypass that part of this irksome statement. So you got a little taste of life in Africa, did you? Well good for you, honey. Now try living there. Try eating your rice and beans as you watch emaciated children digging through the trash for dirty handfuls of discarded sustenance. Try walking into town alone while every predatory eye undresses you. Try taking an evening stroll on campus while you watch as a local criminal is wrapped in car tires and burned alive.
For me, there were some really breathtakingly beautiful moments. An evening run on the red dirt track as the sun slowly set over the trees. Laying in the grass at night replaying the Lion King scene when Simba, Timon and Pumba count the billions of stars. Teaching my four-year old host "nephew" to play Patty Cake for the first time and listening to his glorious squeals of delight.
There is so much beauty in Uganda, as I'm sure there is throughout the rest of the continent of Africa. But for the love of God, please stop focusing on all the positive, lovey-dovey stuff and disregarding the heartwrenchingly awful stuff. You're doing a disservice to the people who live there every day. We owe it to our brothers and sisters of all African nations to highlight the beauty, as well as the darkness. We owe it to them to wrestle with the hard questions of
"Why them?"
"How can this type of suffering continue?"
"Why isn't anything being done to stop this?"
To put these "Africans" on a pedestal to ease your own conscience is plain and simple, messed up.
And there you have it, from the mouth of an Africa snob.
