The news from
Africa just this morning mentions witch lynchings, the stoning of a rapist and murderer,
militant attacks on oil reserves, an ex-president on trial for corruption,
elections following the assassination of a president, amputations, genocide,
the rising number of people facing food insecurity…the gloom and doom is
incessant and pervasive.
In the face of such
a mountain of violence, injustice, corruption, death and poverty, it is no
wonder that Western countries feel aid exhaustion, indifference coming on the
heels of countless failed attempts to solve the myriad problems by throwing
money at them and expecting immediate success. There just seems to be no way to
crawl up the slippery slope of poverty and political and economic
marginalization in the face of seemingly innumerable obstacles…That is, if
Western countries insist on going it alone.
It just stands to
reason that Africans know best about what they need and want. Lawmakers in the
US are and will always be too distant from the realities of Africa, its
challenges, and most especially, its charms. While life for many Africans is
not ideal, and countries with influence and money have a responsibility to engage
with Africans to help improve their situations, ‘African life’ is not always
the tragic and shocking saga that the media portrays. Without taking away from
the severity of those hot spots of violence and the numbing poverty in so many
families, an important antidote to accumulated indifference is the exposure to
what is potentially good and admirable in Africa; where there is already light,
there can never be complete darkness.
Africans know of
the intimate intricacies of what is both good and bad in their world; Americans
make the Hollywood mistake of painting the picture with broad strokes of blood
and poverty. There are two sides to the continent, and focusing only on the
tragic can serve to dehumanize and generalize African people. The tricky
balance of weighing what must be fixed with what is already working can temper
the headlong advancement of the West into exhaustion while maintaining what is
truly African about the continent.
Binta
and the Great Idea is
a Spanish-Senegalese short film nominated for an Oscar in 2007. It is the
cinematic manifestation of what is good in the African reality, the antidote to
the Blood Diamonds and Hotel Rwandas of this world. There is a
time and a place for the darker side of reality, as there is for the lighter
side of African life. It challenges the Western viewer to reevaluate not only
how Africa is perceived off the continent, but how Africans perceive
themselves. Momentarily shelving the humanitarian, it is a brilliant glimpse
into the human.
Comments