A PASSAGE TO AFRICA

By George Alagiah
 ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
George Alagiah is a BBC newsreader. He used
to be a reporter and he was sent to Africa to
cover the events that unfolded in the 1990s in
Somalia. At this time, there was a civil war and
the people encountered many difficulties.
In this Extract George Alagiah is describing his
visit to Africa. He is discussing the horrors that
he saw on his visit and how they have haunted
him since.
 GAP
• Genre - a passage from a book, non fiction and print
• Audience - this piece is directed to a more mature audience, both genders, from
younger adults on because it has some strong imagery
• Purpose - to share his experience in Africa with the rest of the world, he does this
by making it interesting and informative. Some could argue that his main
purpose is to make money because he is a journalist. He also criticises
journalism so he might want to raise awareness of the industry. For example in
one line he said “in a ghoulish manner of journalists on the hunt for the most
striking pictures.”
ANALYSIS
I saw a thousand hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces as I criss-crossed
Somalia between the end of 1991 and December 1992, but there is one I will never
forget.

Series of adjectives in rapid

succession: Showing the turmoil of emotions
the author felt, unable to pin down the shows the impersonal detachment of the author. They aren’t human
description of the faces in one word, it also beings to him; they are just faces, just surfaces and expressions .
evokes at once the curiosity of the reader a
well as lays the ground work for the setting: a
general picture of death and disease form in
one’s mind. 

 meeting which was so exceptional that the author cannot forget it, it also
implies that the rest of the death and suffering he sees around him are
very much forgettable and don’t really affect him.

One sentence introductory paragraph

 I was in a little hamlet just outside Gufgaduud, a village in the back of beyond, a
place the aid agencies had yet to reach. In my notebook I had jotted down
instructions on how to get there. ‘Take the Badale Road for a few kilometers till the
end of the tarmac, turn right on to a dirt track, stay on it for about forty-five minutes
— Gufgaduud. Go another fifteen minutes approx. — like a ghost village.’

describe the small village,

hyperbole
This simile brings out visual image of how the hamlet is being neglected and isolated by the rest of the world

 The hyperbole ‘back of beyond’, the fact that agencies cannot reach that
village, the long sentence giving directions of how to reach there, the
dash before further elaborating on the bleak picture and the use of the
simile comparing the place to a ‘ghost village’; all convey the isolation of
the village, it’s detachment from the rest of the world, along with giving
the reader a sense of the unnatural death and disease which surrounds
the settlement like an ever present aur
 revulsion which the hunter feels towards himself is further shown in the
ellipses in ‘my cameraman… and I’ as if he hesitates a little, out of
shame and self-disgust

In the ghoulish manner of journalists on the hunt for the most striking pictures, my
cameraman … and I tramped from one hut to another. What might have appalled
us when we’d started our trip just a few days before no longer impressed us much.
The search for the shocking is like the craving for a drug: you require heavier and
more frequent doses the longer you’re at it. Pictures that stun the editors one day
are written off as the same old stuff the next. This sounds callous, but it is just a
fact of life. It’s how we collect and compile the images that so move people in the
comfort of their sitting rooms back home. To depict the addictive nature of the journalists and how heartless they should be
The writer’s disgust at his own job

all those things that might have appalled him before don’t even leave an
impression on him now, showing how his job is changing him, making him
harder, more cynical and detached. These words refer indirectly to the prey/predator metaphor, where the
journalists are the searchers, the ferocious and ruthless hunters looking
for ways to exploit the suffering and deaths of the village locals, who
become the helpless victim which covers and trembles before the mightier
This simultaneous degradation of the village people and elevation being.
of the
journalists is ironical as it proves that in the author’s mind it is the village
people who are above them as he views himself as nothing more than a
relentless animalistic hunter who is following a trail. T
 There was Amina Abdirahman, who had gone out that morning in search of wild,
edible roots, leaving her two young girls lying on the dirt floor of their hut. They had
been sick for days, and were reaching the final, enervating stages of terminal
hunger. Habiba was ten years old and her sister, Ayaan, was nine. By the time
Amina returned, she had only one daughter. Habiba had died. No rage, no
whimpering, just a passing away — that simple, frictionless, motionless
deliverance from a state of half-life to death itself. It was, as I said at the time in my
dispatch, a vision of ‘famine away from the headlines, a famine of quiet suffering
and lonely death’.
Anaphora and the dash all are used to diminish death, as if it is a matter of
Pathos and pity is evoked
no importance or significance, an everyday occurring which is inevitable . 

 cynicism
Repetition - life is a punishment, something to be saved from. -all of the desolate scenes around him are not gruesome enough anymore to act as
material for news. The ghastly horror of slow death does not hold the strength to leave an
impact on anyone.

