On the way into Manhattan today my cab driver, Bubu, asked me what my impression of Africa was. I admitted that it was limited – I had only spent a week there, most of it in a middle class suburb or on a safari ranch and all of it in the company of middle class people.
But I said that the overwhelming impression was that Africa differed from North America in a key way: in Africa, the truth is valued above everything else.
Here in North America we are quick to sacrifice truth at the alter of a happy ending but African stories would never do that.