Photo by Matt West
I know, you have seen this photo. It is the typical “white people walking through the generic African slum holding the hands of the African children they are there to save” shot. I guess in a way it is true, wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to make this slum go away, to build proper structures and educate all the children who live in the area? In reality, we all want to believe that we can save people, that we can say “things will be OK” and believe they will be. But, sometimes we can’t do this. Beyond the obvious aspects of this photo, it is a sad portrayal of how people live. I don’t have to preach what reality is like for people living in these spaces because you have heard it before in the commercials that you see on TV – the whole living on less than a dollar a day idea. Which is great, it is good you have seen and heard this. The unfortunate thing is that reality is not understood until it is experienced. An experience gives you reference, it gives visuals, emotions, sights, smells, relationships – it makes a situation real. And that experience is happening in this photo.
Over the past seven years I have worked in, and walked through, many African slums and I can say that at most times I feel helpless, there is no way that I could tell the kids, the people, that things would be OK because I really did not know that they would be. They may be, but who knows? However, the reality of things not being OK was not real to me because things for me were always OK. I would leave that specific slum and go to my hotel room, eat my dinner, wake up, work, eventually fly home, meet my wife, buy groceries when I needed them, use my credit card when I couldn’t afford them – things were OK.
Recently this has changed. Things in my life, and in the life of my family, may not be OK and now I better understand what it feels like to not have the ability to believe in that phrase, in the word OK, and I can tell you that it is not the best feeling. It’s not that the final outcome is sure to be negative, but it may be. It is not that the next few months will suck, but they might. It’s not that tomorrow won’t be a good day, but it could very well be crappy. Things being OK is no longer my default; it is what I will strive for, it is what I will hope and pray for, it is how I will act in the face of the potential opposite, but there will always be that nagging dull spot in the back of my skull that will remind me that OK is no longer the assured outcome. And that, my friends, is where my new landscape begins.
Africa has been a more than significant in my life, it reset my compass and my own reality. But, it is only through the passing of time and the living of life that I can even slightly begin to comprehend what the people of that continent have to deal with on a daily basis. Of course, some are fine, some have great lives, some have extravagant lives, but many don’t, and even though they don’t they can still stretch their face into a smile.
Life has now changed, a lot, and a smile will be necessary, essential even. If they can do it, so can I.






















