Don't sell people an incomplete map and then blame them for getting lost. I've been sitting with that thought for weeks because the more I look around, the more I realize that many of the frustrations we carry as a society are not simply about unemployment, corruption, inequality or even money. They are about the stories we tell one another. From the time we are children, we are handed maps for how life is supposed to work. Study hard and life will work out. Get a degree and you'll find a good job. Work hard and success will follow. Save consistently and you'll become financially secure. Find your passion and the money will come. Marry the right person and everything else will fall into place. Believe in yourself. Think positively. Stay disciplined. None of these statements is entirely false. But none of them is entirely true either. The problem is rarely what they say. The problem is what they leave unsaid. Because what is omitted from a story is often just as powerful...
"Growing up, I saw everybody else fall in love. I saw Europeans fall in love. I saw Americans continuously fall in love. But I never saw Africans fall in love. I saw Africans procreate. I saw Africans affected by HIV and AIDS, but those weren't love stories." — Wanuri Kahiu, director of Rafiki Scene from Life: A couple walks down Moi Avenue. Their clothes match—both wearing bright Ankara prints, perfectly coordinated for Instagram. But their hands do not touch. Their eyes do not meet. Their bodies move parallel but emotionally distant. A child greets their father after school with a formal handshake. A teenage boy stiffens when his mother tries to hug him in public. A man buries his wife and never cries, because "men don't cry." We see the motions of love—weddings, gifts, romantic holidays—but rarely the soul of it. Rarely the warmth, the gentleness, the pause. We see couples. We don't see connection. The Myth of Taboo Somehow, we have come to believe ...