The Danger of a Single Story

Here are some thoughts taken from a blog post by Matt Madigan.  He is volunteering with MCC's SALT program in South Africa for the year.  Check out his blog.

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The Danger of a Single Story
By Matt Madigan

The week-long orientation [for SALT, IVEP, and YAMEN] in Akron, Pennsylvania back in August proved to be exceedingly valuable and very much prepared me for the year ahead. Not only was it informative of the ins and outs of adjusting to a new culture it was also a great week just to chill out, meet some new people and have a lot of fun! One particularly useful session that struck me was on the danger of a single story.

At home we have this incredibly distorted image of what Africa is like. How can you blame us when the only stories we receive of Africa on the six o’clock news are those of suffering, hunger and violence? Of course there are many places in Africa that are desperate and unsafe but our folly comes when we apply those images to the entire continent. We paint all the nations of Africa with the same brush and fail to see their differences.


I have to admit that I fell into this exact trap myself. Even though I knew before coming here that Pietermaritzburg is a developed, modern city I still secretly held the belief that I’d be experiencing a third world nation through and through. I imagined barefoot children running the streets and seeing women carrying jugs of water on their heads on their way to the local well. Instead, on my walk to work I pass luxury Mercedes Benz (alongside many kombis of course) and well dressed business people headed to the office. Most people are busy talking on their cellphones, sometimes with one in each hand! And the only kids I see barefoot are the well-to-do white Afrikaners on their way to play cricket. On the sidewalk I’m the one out of place, filthy and sweating from a long day’s work in the sun.

Where is the suffering? Where are the women with the water jugs on their heads? Many people I’ve met don’t even consider themselves to be African. All the time you hear, “oh, the problems they have up in Africa … next month we’re going to help the needy up in Africa.” It’s like people suffer from identity crisis daily, I thought this was Africa!?!

It’s true that in many ways life here is much the same as at home. Nearly all of the city has electricity and drinkable running water, my host family watch their favorite TV shows in the evening, and on weekends people love to do normal things like go fishing, catch a movie or visit the beach. But here again I run the risk of the single story.

My host family falls in the small, middle class snack bracket. It’s easy to forget that not everyone has three nutritious meals a day and a swimming pool at home to enjoy. In fact, nearly 50% of the citizens in Pietermaritzburg live in grinding poverty, jobless after the worldwide recession and angry at a useless government. Their hardships are just difficult to see or even imagine when you yourself are immersed in a single story.

I’ve been living here under South African skies for just over a month now and I have to tell you I’m more confused about it then when the three of us first landed. There are so many layers to this country’s history, so many dimensions of its reality, so many uncertainties for its future. I’m reminded of that scene in Shrek when Donkey figures out that ogres are like onions because “they have LAYERS!” I’m not saying that South Africa is like an onion, nor is it like an ogre for that matter. It’s just that right when I think I’ve figured out a piece of the puzzle I learn of a new layer. A new fact comes to light and makes the people that more dynamic, that more resilient. I guess all I can do is try to learn as many stories as I possibly can and keep pulling back that onion.