Africa

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, June 2007; written by Lisa Pearson.

Word association time: Africa. What does the name conjure up in your mind? Genocide, AIDS, famine, civil war, poverty? Most Americans get their knowledge of Africa from the media, which generally means either news reports of horrific wars and disease, or nature programs where humans don’t seem to co-exist with the wildlife (unless negatively, as poachers). Surely there is more to Africa than tragedy, and surely the 500 million people who inhabit a continent three times the size of Europe deserve individual identities. There are a number of resources at the public library that don’t write off the African people as a one-dimensional, homogeneous group.

In 2001 National Geographic and Nature teamed up to broadcast Africa, a 9-hour series that examined the lives of African people. This series was the best piece of work I have ever seen come from Nature or National Geographic. You see the stunning landscape of Africa, and the exotic nature of salt caravans, cathedrals carved into rock, gold mines and a cattle drive across the edge of the Sahara. But you also watch a long-distance love affair, a woman returning to her village from the city to give birth amongst her family, kids going to school, giggling teenagers, and the struggles of a small regional soccer team. You see ordinary people experiencing the same ordinary events we all share: birth, marriage, death, family. The filmmakers have covered a large expanse of the continent, and are able to show some of the diversity of cultures present in Africa. It’s a beautiful, humanizing series.

Along a similar vein is “A Day in the Life of Africa”. On February 28, 2002, the daily routine of Africa was caught in a freeze-frame by 100 of the world’s top photojournalists. Some of the pictures are beautiful landscapes, but most of the photos focus on the people. Candid shots from beauty parlors, playgrounds, restaurants, swimming pools, and shops show people enjoying their day. You get a sense of the economic diversity found in the different regions of Africa by looking at the images captured in factories, markets, farms, and fishing villages. There are hidden stories in every photograph, and sometimes when you look at some of these pleasant, inviting faces it seems as though they are politely waiting for you to ask them to tell their own individual tale. My favorite photograph is on page 33: a six-year old girl stretching in the doorway of her house, her cat crouched next to her feet. She reminds me of my daughter.

One of our newest books is “Africa” by Olivier Follmi. Unlike the photographers in the previous book, Follmi spends most of the time taking the reader into rural Africa, to small villages and remote farms, to places where the mud-brick walls were laid in place centuries ago. The captions to the pictures are at the back of the book, which is nice because that forces you to look at the image as you would if you were standing in Africa yourself – without knowing where you are, or who these people are, or making connections in your mind with their identity and some tragedy you read about in the news. It’s a lovely book, and you can flip through the pages again and again, consistently finding new details in the photos and new interpretations of what you see.

The theme for this article was actually prompted by the new issue of Vanity Fair, which Bono oversaw as guest editor. Bono was able to bring in a variety of contributors, so you have Bill Clinton reminiscing about Nelson Mandela, Brad Pitt interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Sebastian Junger chronicling China’s growing involvement with Africa’s oil-rich nations. There are also profiles of Africa’s movers and shakers, a music festival in the middle of the Sahara, a review of African literary giants, and a description of how Annie Leibovitz put together 20 different covers for this issue, and why each participant was selected (here at the public library we have the issue with Alicia Keys, who is involved with Keep a Child Alive, a nonprofit organization that helps provide AIDS drugs in Africa, and Iman, the stunning Somali-born model and wife of David Bowie. This is, after all, Vanity Fair).

So take another look at the overlooked continent of Africa, and get a feel for both the extraordinary diversity and history of her inhabitants and also for the normalcy of their lives. Shrouded in mystery and rumor for centuries, it is time for Africa to step onto the stage as a major player, rather than a bit part.