What means "Africa" to me...
When I was watching some TED talks, I encounted with this one..." The danger of a single story." by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which I had a discussion when I was in uni... that talk kind of blew my mind about "the idea of Africa"
Since today is "Africa day"...Let me tell you how I feel and think about Africa.
I did not know about Africa when I was in high school...
But at the age of seventeen, I met with Tata, Noni, and Mumu they hosted me when I studied abroad in America, Pennsylvania.
Getting to know them made me egar to know about the sprit of Africa since I loved their idea of living...
After coming back from abroad, I visited few countries in Africa.
During the stay, I enjoyed visiting local schools, communicating with local people, and of course visiting some famous touris sites.
I felt in LOVE with the African atmosphere, the way of people's communication, the language, the accent, the food.... I could keep writing...hehe
What I see there was totally different from what I see on Japanese TV.
We have so many TV commercials which asking Japanese to donate for the poor in Africa. Seeing those commercials every single day unfortunately made me have the wrong idea about Africa.
I am not saying there aren't any poor in Africa... Unfortunately, it is true indeed... there are! YET that is not all about Africa.
When I hear the word"AFRICA", "colourful." "love." "welcoming" could be the words that came up to my mind... but some Japanese may come up with some words like "danger" "poverty" ...
I also encounter with this TED talk, and I feel like she is talking to some Japanese who are going to invest some money into Africa...
Since we have the sligtly biased idea about Africa, we may tended to commisarate with them and do some charity...
In the future, I may be doing business with African or doing business in Africa... whenever I am going to do that, I would like to watch this TED talk at the beginning...
There is a saying...”Seeing is believing."
You won't know until you actually experience it.
I would love to know more about Africa... Once the chaos of COVID-19 is over, I wanna have one year break which allows me to travel the African continent.
That much, I love African countries, African people as much as I love Japan and Japanese people...
I hope in the future there will be many Japanese who have positive image about Africa...
