People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. Its not viewed as a serious continent. Its a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people dont do what common sense demands.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of open-mindedness and the need to see beyond preconceived notions when exploring different cultures.
Chinua Achebe's quote critiques the tendency of people to impose their biases and stereotypes onto Africa, preventing them from truly understanding the continent and its complexities. It highlights how preconceived ideas can cloud perception, leading to a narrow understanding of a diverse and rich culture, which often goes unappreciated. Instead of engaging with the reality of Africa, many travelers confirm their biases, which diminishes the potential for genuine knowledge and appreciation of the continent's true nature.
In practice
In a presentation about cultural sensitivity, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of being open-minded when exploring new societies.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
Reactionary: a man walking backwards with his face to the future.
They that know no evil will suspect none.
Ideas do have consequences in history, yet not because those ideas are inherently truthful or obviously correct but rather because of the way they are embedded in very powerful institutions, networks, interests, and symbols.
In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.
Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.
ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.
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