“How to write about Africa” and “How to write about poor people”

by Aaron Hotfelder on

In “How to write about Africa,” a classic satirical essay from Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, the author pokes fun at those who recycle the same well-worn clichés about Africa, especially the portrayal of Africans as uncomplicated stock characters.

The following satirical “advice” for writing about Africa represents the tone of the essay pretty well:

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life-but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause…

Read the rest of the piece, originally published in the literary mag Granta, here.

Over at Aid Watch, a blog which I recommended to you, humble reader, just yesterday, Bill Easterly has some satirical “advice” for anyone looking to write about the impoverished, particularly those in the developing world. A couple of suggestions from Bill and his readers are below:

  • Display pictures of poor children (alternatively women).
  • Don’t show pictures of poor men, who make your audience think of drunkards, wife-beaters, or janjaweed.
  • Assume that all poor people everywhere have the same interests and views on all subjects.
  • Write about the interests of the poor as entirely consistent with other good things, such as preserving the natural environment and fighting global warming.
  • Suggest specific answers that will end poverty in every possible situation, such as a package of microcredit, fertilizer subsidies, and a women’s handicraft cooperative.
  • It is not necessary to talk to any real poor people, they do not understand how to solve their problems anyway.
  • Suggest to the readers some demonstrative action that they can do to end poverty, such as wearing a white band on their wrist. How these actions affect global poverty does not have to be completely spelled out.

(It shouldn’t be necessary, but let me say this again: This. Is. Satire.) The lesson, if you haven’t caught it already, is that the world’s poorest people are still people, not merely vehicles for fundraising. Their problems are immeasurably complex and sometimes hopelessly intractable.

As travelers and as people who care about world poverty, we often do more harm than good when we spout off about people and problems we only think we understand.

For more, check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the hilarious but thought-provoking “How to write about poor people.”

Rowing across the Atlantic to end slavery

by Sean McLachlan on

Slavery is not dead.

There are millions of men, women, and children forced into physical and sexual labor around the world, but the problem is often drowned out by other headlines.

In order to bring attention to the modern slave trade, a team of ten athletes is Rowing Against Slavery across the Atlantic Ocean. They’ll be stuck in a small boat for weeks, each one rowing two hours and taking two hours off as other team members take the oars, nonstop until they make the entire 3,000 mile journey.

The team hopes to beat the previous world record for rowing across the Atlantic, which is 33 days, but more importantly they will be raising awareness for an often hidden crime.

There are some grim facts and figures on their website, and more on the website of Anti-Slavery International, which was founded back in 1839 but still finds itself fighting a global problem.

It’s noticeable that both sites use the term “slavery” instead of “human trafficking”, which technically only refers to slaves who are moved from one place to another through force or deception. Instead they call slavery what it is. There appears to be a trend in the media of using the nastier-sounding term “slavery” when referring to slaves in Africa or Asia, and “human trafficking” when referring to slaves in the U.S. or Europe.

Slaves in U.S. and Europe? Yes. Many women and children are forced into prostitution in the developed world and there’s no shortage of child workers, like the blueberry farm in Michigan that ABC News found was using children as young as five. Kids as young as twelve are allowed to work legally on U.S. farms. Child labor is often considered slavery because the children have no choice about working, and are often denied access to education and are subject to sexual exploitation.

To follow the team’s adventure across the Atlantic, check out their blog. There’s a donate button if you want to help the effort to free the slaves. In the land of the free, what could be a better cause?

Bowermaster’s Adventures — Live from Antarctica: part 8

by Jon Bowermaster on

Dallum Bay, New Year’s Day – Stopped off in this beautiful, ice-choked bay to say goodbye to Antarctica for this season. From here the route runs due north, across the Drake Passage, towards Cape Horn and the tip of Argentina. One of the beauties of traveling down south this time of year is that the sun barely sets. At midnight, like now, it is dusky … the official time of the sun’s rising is 2:20 a.m. This time of year it never truly gets dark.

Tonight could be the most beautiful I’ve ever seen the nearby Melchior Islands, bathed in the pink light of an Antarctic sunset. The blue-black sea is coated with grease ice, sea on the verge of freezing, giving it a coating like cellophane paper which undulates with the currents, and laden with small icebergs. The narrow, u-shaped bay off the Palmer Archipelago is lined with glaciers; the glaciers are thousands of years old and hundreds of feet tall. There’s no possible way any man has ever walked along this shoreline, which is what I love most about Antarctica. Still today, with 14 billion feet trodding the planet on a daily basis – headed fast towards 18 billion – much of this continent remains untrammeled, untouched.

