This summer I read two interesting, but notably different, books on the AIDS crisis in Africa. Stephen Lewis’s Race Against Time is a compilation of the Massey Lectures he delivered in 2005. Published this year, Stephanie Nolan’s 28 Stories About AIDS tells the individual stories of twenty-eight Africans affected by the epidemic.
Lewis, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Africa for HIV/AIDS, has arguably done more to stop the spread of this disease than any other person or organization. His work merits both admiration and praise. But when Lewis chooses to name a chapter about Ghana in his book “Pandemic: My Country Is on Its Knees”, the former politician reveals an attitude towards the people of Africa that is overly simplistic. By suggesting that Ghana is “my country,” Lewis, at best, declares kinship with the people of an entire country. At worst, he claims ownership over Ghana, a disturbing allegation that reveals a colonial mindset. In fact, most North Americans thoughtlessly fail to respect the diversity, strength and self-reliance of the millions of people that inhabit Africa.
It is precisely this flawed, one could even go so far as to say racist, attitude that the Globe and Mail’s Africa correspondent Stephanie Nolan rejects in 28 Stories. In contrast to the onesided depiction of Africa that Lewis and others adopt, Nolan writes in her introduction that “There is always a danger in talking about ‘Africa’ – as if it were one place, one country, one homogeneous story. Africa is fifty-three countries, many of which are themselves made up of hundreds of peoples and cultures.” From the outset, Nolan does not claim full knowledge or possession of Africa. Instead, she reveals a refreshing respect for the plethora of experiences that make up its life.
Nolan herself does not tell Africans’ stories about AIDS. Rather, she lets the men, women and children who have been intimately touched by the disease tell their own stories.
One significant and positive consequence of Nolan’s innovative approach to writing about AIDS is that the Africans she depicts are not passive victims. All twenty-eight stories the journalist chronicles feature people who are, in one way or another, fighting against the disease. And all of them are very real and complex people.
Nolan writes that many Africans are “irritated by the one-dimensional portrayals of sexually predatory men and silent, long-suffering women that continue to characterize discussion of the pandemic by experts in the West.” Indeed, it is no wonder that Africans are frustrated by this portrayal when people as intelligent and esteemed as Stephen Lewis say that Ghana is “my country.”
Not one of the men that Nolan writes about are aggressive or sexually charged. They are human beings struggling to fill the role of husband or father when their search for work takes them to places far away from their families. None of the women lie down and passively accept their position. These women leave abusive or philandering husbands and lead organizations that are at the forefront of AIDS education and prevention.
In the end, Nolan’s book illustrates that hope for Africa’s future lies within the brave and diverse African population, some of whose stories she has been fortunate enough to tell. On another level, Nolan gives people like me hope that Westerners can adopt more educated and less discriminatory understanding of the reality of life in Africa.
