Seeing West Africa: Notes from a Traveler on “An Image of Africa”
C. Ann McDonald

I may be challenged on the grounds of actuality. Conrad, after all, sailed down the Congo in 1890 when my own father was still a babe in arms, and recorded what he saw. How could I stand up in 1975, fifty years after his death and purport to contradict him? My answer is that as a sensible man I will not accept just any traveller's tales solely on the grounds that I have not made the journey myself. I will not trust the evidence even of a man's very eyes when I suspect them to be as jaundiced as Conrad's.
— Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness"

On Feb. 18, 1975, Chinua Achebe first presented “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness” at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In that speech, he states that Joseph Conrad, despite the fact that the novel did indeed criticize European imperialism in general and the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State in particular, "was a bloody racist." At the heart of Achebe's criticism is the understanding that “Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as 'the other world,' the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where a man's vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.” Achebe's point here is a good one: Africa is often seen through Western eyes as “primitive,” less civilized than Western nations and therefore in need of either aide or conversion. In other words, Westerners see Africa as a place to be either rescued or conquered.

Plenty examples of this Western view abound. Mohamed N’Daou, the Fulbright scholar who went with us to Guinea and Sierra Leone in the summer of 2008, noted that the image of starving African children with extended bellies, protruding rib cages, and flies crawling from their mouths permeates the Western imagination. Though this image, often used by charitable organizations to inspire donations that would end world hunger, pertains to specific African countries during various time periods, it has become associated in the minds of many Westerners with all of Africa. Accepting this single image to represent the entire continent of Africa would, however, be like using pictures of men in food lines during the Great Depression, or photographs of people sleeping in the Louisiana Superdome in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, to embody all of North America. The pictures below, taken in Guinea and Sierra Leone, stand as testimony to Professor N’Daou’s response to such a generalized depiction of African life: “Our children do not have flies in their mouths.”

In my effort to avoid overgeneralizations, I do not wish to downplay the real need for economic advancement in many parts of Africa. However, though humanitarian efforts are needed in parts Africa, as they are in all parts of the world, there is an inherent problem in viewing all of Africa as indigent and therefore in need of Western aide. As Achebe puts it:

The kind of liberalism espoused [in Heart of Darkness] by Marlow/Conrad touched all the best minds of the age in England, Europe, and America. It took different forms in the minds of different people but almost always managed to sidestep the ultimate question of equality between white people and black people. That extraordinary missionary Albert Schweitzer, who sacrificed brilliant careers in music and theology in Europe for a life of service to Africans in much the same area as Conrad writes about, epitomizes the ambivalence. In a comment which I have often quoted but must quote one last time Schweitzer says: “The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother.” And so he proceeded to build a hospital appropriate to the needs of junior brothers with standards of hygiene reminiscent of medical practice in the days before the germ theory of disease came into being.

In other words, this kind of charitable perspective is ultimately condescending, placing Africa in a position of inferiority as the “junior brother”— akin to, yes, but less advanced than the West. Thus, we see, all in the name of charity, gross misunderstandings that lead to a depiction of African culture(s) as inferior to English, European, and North American culture(s).

One such example is the America Idol “Idol Gives Back” campaign. In a segment filmed for the broadcast of this “television event,” Simon Cowell — moving in slow motion through scenes filmed on a trip to an unidentified part of Africa while the sad piano strains and remorseful vocals of a Coldplay song assure us that “I never meant to cause you trouble,/ I never meant to do you wrong” — interrupts a woman whose home he has entered to tell her, as she tries to explain why things are not “in good condition,” that in fact her home “is in terrible condition.” At the end of the footage, as he walks over mounds of garbage, Cowell exclaims, “This is quite literally hell on Earth.”¹ In these scenes, Cowell, as well-intentioned and sympathetic as he may seem, participates in an orchestrated depiction of Africa as generally horrific. His moral outrage at the hellish conditions he encounters is the reaction of the senior brother, as it were, who must step in and take over for a badly managed continent that fails to meet his standards. Furthermore, the campaign assures us that “by simply picking up the phone” we can save the impoverished continent through our “charitable donations.” A highlight of the campaign? Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in 2008, pledged to donate 20 million mosquito nets at a cost of approximately 197 million dollars.² This pledge recalls Achebe’s criticism of Schweitzer, who built a hospital with substandard hygienic practices to meet the needs of his “junior brother.”

I do not mean to suggest here that we should turn our backs on Africans in need. The point, however, is this: the images that come into the homes of America via the “Idol Gives Back” campaign are filtered through the eyes of those who have travelled to Africa and brought back a singular depiction of an expansive continent, and, as Achebe tells us, “travellers can be blind.” Accepting this depiction as the sole definition of African life is tantamount to believing that the “Idol Gives Back” segments about poverty in New York, New Orleans, and East L.A. provide a balanced, all-encompassing view of life in the U.S.A. In his essay, Achebe turns the lens around, inviting us to view the idea of foreign aid from his perspective, when he offers a vision of the West as the recipient of much needed assistance from Africa:

Perhaps a change will come. Perhaps this is the time when it can begin, when the high optimism engendered by the breathtaking achievements of Western science and industry is giving way to doubt and even confusion. There is just the possibility that Western man may begin to look seriously at the achievements of other people. I read in the papers the other day a suggestion that what America needs at this time is somehow to bring back the extended family. And I saw in my mind's eye future African Peace Corps Volunteers coming to help you set up the system.

