Here are bits of what she said:
I like having a hot shower, food and, yes, even air conditioning. If you are traveling to Ghana don't expect any of these things.
Only twenty percent of Ghanaians have flush toilets in their homes. People have no choice but to urinate right in the middle of the street ...
The poverty over there is heartbreaking...
The people over there do not know how to react to white people.
When I was walking around the market I was constantly poked and prodded like a lab rat. I think some wanted to touch me because they had never seen a white person.
No one likes having their pictures taken, ...
If you want to go to the beach forget it. The beaches there are disgusting ... And no one seemed to care.
The water is filled with trash and it's not even clean enough to go swimming.
I would definitely not go over there on vacation.
This is how a journalist summarizes a country's tourism when she had in fact been talking about Accra, one location in Ghana. And obviously she hadn't even seen all of Accra.
Karen is not the only one who has offered such one-sided and research deprived opinions about Ghana or Africa.
What is wrong with the way people like Karen write about Africa?
Komla Dumor on Telling the African Story in his presentation at TEDxEuston taught something to foreign reporters and even to Africans who write about the continent. He advocated for balance. He first displayed photos (below) of Luanda the capital of Angola, projecting the port city in a positive light -- plush.
Screenshot: Komla Dumor /TEDxEuston Presentation
Screenshot: Komla Dumor /TEDxEuston Presentation
On the next slide, he showed another photo of Luanda (below), this time of a group of people obviously facing a water shortage, with recycled vegetable oil gallons queuing for water. This contrasting photo was taken less than five kilometres away from the plush place displayed previously according to Komla.
Screenshot: Komla Dumor /TEDxEuston Presentation
Africans know we have weighty underdevelopment issues. We are not asking for them not to be discussed. However all sides to the story must be told or the story need not be told at all. In Komla's words, there is "... an obligation to tell this story as well" (referring to contrasting situations of life in Angola),
The "mini case study" of Luanda applies to the Accra that Karen wrote bitterly about. Not too far from places like Kantamato which she described are Tudu, Ridge and other areas home to main offices of organisations that don't experience the filth of Kantamanto. She needed not generalise so the discerning reader would know there are two sides to Accra. That is the proper way to do opinion journalism about a place.
Screenshot: Komla Dumor /TEDxEuston Presentation
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