The things you know, the things you don’t know and the things you didn’t know you didn’t know about Africa.

Social economics in Africa are very different than those in America. From what I’ve observed in the short time that I’ve been studying in the United States, there are many categories that people and their wealth fall into. My knowledge about this sort of thing is obviously very limited but everyday I see kids who have very different levels of wealth. There are the insanely rich kids who pay people a hundred bucks to do their homework or impulsively purchase Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton belts to add to their collections. These are the kinds of rich people you want to have as friends or never want to meet for your own sanity. There also the less rich people who have money but not enough to spend it recklessly but instead on expensive family holidays and special birthdays and anniversaries. There are then the ones that are comfortable but need financial aid and have only traveled inside the country. Then crossing over the class line are the families with jobs you hear people complaining about on tv; poor paying government jobs with long hours but good benefits. These attend public schools according to many tv shows. There are then, unfortunately, the forgotten hustlers. The people promised meritocracy but incapable of achieving its ultimate goal due to various reasons including race, gender and sometimes even class as poverty tends to be a self-perpetuating issue. There are obviously people who don’t fall in those categories exactly but around them. In most places in Africa, however, the classes are fewer, more extreme, much more conspicuous, and funnily enough a subject of really casual discussion in teenagers. I think that this is because the United States have had rich people for a longer time that Africa. For a long time, Americans have been civilized enough to have wealth and be able to express it in their properties, appearances and things of the sort. However, to the best of my knowledge, Africans have only recently started to get rich.

Wealth as we know it, expressed in the media with cars and mansions and country clubs started with the generations of our parents or our grandparents. This is because Africa is mostly developing and it is harder to get wealthy in a third-world continent. There are, nonetheless, ridiculously wealthy men and families in Africa who don’t make it to the news because privileged societies don’t want or care to hear about the people in Africa who are wealthier than them. There are the rich families who own companies and work in energy resources and travel around the world during every vacation, have multiple luxury cars and insane mansions and there are the less but still rich families who have stable jobs with high salaries, large families and beautiful cars. Unfortunately, there are also the managing families who can only afford two kids and have government jobs and can only afford one car for their whole lives. But these aren’t the worst. The saddest to see are the families who struggle to feed their children and work day and night selling plastic bags of water and fruits on the streets. The men who drive taxi cabs and motos to go back home with the little they made with food for their 5 children. And these people don’t live in isolated areas. They live in further neighborhoods with dirt roads but work in the city because it’s the only place they can find money. There are also the more secluded villages that are considerably poor but have created their own remote communities where they try their best to support each other, while trying at the same time to fight malnutrition, hunger, disease and all sorts of terrifying life threatening conditions. The latter two are the parts of Africa people see. To be fair, they are the majority of Africa so it’s almost understandable. However this doesn’t mean that the wealthier and actually well off Africans shouldn’t be recognized as Africa, because they’ve worked hard to get where they are now and should be able to represent the better and inspirational part of their Africa.

In addition to this, the wealthy don’t look down to the poor because they too, were once in their position. A common occurrence I’m quite uncomfortable with here is people passing by beggars and homeless people and not giving them something. I can only speak for the countries in Africa I’ve lived in for this one, but abled people always give something. It happens so often that mothers have learned to recognize the fakers, the one who need it less, because that’s an actual thing. While walking in the market, your mom will teach you which ones need it more, which kids are being sent out by their parents to guilt rich consumers into handing over large bills. When a street kid is walking towards, you don’t cross the street. Sometimes they are actually quite cocky and if they see you and your friends walking, they’ll whistle or do some very normal teenager things and it’s so fun.

Most of the Africans I mentioned to be extremely rich worked for it. The generation of our parents or grandparents pulled themselves from the wreckage that was their lives and found incredible ways to make money and find better education and opportunities elsewhere. For the most part, the life they are able to provide for their kids is not the one they received themselves. They most likely “started from the bottom.” My parents and a lot of my friends’ parents are great examples. My parents both grew up with a refugee status in Burundi’s capital city in the poorest neighborhoods with large families and in very low income homes. But my father after attending the cheapest public schools and then receiving a full scholarship to the country’s university put himself through a renowned graduate school in Geneva, one Kofi Annan, seven Nobel Prize recipients and one Pulitzer Prize winner attended. He once told me the story but it was long and I don’t remember it properly but it was mostly him having remarkable initiative, willpower and drive. He built his way up and is now able to provide a comfortable and happy childhood for his five children. In Africa, we don’t talk about this to be boastful but we like to remember those who put in the effort to better themselves which will eventually better Africa. We like to talk about these things and try to share them with those who will listen to widen people’s understanding of what and who is Africa.

The are so many parts of Africa I’m sure all Africans would love to share with everyone, parts of their home that their grandfathers and fathers built that they love and are proud of. But it reaches a point when it starts feeling like westerners would rather keep hearing about the cool giraffes and mud huts and a result resentment and a sense of returned contempt begins, even in the minds of the young generations, and we start to feel like we don’t want to share anymore.