A fine mess of contradictions

Intellectual obsessions and all that....

When I saw the Vanity Fair Africa issue I was filled with glee. Literally. I love any opportunity to immerse myself in information, pictures or stories from a place that I fell in love with. Perhaps I loved my experience there so much because it was the biggest escape of all. We had almost no internet access, my phone barely worked, and we were lucky if the power even did! But I have found myself a little obsessed. Ever since my post-colonial class I have begun to fill my room and bookshelf with works from African writers, post-colonial books, magazines, pictures, any information I can gather on this interesting continent. It is huge, and encompasses so many different cultures, wildlife, habitats, languages and I just think I could study it and learn about if for years and still know almost nothing.

It really just gives me some perspective in my life. When you read about what some people endure every day it makes you step back and not worry so much about what you were thinking about. How selfish is that- that it takes the suffering of other people to give me some enlightenment? It blocks out concerns about schoolwork or boys and seems to fulfill a great purpose- that there are 54 countries somewhere that people don't often talk about, that many people might never visit, that experience things we could never imagine and that are filled with vibrant and vivacious people who from my small experience have an incredible will to survive. I think this is enforced as I've been methodically reading Stephanie Nolen's book about AIDS in Africa. Almost every story takes place in a different country where AIDS has taken a devastating toll. There is one sentence she wrote and reading it really encapsulated how I felt about AIDS.

"...there is a particular distaste saved for those diseases where the sick are viewed as the authors of their own misfortune..."... I thought this was such a moving way to put it. The "authors of their own misfortune" is how many people view HIV in developing countries as well as in Canada. It is easier not to use a condom, not to get tested, to let yourself die without ever knowing your status, but it takes courage to try to live through an extremely stigmatized disease. I admire people like the woman who won the Miss HIV Stigma-Free beauty pageant that Nolen describes in Botswana. Cynthia Leshomo tried to kill herself when she found out she was positive, but in doing so realized she had much to live for. And then she became an icon for the PLWHA community. The book is full of inspiring stories. And as I work my way through them and the Vanity Fair I'm sure I'll have much more to say...

I wrote a letter into Flare this month about a woman that they featured who was HIV positive in Canada. The magazine didn't treat the disease like it was nothing, but they also showed that you can live with HIV and live a full life. That if you get tested and you are positive you can survive and teach others the lessons you learned-because I could never even imagine how hard that would be. Stigma as I mentioned is what keeps this disease alive.

I just wish I could do more, learn more, and immerse myself in everything I'm thinking of all the time, and that I could understand things from a different perspective. Because no matter what I didn't grow up in a village, I was given free medical treatment and I will never understand someone who grew up with nothing the same way they could never understand me. But I love learning about it, and I'm hoping that will make all the difference because education is key right?

I just feel like the problems have many solutions. And what I love about the Vanity Fair issue so far is that it is not negative. Yes, many negative things happen in Africa, as many negative things happen all over the world. But the focus of the media is always on these aspects. And I hope that this sheds some light on the many, many positives I have experienced, so the world knows a little bit more.

posted by Kate @ 7:55 PM