Comments on: Every place has a thousand stories

By: liz

liz — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:59:34 +0000

Thanks Marie That must have been a great experience - from the video she seems a compelling speaker. I enjoyed her books too.

By: marie

marie — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:18:15 +0000

I love this video of a topic that resonates deeply with me and, I’m sure, many others. She spoke at the Auckland Readers’ and Writers’ Festival this year and I was amazed by her storytelling. I’ve already forwarded a link to this post to about 10 people:-)

By: liz

liz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:51:47 +0000

Glad you enjoyed the talk Alice. Thanks for commenting! It’s a good point that Africa looks more consolidated than other continents. Maybe that does play a part. I think you tend to hear less about the individual countries too. I read an article recently about fashion designers from Cameroon, and they were saying they look forward to the day when more people have heard of Cameroon so they can stop describing it as ‘the country next to Nigeria’

By: Alice, London

Alice, London — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:16:20 +0000

Thanks for posting this talk. I found it really interesting. It made me wonder why African countries are lumped together so often as ‘Africa’ in the UK. Is it because the continent is less fragmented geographically than other continents or because we assume that African countries (and people) are all the same? I recently spent a few weeks travelling in Namibia and South Africa and people I met laughed when I said it was my first time in Africa. They found it strange that I referred to ‘Africa’. But its also really common in the UK to refer to the USA as ‘America’, as if that were the only country on the continent.

Really inciteful look at why people have stereotypes. I agree that the one-sided coverage we get from world news has a huge influence on people. But the internet can really change things for the better because it opens up the world to people. And especially websites like this one!