The air is cold and clear; sucking it in burns my lungs but it feels good. There isn’t a place on the planet I’d rather be and I feel fortunate to be able to return, year after year. When we sail away from Dallman, I will be filled with both joy and regret. The former, because I know how lucky I am to keep coming back to this remote corner of the planet; the latter because I would prefer to stay longer, until the days here grow short, and dark.

Due to the sour global economy, tourism to Antarctica this season and last has dropped off. A couple years back it topped an all-time high of 45,000 arriving by cruise boat. This year I don’t think it will get much above 35,000. Maybe too, those with the economic wherewithal to come to Antarctica have already been. Until it becomes cheap to visit the seventh continent, maybe tourism numbers will continue to decline. We shall see. This season there are thirty ships bringing tourists to the Peninsula and I know that right now on the streets of Ushuaia, the Argentine port town where the big boats come and go from, there are “sales” in tourist agency windows advertising “last minute, cut rate” prices in order to fill empty cabins and beds on Antarctic-bound ships. What’s cut-rate? $3500, $4000. Which may seem like a lot for a ten-day to two-week trip … but then again … it’s Antarctica, the most remote place on earth.

It’s been thirty-three years since a New Zealand tourist plane crashed in Antarctica during a flyover, killing all 257 aboard. Today I read that a Qantas Airbus A380 – a “super jumbo” will make a twelve hour roundtrip flight from Melbourne, carrying 450 New Year’s eve revelers, for a glimpse of the ice. Birthday parties, anniversaries and wedding engagements will be celebrated in the air over the edge of the continent. Many bottles of champagne are part of the deal, for prices ranging from $999 to $6000 per person. “It’s a party flight and also an expedition,” the organizers boast. “Passengers are welcome to dance to the jazz band if that is what they want!”

What a long way we’ve come in the past fifty years, since the treaty that governs Antarctica was signed. Then, no one could have imagined tourism coming to Antarctica. Today, somehow the place seems to be on everyone’s “list.”

I pause and look around, turning 360 degrees in the cold dusk air. I see no one. A trio of humpbacks break the surface, their breathing sending spumes of vapor into the pink sky, heading towards the open ocean. I am privileged to be here, and I know it.

Bookmark-worthy blog about foreign aid and devopment: Bill Easterly’s Aid Watch

by Aaron Hotfelder on

If you’re interest in foreign aid and economic development in the world’s poorest areas, do yourself a favor and bookmark the excellent blog Aid Watch, written by NYU economist Bill Easterly.

Aid Watch, which Easterly began last year with the sensible tag line “Just asking that aid benefit the poor,” is Easterly’s attempt at introducing some accountability to the well-intentioned but often shadowy and wasteful world of foreign aid.

“The objective [of the blog],” Easterly says, “is to be brutally honest when aid is not helping the poor, but also praising it when it is.”

In an EconTalk podcast from last year, Easterly called it “one of the great tragedies of our generation” that most of the financial resources that have been summoned over the last 50 years in trying to help the world’s poorest and most desperate people have essentially been squandered.

“Nearly 600 billion dollars of that went into Africa,” said Easterly. “Economic growth per-person in Africa has been zero over that whole period. That is, the standard of living of the average African is no higher today than it was 50 years ago despite this massive aid effort. That clearly is a sign that all that aid money was not reaching the poor.”

Some of the most interesting, provocative, and even humorous posts from Aid Watch:

Also, check out Easterly on Bloggingheads.tv chatting with philosopher Peter Singer about foreign aid, microcredit, and bad charities with good intentions.

Ethiopian tribe hopes museum and tourism will save its culture

by Sean McLachlan on

The Konso people of southern Ethiopia live in a remote region, but that hasn’t saved them from grave robbers.

These little-known farmers, who number only about a quarter of a million, have gotten the attention of international art dealers because the Konso honor their dead warriors and hunters with waka, elaborately decorated wooden funeral stele that can be several feet tall. They are a striking example of African art and First World collectors will pay thousands of dollars for them.

But the Konso aren’t selling their ancestors’ monuments, and that’s where the grave robbers come in. Thousands of irreplaceable monuments have been stolen. Ethiopian customs officials have managed to stop about two hundred from leaving the country, but most have disappeared into the collections of wealthy foreigners.

Now with the help of the French government the Konso have opened a museum in their homeland in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region in Ethiopia. This is an area little frequented by tourists, who tend to visit the historic sites of the more developed northern highlands, but the Konso expect that newly paved roads and Ethiopia’s steady rise in foreign visitors will bring more tourists to their area.

The museum will house the waka that have been retrieved from thieves, as well as other tribal arts and crafts. The Konso hope that increased tourism will help keep traditions alive and keep young people from leaving their homeland in search of work in the big cities.

Will opening up the tribe to more tourism help preserve their traditional culture or only end up diluting it? Tell us what you think in the comments section.