“Until the lion learns to speak, tales of hunt shall always glorify the hunter”- An African proverb
Photo credit: www.huntinglegends.com (Danny Littric)
Proverbs have a way of going straight to a point with a simple message. African proverbs though have this special ability to convey a whole generation worth of lessons and cautions with just a sentence or two.
When I first heard this particular proverb, however, it didn’t click right away. Maybe because it wasn’t meant for me (not directly) and I heard it only in passing. You know one of those things you hear and for a second or two, as far as you are concerned, you just heard random words put together. Then four or five seconds later, it hits you rudely with a jolt. Suddenly, everything is clear as if ECG just turned the lights back on, only this time, it is the bulb in your heard turning on. Those few words just became clear and for the first time since you first heard them, these are no ordinary words. These words have meaning. They may in fact carry profoundly life-changing meaning in them.
That is what happened to me when I first heard this proverb and it got me thinking about just why it is necessary that we write out our own stories. Our stories come in varied forms, ways and means but it has to be told by us. It could be just your own experiences as a human being, life as an African, a Ghanaian. No matter where you came from or grew up, you have stories that only you can tell.
When I first came to America, my blood would boil and spill over whenever I saw the way Africa was depicted on TV. The narrative was always the same- civil wars, Western countries sending aid to the ‘poor’ in Africa, people visiting Africa (never mind that Africa is a big continent with 55 countries). Pictures you see always showed the impoverish parts of some war-torn country and never the modern and progressive cities that are springing up everywhere throughout the big continent. Unfortunately, bad news sells and good news is just boring. As a news outlet – a business- is in it to inform and make money, usually concentrating on the latter part. So coupe d’état in Mali, extremists bombing in Nigeria, demonstrations against Democratic elections in Ghana, just to mention a few, get headline coverage on major news outlets in America. The fact that Ghana has never had any civil war (thank God) or that the country enjoys relative peace as a result of the democratic dispensation it’s had since 1992 continually goes unmentioned. In as much as the international media deserve scolding for their inadequate or sometimes inaccurate reportage about Africa, the blame finger should be pointing at ourselves- those of us who call the continent ‘Home’. We should tell our own stories. Dwelling on just the negatives would not help. In the same vein, just highlighting the positives all the time might make us complacent. So what is sorely needed in the news is the balance in reporting.
Last year, in the run-up to the general elections in Ghana, a friend told me of a project called Ghana Decides, which sought to educate Ghanaians on the upcoming elections and also to get people out to vote. I thought that was an awesome idea and I followed them with keen interest. They had YouTube videos asking constructive questions of the politician and also engaging the ordinary Ghanaian. Their volunteers were taking pictures and reporting from various parts of the country, before and during the elections like they were professional journalists, immediately posting them on Twitter and other social media. Not even the ‘great’ America had seen such an engagement and enthusiasm about one election. The project was widely successful. That is the kind of participation and story telling I am talking about. This was the general election not from the view of some big international news outlet, but an election through the eyes (and mostly mobile phones) of people who knew Ghana, were born in Ghana or at least were in tune with Ghana. Because of their reports, I never once felt like I was missing out on such a significant event in the life of my country, even though I was thousands of miles away. I found out later that Ghana Decides project is the brain-child of those awesome group of people who make up BloggingGhana . As a Ghanaian, you can trust that I am insanely proud of my country folks.
Not trying -or willing - to do anything to change the narrative coming out of Africa is no longer a choice. You are either actively helping or inactively not helping, either way you are doing something but lets make sure that ‘something’, is positive. Being that I am from Ghana, my primary focus is going to be Ghana. That doesn’t mean I would ignore Africa as a whole, I will not, because to the outside world, Africa is just one big country. Even as I write this, I am reminded of something that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, said on our Independence Day in 1957 “ the independence of Ghana is meaningless until it is linked to the total liberation of Africa”
This piece is not a call to action for everybody. If after reading this you feel energized to contribute towards the development of Ghana, great news!. I wrote this to remind myself to speak up, to put my good thoughts about my country into action. To remind myself that I can never be isolated enough to the point where I would not be impacted by the happenings in my country. For starters, my whole family lives in Ghana. I love Ghana and I intend on moving back after grad school(I begin this fall). I want what’s best for the country, even if the reason is a little selfish. This is my way of trying to speak up, doing something positive to contribute to the many gains that have been achieved in Ghana. This is ME trying to change the conversation towards a positive outcome and in the process, hopefully, be the change that I seek.This is a little one-sided only because these are my thoughts. Let me know what your thoughts are.
