It’s been said that there are three stories that are told about the African continent: animals, war and conflict, poverty. A glance through any news publication and the vast majority of stories about this continent likely fall into one of those three categories. But there are many stories to be told about people and places within the 54 countries that make up this continent.
But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Danger of the Single Story
In an effort to combat the single story that is told about Ghana, I asked some of my co-workers what they thought people should know about Ghana. This is what they had to say.
What You Should Know About Ghana
I wanted to give my friends and co-workers a chance to tell their own story in their own words, rather than contribute another story about them and their country. Hopefully this will allow more complex feelings than pity and a possibility of human connection, to paraphrase from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk.
This post is part of Blogging Abroad’s 2017 New Years Blog Challenge, week two: The Danger of a Single Story.