The beauty of the single story

Glowering down in the serene farewell of evening, majestically illumined by high-wattage florescent lamp-light; and erected not many meters before one reaches the summit of gentle Mulago – that ancient hill numbering among Kampala’s famous seven – towers a roadside billboard, an imposing edifice of printed canvas strapped onto painted steel, ostensibly playing dutiful sentinel over the sleeping National Hospital compound, plus surrounding staff quarters and student lodgings.

It’s an easy one to miss; especially in the pedestrian rush and cyclist bustle of Kampala’s midday activity.

Many a frantic driver may never once see it, either – as darting eyes, squinting through dusty windshields, strain to spot (hopefully in time to avert disaster) the pea-brained, infrequently-helmeted grasshoppers who scurry across the city paths precariously perched on those wheeled contraptions locally dubbed boda-bodas.

All this of course, was before the board, which defiantly trumpeted, ‘AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY!’, was pulled down a few years back.

I’ve no clue, whether the company that’d sought to propagate its popularity by co-opting the message of this now world-famous phrase run to the ground by their own doing, got run out of business by competitors, or simply stopped paying for the advert after gaining sufficient renown.

Why-ever that was, when it still stood, the board never once failed to stir impassioned debate among a group of friends with whom I occasionally undertook – in the willfully reckless days of young manhood – to ‘further acquaintance’ with particular residents at the female nursing students’ hostel in Mulago.

No sooner would we have rounded the hedged corner leading up to the hospital gates, coming within sight of the luminous yellow words prominently foregrounded against a night-black background, than Ojok, an argumentative but highly perceptive fellow with a knack for the harmless tease, would prompt;

‘‘Mujjasi, what was that you were saying last time about Chimamanda?’’

Mujjasi – lost in thought at this time, for he was the most brooding of the crew, would start for a second, mumble something inaudible, and return to his thoughts.

Ojok wasn’t one to be easily put off though, once he had the notion he was onto something.

‘‘You man, I know you are thinking about Akot. But worries won’t make her love you any more than she already does. Okay?’’

There would be a general burst of laughter, loud but short, as we each searched Mujjasi’s face for any signs of provocation – stealing quick glances in his general direction without appearing too interested.

His wide, bulbous brow would crease into a frown of mild disapproval, before his lips tightened in an unctuous smile of diplomatic comprehension –

‘‘Ojok, you grandson of Ojoka and notorious lumpen from Lango, get off my case. 

Honestly, I was actually thinking of how best to steal Nakamanya from you. Before the semester is through; you, my friend, will be jilted and out in the cold once more.’’

He turned and winked at Wambuzi and myself, the other two cronies in our improbable gang of four, his slightly stained eyes atwinkle with mischief.

It was Ojok’s turn to titter nervously and attempt to display bravado by shooing away the prospect of any such risk to himself and his chosen other.

‘‘The Pope will have a sex-change before the Mujjasis of this world can ever pose a threat to men from my village. We are renowned for virility, irresistible charm and unrivalled prowess in the arena of bedroom-rugby. We are so supreme, that even the hyenas in our place are known to grow manes.’’

Mujjasi, feigning anger, jabbed a light punch at Ojok’s shoulder, staggering him slightly into the adjacent hedge, as we all broke into a goodhearted guffaw – this time long and bellyful.

‘‘Anyway, Ojok had asked for your thoughts on that Nigerian writer-girl who burst onto the scene last month with her TED talk on one-dimensional narratives about Africa …’’ – Wambuzi, ever the sober subject of Busoga’s Kyabazinga, attempted to restore sanity to the milieu.

‘‘You mean Chimamanda,’’ interrupted Mujjasi, ‘‘and she’s not a girl by the way – just a mature woman with money enough to keep her looking nubile even at forty.’’

‘‘Now, that’s my type of woman … ’’ I proudly pronounced, seeking to finally register my noble presence.

The curious looks I got from the company, followed by a chilling silence in which the wildest of thoughts must’ve been ricocheting through their minds, were enough to send my ego scampering back into the dim alcove from whence he’d stirred.

‘‘I was only talking about her sense of independence and artistic temperament ...’’ I was about to clarify, when Ojok, clearing his throat with uncalled-for loudness, volunteered to dispel the icy air by elaborating;

‘‘So that’s why you always look longingly at Mama Hamza, the matronly launderette. She must be about sixty, right?
I must admit I always thought you a strange one, Solo. I just thought when it came to women your tastes wouldn’t be as shocking. I guess I was mistaken …’’

Before I could jump onto Ojok and finish the murder-attempt Mujjasi had playfully started earlier, I was roughly grabbed by Wambuzi, the hulking son of Busoga who’d evidently been weaned on Kikomando, and restrained till I was ‘compelled’, with my arm painfully pinioned behind my back, to renounce any harmful intent against all mankind – including but not limited to the defaulting grandson of Ojoka.

Silently vowing future revenge, I let myself be browbeaten into tentative armistice, all the while cursing myself for coming along with such inconsiderate hoodlums, but not before fixing my adversary with a homicidal glare.

