I’ve been meaning to jump on the bandwagon for some time now, but hadn’t got around to blogging it yet.

SO… African Reading Challenge 2008: the idea, posted here, is to read six books about Africa. Rebekah, Pernille, Tumwijuke and others have already started, so I’ll follow suit.

(By the way, Mom, I hope this means you’ll help me out with a package from Amazon, since many of these books are not Aristock regulars.)

1. Waugh in Abyssinya: Didn’t even know that this existed until I followed a footnote in book #2, which I’m about half way through. Evelyn Waugh reported for the foreign press in Abyssinya, now Ethopia, for quite some time and I look forward to his wry observations.

2. I didn’t do it for you: Michela Wrong’s excellent piece about Eritrea. Already about half way through, so expect the review soon. (On a different note, though, the tag line for the book is “How the world betrayed a small African nation,” and a friend of mine, upon noting the cover, said, “Well, that won’t be biased at all.” But then again, bias isn’t always bad.)

3. Justice on the Grass: A book about the gacaca trials of three Rwandan journalists implicated in spreading propaganda before and during the genocide. (Fellow Columbia alum’s book, I picked it up at a bargain price while I was in New York.)

4. Che in Africa: Okay, stolen from Pernille, but sounds like a book I really really want to read. And the great thing about this challenge is other people’s lists, since I certainly didn’t know about this book.

5. Heart of Darkness: I know, I know, ridiculous that I’ve never read it. But what better time than this challenge to finally get around to it?

6. Blood River: a journalist tracks through the entire huge swathe of territory that is the Congo. Though I fear this may be some poverty porn, who am I to resist another journalist writing on Congo?

7. The Invisible Cure: A new treatise on AIDS in Africa, acclaimed by many a critic. Now that I’m going to be doing some work for PlusNews, this seems like a necessary volume.

So that’s my list. But I thought I’d also add a list of some other books about Africa that I’ve read lately if you’re looking for more fodder. (I’m not linking to all of them – my internet is way too slow – so you can do some googling.)

Emma’s War
What is the What
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families
Aiding Violence
King Leopold’s Ghost
In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz
Shadow of the Sun
Half of a Yellow Sun
When the Crocodile eats the sun
Graceland
Machete Seasons
Freetown Ambush
Emergency Sex
The Graves Are Not Yet Full

Also, books NOT to read:

Anything by Alexander McCall Smith – stereotypical, badly written bullshit
In the Hot Zone – see my review here
The Zanzibar Chest – I should have known better than to pick up a book with an “antique” on the cover…

This is post number 100. I have been in Uganda for eight months now. I’ve spilled ink and captured images, stroked keyboards and pushed people’s buttons.

I’ve changed. Indescribably, but incredibly. And, as a Ugandan would say, It’s there.

How could I not? I’ve spent the past eight months with my eyes open to a different landscape, my body located on a different hemisphere, my self undergoing experiential fluctuations extreme as the Ugandan climate is temperate.

I’ve seen things I would never see back in the states: I would never interview a head of state, or hang out with a street kid, or be the intrepid person I’ve become. And I love being here for all these reasons. And I appreciate it for all its complexity.

Which leads me to you, 27^th, my most faithful reader (after you Mom, okay, and you David…Grant you’re up there too… and if Dad learned how to use a computer he’d be on the list also).

We’ve been arguing about poverty and representations of Africa on my blog for some months now, in the comments and the posts. I want you to know I see all those sides, or at least try my very hardest to.

There’s journalism out there that serves to contrast those vibrancies with poverty that exists side by side.

In the LATimes, Robyn Dixon writes about Lagos’ goats and metropolitans, Cholesterol Hair Conditioner and accepting the surrounding urban chaos.

Lagos is one of the planet’s fastest-growing mega-cities, with people drawn not only from rural Nigeria but also from all over West Africa to hack out a living. Depending on your point of view, it’s either a center of irrepressible entrepreneurialism or a nightmarish city of unplanned chaos, a cautionary tale on what not to do.

Bono’s new Vanity Fair issue about Africa, controversial as it may be, celebrates the literary highlights of a vibrant and burgeoning scene, with newly crowned royalty: Chinua Achebe won the prestigious Booker Prize, and the Orange Prize for Fiction was swept away by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

There are other highlights: the man building the windmill to create electricity, rural schools getting internet, etc etc etc. It’s good. Some things are getting better. If I had to choose between the 1950s and now, I would choose now.

But that doesn’t mean there can’t be a backslide.

Some people are working to stop that. This widely circulated article, Women Lawyers Force Big Rights Gains in Uganda, on the pursuit of female lawyers in Uganda makes me think there is progress – women, with higher education, making changes to the judiciary.

I read a lot of news about Africa. I see the good and the bad, and a whole lot of in between. Like this (inserted partially because this is such a long post):

Not just do I read about the good, bad, and ugly, I live it, and navigate the complexities of privilege and visibility within that system, the weights and lightness that ensue.

I try and write in a way that’s true to that. I don’t always see a pretty picture, and sometimes the nice colors aren’t the most memorable part of the scene so they aren’t what I write about.

27, you think, and others agree, that there’s some kind of conspiracy to report an overly simplistic version of Africa. While this holds true for a vein of mainstream media, there’s a lot more out there. There are real reporters, writers, bloggers, citizen journalists and everything in between, doing work – good work. They’re giving words to the undescribed, making the murmur into a shout, and telling stories that might tear at one of your heart’s seams until it bleeds, no matter how well stitched it was.

I wouldn’t live here if it were all heartbreak. But even though the colors are pretty and the women lawyers are great, I don’t ever want to be the kind of person who closes my eyes to this:

When I open my eyes, I can take a lot in (not all of it, of course, otherwise what would be the point of continuing?), but I can only tell one story at a time. I try to tell it carefully, to trod lightly, but somethings need to be stamped out. And some stories are more powerful when they stand alone. Everyone needs a complete picture, but not everyone wants one. And not all the media houses are ready to give people something they don’t want.

But remember, 27, deep down, I’m a bleeding heart too. I actually read most of the collected Marx-Engels Reader in college (along with a lot of other books that remain, highly annotated, in storage in New York), and think that people can come together and make change. I’ve traded in my black cat-eye specs in for a soft brown colored pair, lined with turquoise, and the harsher version of the ideology the first represented for a more flexible one as well. I’m still a bleeding heart though, waiting for all those people to follow John Lennon and come together and do something amazing.

And until they do, I’ll stand alone, with my pen, writing about the ones who don’t.