Great African Reads discussion

Discuss Chapter 1...

Some great insights here: "Back at home in London I sometimes ask visiting African what strikes them most about the way Londoners live....'People walk so fast. And they do not talk to each other. I came to the office in London and the people working there did not even greet me or each other'."

"In Africa even in the worst of times you do not hear the tones of doom and despair that characterize some Western media reports on the state of Africa. Africa always has hope. I find more hopelessness in Highbury where I live in north London than in the whole of Africa."

Hana wrote: ""In Africa even in the worst of times you do not hear the tones of doom and despair that characterize some Western media reports on the state of Africa. Africa always has hope. I find more hopelessness in Highbury where I live in north London than in the whole of Africa."..."

Hana, I just read On That Day, Everybody Ate, and the author mentions a priest saying something very similar—that suicide rates are lower in the developing world because people always have hope. The book doesn't cite any sources, and I haven't looked (yet) to see if I can substantiate that, but it stood out to me.

I haven't started yet, but what a great observation about hope vs despair and how things get portrayed.

It was page 5 when I knew this book would become addictive, and this author (a journalist) rips into his old editor at The Times of London.

Pg 4:

As a reporter on The Times in 1984, I received call from a contact at Oxfam who warned me a huge famine was building in Ethiopia. I asked the editor, Charles Douglas-Home, if I could go. "I don't think people want to read about starving Africans," he drawled. "We saw quite enough of that in Biafra"

Pg 5:

Editors want breaking news but have little interest in explanations, let alone explanations from an African perspective. Journalists are sent to get 'the story' - or not, if the editor is like Douglas-Horne

Here's a guy that isn't going to feed me any crap, well-meaning or otherwise.

He talks about the problems of negative news of Africa, but how it's the reality that needs to change - not the media. He touches on the hypocrisy of aid groups (yes, again, sometimes even the well-meaning ones).

And he presents himself as someone I want to spend 550 pages with.

Besides the wonderful quotes above in this chapter we learn what the author was to accomplish with this book:

- combine the broad history with local and personal, telling stories of incidents, actions, characters that hopefully demonstrate its huge diversity of people and places.
- hopes that Africans will recognize their continent and themselves but writes chiefly for outsiders.

Hana wrote: "Some great insights here: "Back at home in London I sometimes ask visiting African what strikes them most about the way Londoners live....'People walk so fast. And they do not talk to each other. I..."

I heard this a lot when I lived in the northern part of the US.
I actually hear it less now that I live in the southern part of the US. In fact when I moved to the southern part of the US I use to get annoyed in stores as it seemed the clerks took so much time with each customer speaking to them besides just ringing up and bagging the items. Now I am use to it. :)

Hana wrote: ""In Africa even in the worst of times you do not hear the tones of doom and despair that characterize some Western media reports on the state of Africa. Africa always has hope. I find more hopeless..."

This was another quote that I also underlined.
I had to chuckle as this certainly comes through in the non-fiction and fiction that I have read.

Jessica wrote: "It was page 5 when I knew this book would become addictive, and this author (a journalist) rips into his old editor at The Times of London.

Pg 4:
As a reporter on The Times in 1984, I received ..."

agree

I liked how he pointed the vicious cycle of aid agencies and journalists working together for each of their own self-interest and ignored what the Africans were doing about the same/similar situations.