Only my cowardice at being set upon by the Kasolo gang – a notorious band of thugs that’d lately risen to infamy in the neighborhood – prevented me from deserting present company right then, and storming back to the University campus.

Being the insensitive brutes they were, however, my sulking was totally ignored and the discussion resumed –

‘‘Look, Chimamanda was very prominent even before that talk. She was already a widely read author and outspoken feminist …’’

‘‘Yes, that I agree with, but that particular TED talk, the one titled THE DANGER OF THE SINGLE STORY, was pivotal in framing her as a spokesperson on Africa’s position in the world … It gave her a new legitimacy, because it was personal and yet universal …’’

‘‘Universal my butt!’’ roared Ojok, dismissing Mujjasi and Wambuzi’s rationale in one barbaric ejaculation. 

‘‘There wasn’t anything universal about what she said, it was a strictly personal and biased position to take. 
What did she mean by Africa suffering from a single story? The truth is, we are more uniform than disparate …’’

Wambuzi shook his abnormally huge head patronizingly (I for some strange reason was now suddenly acutely aware of all my mates’ malformations, real or wished), and said –

‘‘But Ojok, she was talking about the negative stereotypes non-Africans harbor about the continent, especially those who’ve never been here. Even those who visit don’t make the effort to reverse these biases, but instead use their time here to confirm them.’’

Mujjasi nodded approvingly, looking to Ojok for signs of a response as he taunted – ‘‘What now, has the mane-wearing hyena of Lango nothing more to say?’’

‘‘Don’t celebrate as yet, you spineless Muganda, or I will beat you to pulp like I plan to do a certain native of Congo’s pygmy community …’’

Without looking up, I knew Ojok’s protuberant eyes were on me, but kept mine trained straight ahead.

Pretending not to have heard anything, I resolved to save my battered dignity further assault, despite the active volcano seething beneath my stoic mien.

Seeing this remarkable display of statesmanship on my part, and possibly sensing a tactical defeat looming, Ojok hastily returned to the discussion –

‘‘The point Wambuzi raises is a good one. Bias is a thing natural to man, and is certainly multiplied by ignorance. Most biases are many times well-meaning and quite justifiable. Everyone is entitled to their biases, you know …’’

‘‘Quite true, but what of when those prejudices are also entrenched by the media? The coverage of Africa in the West purveys a narrative of the continent as chronically warring, starved and broken.’’

‘‘Aha!’’ interjected Ojok, excitedly ‘‘… but isn’t Africa all that, and even much more?’’

‘‘Definitely not, Africa has many positive stories which are deliberately sidelined …’’ calmly reasoned Mujjasi.

‘‘Which positive stories?’’ Ojok skeptically threw back.

‘‘So many. Like the growing middle-class. Industrializing and democratizing countries. We are fighting corruption and educating the continent’s children …’’

Ojok sneered contemptuously –

‘‘Give me a break. All those things are not inherently positive. We are being turned into parrot-societies by modeling our development after Western ideals, and waiting for them to either approve or reject us. It’s really a shame that middle-class people like Chimamanda promote this concept … ’’

‘‘How do you mean?’’ Wambuzi inquired, raising his bushy eyebrows in an exaggerated gesture of curiosity.

‘‘Well, Chimamanda and many middle-class Africans are just acting snobbish. They don’t want to identify with Africa’s misery-stricken image, because they feel embarrassed, in their supercilious middle-class hearts, at being equated to their lowly neighbors … ’’

‘‘But Ojok, isn’t this a misrepresentation? If I happen to be a University-educated African with private health-insurance, who drives a newly-imported car to work every morning, why should I be lumped together with the wretched chaps starving in Asmara?’’

‘‘And that is precisely my point. Affluent Africans have to stop taking offense at being likened to their suffering countrymen, and own up to it. We need to own our leaders’ tyranny and our people’s poverty and suffering, because after all, these groups are the majority in our countries. Ironically, it’s also a democratic concept.
Instead of disengaging with it, we need to be able to say; this is our poverty, this is our misery. Accept us as we are and help us solve it, or just keep away. ’’

‘‘But the positive stories are important too!’’ protested someone.

Alas! Ojok for once was on a roll, and carried on as if he hadn’t been interrupted;

‘‘Instead of trying to prove to the developed world how similar to them we are, and begging to be accepted into ‘civilized’ society because 1% of our population own smart phones, eat at KFC and watch Premier league football; we should be identifying with Africa’s 99% who don’t know what these things mean, and drawing attention to their plight.…’’

The bafflement on Wambuzi’s and Mujjasi’s faces was palpable at this point, since they, like me, hadn’t expected such clear-headedness from the oft lumpish Ojok.

‘‘Anyway, most of the continent's upper-classes may not even be aware that their fellow nationals live in privation. Isn't is possible that they, having lived most of their lives in relative comfort, innocently think everyone else as comfortable as they?’’ stuttered a now inconfident Wambuzi, perhaps trying to loosen things up.

