Geraldine's Paper

In class a few weeks ago I was reading Geraldines paper and was genuinely intrigued. The paper talked about the misrepresentation the country of Zimbabwe gets because of this American projected image of bushmen in huts with little to no clothing on.

This stereotype holds true for all of Africa, but this paper pertained to strictly Zimbabwe. Geraldine is from Zimbabwe and is a white female who can speak english and wears "normal" American attire. How can this be?

She discusses in her paper how actually many parts of Southern Africa and Zimbabwe are populated by white citizens. This is because much of this continent at one time was a British Colony. She attended boarding school and lived in an environment where there were houses and "civilized" culture.

What does America portray this region of the world as though? A poor nation, who is populated by black bushmen killing animals that run wild on their land. We as Americans, and myself included until reading Geraldine's paper, heard Zimbabwe and thought of lions, giraffes and hyenas running in the vast dry plains of Africa.

It is amazing how wrong I was.