Why Do Africa's Wars Last So Long? Ctd

TNC's readers go to school on this article by Jeffrey Gettleman. TNC follows up by linking to this old Granta article on how to write about Africa. He quotes this bit:

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

And adds:

One of my beefs against coverage of black people in this country is the inability to deal with the simple, ordinariness of black life. Over the past half-century something incredible was created in this country--a broad black middle and upper-middle class. But they're almost invisible to us. There is a dangerous line here--I'm not arguing for ignoring the black poor, or more "positive" articles or propaganda, ("Rich black people. Awesome.") but for stories and narratives that consider the context of our boring, ordinariness.