Kenya: Why are Western media better at African feel-good stories? (opinion)

The Nation (Kenya), by Charles Onyango-Abbo - October 9, 2008.
Nairobi (Kenya) - “Victor Matioli’s organic pumpkins are plump, his coriander aromatic, and his spinach ‘very soft, sweet, and tasty’.
This story appeared in the British newspaper, The Guardian. You will be very surprised where it came from: Kibera slum in Nairobi.

This half-acre farm is a former rubbish dump… “So arresting is the sight of tall sunflowers… Matioli and his fellow growers have had to put up a ‘No Photographing’ sign to allow them to work in peace. Their reputations — the farmers are all reformed criminals — mean the warning is rarely seldom ignored.”

Kibera’s first organic farm was born out of a national disaster — the post-election violence. It needed Matioli on one side, and the worthy Su Kahumbu, managing director of Green Dreams, one of the country’s organic produce farms, on the other. Ms Kahumbu feared that the country would be ravaged by a famine, and she wanted to organise mass distribution of seeds to small-scale farmers in the Rift Valley so they could plant before the April rains. But she couldn’t find money for the project.

A friend told her about a group of young, unemployed men in Kibera who wanted to learn how to farm — and to do it right there in the slum. Kahumbu thought the idea was crazy. But the energy and optimism of Matioli’s 36-member Youth Reform Group eventually won her over.

This story might have appeared in the local media, but I definitely missed it. It raises a question about why, despite criticism that the Western media usually gives Africa a bad rap, they tend to beat us to quite a few feel-good stories about the continent.

Last year, the Hollywood makers of one of the most successful animated TV series, The Simpsons, ordered a large consignment of stone models of the characters from stone carvers in western Kenya. We found out about it in the Western press.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has a good shot at becoming America’s first black president, first came to the attention of the world with a rousing speech in 2004 at his party’s convention. Keen observers said at that point that “one day, this young man will be US president.”

It took another two years, just before he visited and well after the American press had run the story of his family in Nyanza, for Kenya’s media to pick it up.

A colleague likes to tell a story about how, after the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, Daily Nation went to interview the families of the suspected bombers for their profiles, and to get their photographs.

They found that some chap from The Washington Post had beaten them to the punch days earlier, bought off all the best pictures, and left the dregs for the local press.

We are beaten, not because we are indifferent, lazy, or out of touch. It’s just that when you live in a place too long, it loses its novelty and even the most dramatic of events can sometimes just be part of the local furniture.

It was like covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which nearly one million people were slaughtered. It would be quite unnerving to sit back and watch ourselves at work. However, after the first few days of horror at the bodies littering every place you looked, you got used to it and it became normal to step over — and on — bodies as you walked through the church to see how many more were hidden behind the altar where they had been killed.

At the height of the rebellion by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, in the evening, thousands of people would flee the villages with their mattresses and pots to spend the night on the streets, in churches, and hospital grounds of the nearest major town, Gulu that was heavily defended by the army.

It was both a heart-wrenching and awesome sight, watching the long files they formed against the sunset and sunrise when they trooped back to the villages. Gulu-based correspondents who had lived in the war zone for a long time and gone through every imaginable test, didn’t think this massive to-and-fro movement by the villagers was a story, and they never wrote it.

Then Kampala-based journalists went to the conflict area, and the story grew wings. Nearly every major international newspaper, magazine and news TV descended upon the region, and for the better part of eight years, no matter where you lived in the world, you couldn’t escape the “amazing” story of the northern Uganda night exodus.

So, indeed, as the Luhyas say, the one who lives by the river dies of thirst.
The Nation (Kenya), by Charles Onyango-Abbo - October 9, 2008.
Nairobi (Kenya) - “Victor Matioli’s organic pumpkins are plump, his coriander aromatic, and his spinach ‘very soft, sweet, and tasty’.
This story appeared in the British newspaper, The Guardian. You will be very surprised where it came from: Kibera slum in Nairobi.

This half-acre farm is a former rubbish dump… “So arresting is the sight of tall sunflowers… Matioli and his fellow growers have had to put up a ‘No Photographing’ sign to allow them to work in peace. Their reputations — the farmers are all reformed criminals — mean the warning is rarely seldom ignored.”

Kibera’s first organic farm was born out of a national disaster — the post-election violence. It needed Matioli on one side, and the worthy Su Kahumbu, managing director of Green Dreams, one of the country’s organic produce farms, on the other. Ms Kahumbu feared that the country would be ravaged by a famine, and she wanted to organise mass distribution of seeds to small-scale farmers in the Rift Valley so they could plant before the April rains. But she couldn’t find money for the project.

A friend told her about a group of young, unemployed men in Kibera who wanted to learn how to farm — and to do it right there in the slum. Kahumbu thought the idea was crazy. But the energy and optimism of Matioli’s 36-member Youth Reform Group eventually won her over.

This story might have appeared in the local media, but I definitely missed it. It raises a question about why, despite criticism that the Western media usually gives Africa a bad rap, they tend to beat us to quite a few feel-good stories about the continent.

Last year, the Hollywood makers of one of the most successful animated TV series, The Simpsons, ordered a large consignment of stone models of the characters from stone carvers in western Kenya. We found out about it in the Western press.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has a good shot at becoming America’s first black president, first came to the attention of the world with a rousing speech in 2004 at his party’s convention. Keen observers said at that point that “one day, this young man will be US president.”

It took another two years, just before he visited and well after the American press had run the story of his family in Nyanza, for Kenya’s media to pick it up.

A colleague likes to tell a story about how, after the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, Daily Nation went to interview the families of the suspected bombers for their profiles, and to get their photographs.

They found that some chap from The Washington Post had beaten them to the punch days earlier, bought off all the best pictures, and left the dregs for the local press.

We are beaten, not because we are indifferent, lazy, or out of touch. It’s just that when you live in a place too long, it loses its novelty and even the most dramatic of events can sometimes just be part of the local furniture.

It was like covering the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which nearly one million people were slaughtered. It would be quite unnerving to sit back and watch ourselves at work. However, after the first few days of horror at the bodies littering every place you looked, you got used to it and it became normal to step over — and on — bodies as you walked through the church to see how many more were hidden behind the altar where they had been killed.

At the height of the rebellion by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, in the evening, thousands of people would flee the villages with their mattresses and pots to spend the night on the streets, in churches, and hospital grounds of the nearest major town, Gulu that was heavily defended by the army.

It was both a heart-wrenching and awesome sight, watching the long files they formed against the sunset and sunrise when they trooped back to the villages. Gulu-based correspondents who had lived in the war zone for a long time and gone through every imaginable test, didn’t think this massive to-and-fro movement by the villagers was a story, and they never wrote it.

Then Kampala-based journalists went to the conflict area, and the story grew wings. Nearly every major international newspaper, magazine and news TV descended upon the region, and for the better part of eight years, no matter where you lived in the world, you couldn’t escape the “amazing” story of the northern Uganda night exodus.

So, indeed, as the Luhyas say, the one who lives by the river dies of thirst.