The Face of West Africa

If you travel to West Africa, you'll find many people like the girl here: friendly children full of laughter.

Such people are rare, though, in mainstream U.S. media's treatments of West Africa.  Here you'll find Muslim extremists, blood-crazed child soldiers, and, now, Ebola.  And why are Americans paying so much attention to Ebola, as opposed to diseases that kill far many Africans?  Well, in part because unlike malaria (or starvation), the disease may "break containment" and come to the U.S.  That was the message of the Hollywood movie "Outbreak" from the 1990s, that a mysterious, deadly disease could move from the steamy and sinister "Heart-of-Darkness" jungles of Africa to ravage innocent American communities.

Ebola is a very serious problem in parts of West Africa that requires our attention.  But its presence should not lead us back into tired stereotypes about the continent and its people.