Writing about Africa

I don't really intend for this blog to be a blog about Niger or about Africa. The point is really to use this space to write "letters home" and keep in better contact with people than I have on past occasions when I was living abroad. Nonetheless, you find pretty quickly that it becomes difficult to write about daily life without a lot of background information. Just in order to get a simple story across, you often find yourself forced to assume the responsibility of explaining "how things are" and "how it works here", which often later turn out to be horribly wrong or naive. Occasionally I come across old letters or e-mails I wrote from Cote d'Ivoire and Madagascar that make me cringe. It's not just that I'm wrong about broad assumptions of fact, but even my personal impressions are off: people I describe in glowing terms turned out to be jerks, and vice versa. Anyway, all this is just a long-winded disclaimer to the effect that the role of educator on African issues is not really one I'm comfortable playing, but one I may reluctantly assume from time to time in order to communicate my experiences here as best I can. Please keep that in mind.

On the subject of writing about Africa, I'd encourage people to take a look at this satiric essay on the subject. There's a lot of good stuff like this:

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Two posts in two days! I'm really off to a flying start.