Achebe’s vision of an African Peace Corps allows western culture to see itself through different eyes, no longer the helper—heading into the underprivileged African “hell on Earth,” armed with donations, medical supplies, and a slight contempt masked by pity—but the helped.

As I’ve said, Africa is depicted in Western culture as not only impoverished but also as savage.
Achebe addresses this depiction as well, suggesting that the Western mind has a psychological need to see Africa as less civilized:

Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry, the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparing it with Africa. If Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity, it could say with faith and feeling: There go I but for the grace of God. Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray--a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate. Consequently, Africa is something to be avoided just as the picture has to be hidden away to safeguard the man's jeopardous integrity. Keep away from Africa, or else!

Here, Achebe claims that, for the West, Africans are to be either pitied or feared. When we prepared for our trip to West Africa, I encountered people who responded to the news that I would travel to that part of the world in ways that represented both views. For every person who either asked if I was bringing back a baby or let me know — as did the woman who assured me her preteen daughter would love to go to Africa and “just get down there on the ground with those babies and hug them all” — that they approved of what they assumed was my missionary venture, someone else recoiled in horror when I announced my travel plans. Wasn’t I afraid that I would stand out as American because of my white skin? Wasn’t I afraid of the violence? Wasn’t I afraid of the bugs? Wasn’t I afraid of the lions? Wasn’t I afraid of the water? Wasn’t I afraid to be in a world where no one spoke my language, ate my food, dressed, looked, acted, or thought like I do?

I have travelled before, but no one ever asked, when I was planning a trip to Ireland, France, Hawaii, or Canada, if I thought I’d surely meet my doom once I left my homeland and embarked on a journey into the great unknown. I cannot say if what I experienced in Guinea and Sierra Leone is typical of the entire continent, but I can tell you that none of the Americans in our group, regardless of their skins’ hue, passed through Africa without their nationality being known; I can honestly say that I have heard more news reports of violence on American than West African soil; I know that, for quite some time, lions have not been seen in either Guinea or Sierra Leone; I encountered fewer bugs in West Africa than I did on an outing to a nature reserve in Charleston; I drank, as I do on this side of the Atlantic, bottled water that was readily available in the numerous markets and convenience stores that also sold toothpaste, cookies, mangoes, and cards with minutes for the ever-present cell phone; I had, largely due to the multi-lingual abilities of the West African people, very little trouble communicating while I was gone; I wore, as Mohamed N’Daou advised me to do before I packed to go, my own clothes; and I found that the food, most likely due to the influence of West Africa on traditional Southern cuisine, tasted like coming home.

I have to admit that the threat of violence was not what one might call a non-issue. On the night we arrived at the airport in Conakry, the capital city of Guinea, we heard, as we walked with our bags to the van that would become almost our second home, popping sounds in the distance. Though we tried to assure ourselves that the sounds were caused by fireworks, they were, as we feared, gunshots. In fact, had we arrived one day later, we would not have been allowed to enter the country. As it was, when we travelled a few days later from Guinea to Sierra Leone, we had to delay our trip back to Conakry as we waited for the Guinean government to resolve an issue that had caused the threat of a military coup. They did, however, resolve that issue, and, rather than coming away from that experience with the feeling that I had been in danger, I came away instead with a feeling of respect for the leaders of Guinea because, despite the threat of it, the government had avoided violence through negotiation.

I have one last point to make: seeing other cultures challenges us to meet the unfamiliar with an openness that may be hard to find, since we often look through blinders that we don’t even know are in place and therefore cannot truly see that which is right in front of our eyes. At the beginning of the “Idol Gives Back” segment, Ryan Seacrest, travelling in Africa with Simon Cowell, asks a man who is preparing to take them on a day tour through an African city, “So tell us what we’re going to see today.” The man answers, “It’s different from wherever you’re used to.” Placed in the context of the “Idol Gives Back” message, this man’s statement seems to forebode the visual unfolding of a world of misery and poverty that the viewer has yet to see; however, the man’s answer can also be taken as a reminder that what we see when we visit another culture is just that—different—and the challenge is to see that which is unlike our own world for what it is, not for what we imagine it to be. Perhaps the most difficult thing to do is to see difference and not interpret it through one’s preconceived notions of the world. As Achebe states, “Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves. But even those not blinkered, like Conrad, with xenophobia, can be astonishingly blind.” As much as Conrad, as much as Cowell, I went to Africa with a Western lens through which to view the land, the people, and the cultures I encountered. Ultimately, I know that my experience in West Africa has given me a new way of seeing that region, but I also know that I have only seen a very small part of a very big continent , and that, try as I might, I have not been able to see through a culturally unbiased lens. I hope, however, that I opened my eyes and mind to the things I saw while travelling through Guinea and Sierra Leone so that I have brought back with me at least a clearer view. Like Achebe, I realize that, although “the work which needs to be done may appear too daunting . . . it is not one day too soon to begin.”