Tuesday, October 14, 2008

How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina


If you have ever mentioned the word Africa from your mouth, or have written something about the continent and its inhabitants, then I hope you have read this beforehand. I hadn't, unfortunately.

I had, however, received good guidance from Dorota about the code of conduct on images and messages regarding the global south and development issues.

Both are important and substantial food for thought. Indeed, they are a life time supply of 5 course meals in wisdom and fairness. All volunteers, journalists, activists, religious, etc. should consider their content carefully. Please read on and check out the links
.

Always use the word ‘Africa or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.
Read full text here

3 comments:

Paddy in BA (Quickroute) said...

Best of Luck with the new adventure

Julia Dietrich said...

Great blog and awesome entry. I am an expat journalist from Brasil living in Ghana. I write quite a bit about ghana for brazilian newspapers and websites. And it is hard (very hard) not to fall into the common view of Africa. Africa as this common blob, where countries and people are all treated as one same thing...

The Evangelist said...

Hi there!

This is soooo true!!

Many foreigners seem to look for naked children or barefoot children smiling to take photos of...never taking photos of the $500,000 homes in the gated communities of Accra!

There is a desire for many of the missionaries to photograph the
dire communities without giving a total view. A child missing teeth and a foot is photographed more than the child wearing Western clothing who is educated in exclusive schools. The well-to-do Ghanaians are never shown on the blogs of foreigners it seems.

It is a shame...