‘‘We both know that's an absurd proposition, Sir. In this age of constantly-surveilling media-houses whose chosen specialty is peddling misery and woe, it's impossible for any living person to be oblivious to the world's gross inequalities. 
If anything, the media prefers these stories because they are most in demand by the public. We glory in the trouble of impersonal news-victims.
We have become increasingly desensitized to the pain of others that the only interface we have with it is through the television or computer screen, where we scoff at it in the comfort of our living rooms; or through scholarly study, where we feign elitist concern at the numbers and statistics ...’’

‘‘Really? Is it not possible that those you say are down-trodden aren't as badly-off as that? Why are they so silent? Why isn't Africa in flames, then, as the so-called oppressed 'masses' struggle to throw off their tyrants?’’ Mujjasi cynically queried, his lips twisted in a grotesque grin.

‘‘Africa is in flames. Make no mistake about that. The only problem with the struggles being waged is they aren't revolutionary, but petty. It's antagonistic groups of political and economic elites struggling for power and privilege; and enlisting gullible masses on either side to fight their battles. The battle-lines are drawn along ethnicity, political-party affiliation etc.
But do not mistake silence for acquiescence. I think the disenfranchised majorities are simply unorganized, or worse still, disorganized. They have to stop waiting for a messiah from the West, or even from among the indigenous upper-classes who refuse to ally with them and simply regard them as curiosities fit for the news and scholarly research ...’’

Ojok was evidently beginning to take things a notch personal.

‘‘By the way, this blanket denial by Africans of externalized narratives about our home isn't much removed from what's happening with Muslims and fundamentalist Islam.

The 'moderate' segments of Islam, by refusing to have anything to do with their radical coreligionists, are indirectly fueling the mindset the rest of us have about Islam and terrorism being synonymous.

All Muslims ought to band together and accept the label placed on their faith as somewhat justified, then figure out a way of eliminating the cancer inside Islam, through internal reform.

The problem is the scripture-warranted terrorism, not the attitudes of non-muslims against the faith.

They should be busy asking – why does our holy book, many years after the crusades, still so easily lend itself to misinterpretation? 
Not – why do non-Muslims not realize that we peace-loving Muslims are better than those barbarians who blow up things?’’

Mujjasi and Wambuzi exchanged a worried look.

‘‘Ojok, what have you been smoking? Tell us now, you numskull!’’ demanded Mujjasi, only half-joking.

Of course the apprehension was doubled on my part, for I had been malevolently praying for Ojok to make a fool of himself and say something stupid, as was his wont.

And, as I felt my heart drown in the fathomless seas of melancholy, the tears of defeat rose like hired geysers to the brim of my eyes.

I said a quick grace to the god of darkness for coming through to salvage my honor, despite my evident rejection at the hands of all his kin.

Luckily, my tortured state went unnoticed by the fire-breathing Ojok, who clearly wasn't relenting until he’d steamrollered his interlocutors;

‘‘Africa needs a single story more than anything else. Not for others’ placation, but for her own sobriety. She needs to come to terms with her problems as stupendous and deep-rooted. 

She needn’t turn her face from them nor try to focus on the meager and fast-slowing progress her middle-class has made. Africa needs to accept that she’s a country, and build an identity around this.

Your celebrated Chimamanda, by taking offense at the prejudice of her white college roommate, was only reacting out of selfishness – and trying to negate the validity of Africa’s suffering majorities, just so she too could be seen as polished and refined. How tempestuous!’’

Ojok, as usual, finished off his opponents with the flourish of an irrelevant and ill-employed adjective.

Despite my uninterred hatchet, I couldn’t help admiring the forceful logic of Ojok’s foolhardy convictions at the time.

Here was a notion much celebrated in Africa’s academic and popular-culture circles – that Africa was not brutal soldiers, genocidal hordes and pot-bellied infants; but it was high-heeled corporate women, social-media crazy youth, and goat-racing tycoons.

That each of the fifty-some former colonies with its cosmetic boundaries and ‘national’ identities was unique and different from her neighbors, that very little or close to nothing, for instance, was shared between Ghana’s Asante and Sudan’s Nuer, or Botswana’s Tswana and Uganda’s Gishu.


                                                       ***

Nearly five years later, just last month, kicking back after a long day of toil in capitalism’s latter-day slave-plantation, and making myself au fait with the latest T.V season of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, the unlikely character of a High-Priest brought Ojok’s words flooding into my stuffy bedchamber from memory’s treacherous vaults –

‘‘The poor are hard to love. They disgust us … precisely because they are us, shorn of our illusions. They show us what we’d look like without our fine clothes, and how we’d smell without expensive perfumes …’’

***

Ojok and I are yet to ultimately settle our historical acrimony.

We are still torn between the only two duel options available to us – Ojok’s preferred elastic-band stone catapult, or my leather-string and bolus.

Once that fine detail is agreed, the pleasure of the relevant company shall be requested, to spectate at what, for at least one of us, is likely to be life’s concluding enterprise.