This is my Africa

June 05, 2020

This is my Africa

I am an Ethiopian. Born and raised in the capital city of Addis Ababa. I grew up in one of those boring, middle class, suburban towns in the city. You know the kind; it's the type of town they make American TV shows about. Like Riverdale or Mystic falls. If you're a series buff like me, you probably know what I'm talking about. It's the kind of town where everybody knows each other and has that one special place where everybody hangs out, like Pop's Chock’ lit Shoppe or Mystic Grill. The only difference between my town and those towns, is that nothing drastic or interesting ever happened here. The way I looked at my town, my city, and even my country as a whole was as though it was one of those towns minus the drama. Sure, some places are dirty, some places don't have as impressive infrastructures, some places are richer than others and some need a lot of help and improvement, but most places are very much like one of those towns. The people and their lifestyles are very similar as well.

Parents would go to their boring old jobs, kids would go to their dramatic school lives, then both would come back home, have dinner, and go to sleep. Just like the first few scenes in the shows before everything drastically changes. And then it would be summer break and my family and I would go on these two week vacations to another city or region in Ethiopia. These cities look a little different, sometimes even better than Addis and the people would sound a bit different as well and sometimes, not even the same at all. I would see that some of these regions would have their own languages, the food would be a bit spicier and their clothes would be a lot different yet very beautiful in their own ways. It would often be an amazing experience and at the end of the week, I would leave that city thinking that we are the same people, with the same lifestyles, but with different clothes, languages and sometimes, different cultures.

I think from everything you've read so far, you would've guessed that I'm pretty much western influenced. Growing up, I didn't follow any Ethiopian or African media. I would frequently go to my room when my parents opened their 8 pm news, or as we Ethiopians call it, Zena. And I have never been to another country, not even neighboring ones, so the only access I had to the world was through the western media. And consequently, the way that I viewed African countries and the continent as a whole was through the eyes of white people that didn’t live here. So in my head, Africa was a dusty, dirty, poor, non-industrialized village with kids that are all suffering of malnutrition and people that only have dark skin tones. And somehow through all of that stereotype that formed in my head, Ethiopia managed to be the only country that wasn't like the rest of “Africa”. Ethiopia was still that boring middle class town with working class people, while the rest of Africa was a swamp with people that only relied on white volunteer workers to survive. Ethiopia and the rest of Africa managed to stay that way in my head because I had experienced Ethiopia for myself, I had seen it through my own eyes, but I had only seen Africa through my TV screen.

Then I saw a movie about a bunch of pregnant ladies. It's called “What to Expect When You're Expecting”. To be fair the movie is pretty nice, and I've watched it probably a few more times than any person should, however, I've always felt frustrated with a particular scene in the movie. In this scene, Holly, the character played by Jennifer Lopez and her husband go to Ethiopia to adopt a child. It was a really emotional part as the child is handed to Holly and, immediately after, leans on her chest. One of my favorite things about this scene was that, there was a vow ceremony conducted by a priest who was speaking in Amharic, which is the national language of Ethiopia. He is wearing the actual traditional clothes that Ethiopian priests wear and there were even people that were holding the intricately designed traditional umbrellas for him as that is the custom of the church. Everything up to that point was beautiful. However, as the camera zooms out, and I saw the place they were shooting in, I remember thinking, “wait a minute, this doesn't look like my Ethiopia”. The land around the church looked deserted and, quite frankly, like the stereotypical “Africa”. However, it had a lot less exaggerations as there weren't any malnutrition-ed kids going around with no clothes on and all the natives didn’t have the same dark skin tone but rather diverse ones.

But even though it wasn’t exaggerated to that extent, it was wrong. The reason being that most churches in Ethiopia were built during ancient times, when there were more trees and less urbanization. And these churches are known for keeping their lands and natural resources conserved, so even though, I can’t say that all churches in Ethiopia are green, I can say that most of them are. So for that scene, when they could’ve selected from one of the many beautiful green churches in Ethiopia, they chose to pick a deserted one that reinforces the usual African stereotype. It also had some culturally incorrect aspects, as the translator and the girls holding the babies were dressed in something that was supposed to represent Ethiopian dressing culture but was actually not from any one of Ethiopia's 90 diverse ethnic groups. This is to say that they could've chosen from 90 traditional Ethiopian outfits but ended up choosing something that fit the west's rendition of a typical African look even though it wasn’t part of Ethiopian culture.

By the end of that scene, I was left wondering that if I had never been to Ethiopia, that place in the scene was the only way that I would envision Ethiopia to look like. And those dresses are the only looks that I would remember Africans by. This is how I realized that everything I believed about Africa was incorrect. It wasn't the case that Africa was completely poor and Ethiopia was a little better, it was that Africa, including Ethiopia, was only portrayed in that way. And the only reason that I thought of Ethiopia being any different is because I had the chance to know it for myself. As for the rest of the world, they will keep on knowing that one side of Africa with the same backward traditions, poor, dusty and non-industrialized villages as well as identical cultures and clothing styles. Although in actuality, the real Africa is actually a place with over 2000 ethnic communities, languages, and styles of clothing. It's a place with people of really dark skin tones, as well as with people that would normally be considered as being middle eastern or white. It's a place with malnutrition-ed and dehydrated kids, as well as moderately obese ones such as myself. It's a place that is home to the largest desert in the world, but is also home to the world's second-largest equatorial rainforest. It's a place which is poor, and needs volunteer workers, but is also home to some of the fastest growing countries and economies in the world. It's a continent with nomadic and non-technological tribes, as well as countries that have faster internet and better banking systems than some European and Asian countries.

These are the realities of Africa. These are our diverse lives, stories, and heterogeneous identities. Yet only one of these realities is shown to the world. Only one of our 2000 faces are known. “What To Expect When You’re Expecting”, isn’t the only movie that has done this to African countries and cultures, there have been and will be many more. We also have to remember that it’s not only movies that have enforced negative stereotypes upon us. It is magazine articles, news broadcasts, music videos, photography shows and all other platforms that have international coverage. And so, the best way to combat this image is to take these same platforms, which have diminished us all into one single look, and dominate them with all of our beautifully diverse ones. The world's Africa and ours are very different. They don't know Africa like we do. They don’t know the honest, diverse versions of our continent. So it's time for us to tell them. It's time to reclaim our wrongfully stigmatized identities and wash over our negative stereotypes. It’s time to stop them from choosing that one version of us, they want to know. It's time to show all of our faces, beautiful or ugly. And that is why I started this blog, because I believe that it’s time to stop the world at its course and say this is the Real Africa. This is My Africa, and you’re going to respect it.

Below is a video from the YouTube channel, TEDx Talks, it was a speech given by Marek Zmyslowski about the rising economies of African countries.