Group of three -Since death is a relief people react to it passionately

 There was the old woman who lay in her hut, abandoned by relations who were
too weak to carry her on their journey to find food. It was the smell that drew me to
her doorway: the smell of decaying flesh. Where her shinbone should have been
there was a festering wound the size of my hand. She’d been shot in the leg as the
retreating army of the deposed dictator … took revenge on whoever it found in its
way. The shattered leg had fused into the gentle V-shape of a boomerang. It was
rotting; she was rotting. You could see it in her sick, yellow eyes and smell it in the
putrid air she recycled with every struggling breath she took. Elucidates the suffering and pathetic
nature of the helpless victims
a hyperbole which does not necessarily seem like one arise the sense of
acts as proof for the prior admission that such scenes
smell along with adjectives such as ‘rotting’.
aren’t news worthy. ‘
The ellipses before the explanation of her wound show the writer’s
hesitation before he describes the army shooting at an old lady as
‘revenge’, making one wonder exactly how brutal and ruthless they must
have been if the most subtle euphemism for their action is ‘revenge’.  paradox in ‘the gentle V-shaped boomerang’ casts a ghastly and vivid
mental picture of the wound, as well as draws attention to the fact that an
old lady is suffering from a war wound./ visual imagery
To elicit the real pathetic situation of the victims who are being abandoned by their
families Emphasizes the tragic poignant and isolated situation of the people who
live in war torn area
And then there was the face I will never forget.

The simple one sentence sixth stanza ‘And then there was
the face I will never forget’ implies the great significance of
the meeting it alludes to , how important it must have been
for the author.
My reaction to everyone else I met that day was a mixture of pity and revulsion.
Yes, revulsion. The degeneration of the human body, sucked of its natural vitality by
the twin evils of hunger and disease, is a disgusting thing. We never say so in our
TV reports. It’s a taboo that has yet to be breached. To be in a feeding center is to
hear and smell the excretion of fluids by people who are beyond controlling their
bodily functions. To be in a feeding center is surreptitiously* to wipe your hands on
the back of your trousers after you’ve held the clammy palm of a mother
who has just cleaned vomit from her child’s mouth. He knows that he should not be feeling disgust, as if he
tries to hide it.
His disregard for the ‘taboo’ by stating a fact that most journalists choose
The repetition of this fact in a short sentence: ‘Yes, revulsion,’ not only to ignore, places him in a positive light despite his revolting admission.
implies that the readers should be confused and shocked by this, but also The reader is moved by his honesty and frankness and trusts his point of
shows how the author himself is surprised and perhaps ashamed in view because of this.
admitting this, but feels a determination to do so

The reader too is disgusted by the effect of the imagery, despite the
intense pathos which the scene evokes. 
Irony -in feeding centers instead of generating food smell, this deals with
excretion
There’s pity, too, because even in this state of utter despair they aspire to a dignity
that is almost impossible to achieve. An old woman will cover her shriveled body
with a soiled cloth as your gaze turns towards her. Or the old and dying man who
keeps his hoe next to the mat with which, one day soon, they will shroud his
corpse, as if he means to go out and till the soil once all this is over.

The height of pity is reached 

I saw that face for only a few seconds, a fleeting meeting of eyes before the face
turned away, as its owner retreated into the darkness of another hut. In those
brief moments there had been a smile, not from me, but from the face. It was not
a smile of greeting, it was not a smile of joy — how could it be? — but it was a
smile nonetheless. It touched me in a way I could not explain. It moved me in a
way that went beyond pity or revulsion  smile is what makes it special, something unearthly in its beauty. / symbol
of realization.
not a man, not a name, simply a face; as were those faces that he saw and
forgot that were mentioned before.

Irony - The confusion is brought forward when a man can smile in the midst of
such poverty and destruction
What was it about that smile? I had to find out. I urged my translator to ask the man
why he had smiled. He came back with an answer. ‘It’s just that he was
embarrassed to be found in this condition,’ the translator explained. And then it
clicked. That’s what the smile had been about. It was the feeble smile that goes
with apology, the kind of smile you might give if you felt you had done something
wrong.

The verb ‘clicked’ signify a sudden realization an epiphany which the author experiences as he realizes
that the smile has been one of shameful apology. He is moved with disgust at himself and appreciation
for the man’s courage and dignity . 

The irony is evident. The man surrounded by death, disease, suffering,

and destruction is ashamed of his circumstances and appearance, but the
man who is healthy, well-fed, confident and strong stands among them
unashamed
Normally inured to stories of suffering, accustomed to the evidence of deprivation, I
was unsettled by this one smile in a way I had never been before. There is an
unwritten code between the journalist and his subjects in these situations.
The journalist observes, the subject is observed. The journalist is active, the subject
is passive. But this smile had turned the tables on that tacit agreement. Without
uttering a single word, the man had posed a question that cut to the heart of the
relationship between me and him, between us and them, between the rich world
and the poor world. If he was embarrassed to be found weakened by hunger and
ground down by conflict, how should I feel to be standing there so strong and
confident?
Rhetorical question - Attempts to find answers to the unidentified man’s smile
who later become the reason of his turning point

The fact that the man tries to apologize for his suffering metaphorically ‘cut
to his heart,’ so deep is the man’s question’s impact was./The influential
nature of the smile changed his entire life
I resolved there and then that I would write the story of Gufgaduud with all the
power and purpose I could muster. It seemed at the time, and still does, the only
adequate answer a reporter can give to the man’s question.

This incident, isolated and alone, was what made the

author determined to write about the plight of the Africans
with all his heart and soul in the matter, not all the other
horrible things he could forget
I have one regret about that brief encounter in Gufgaduud. Having searched
through my notes and studied the dispatch that the BBC broadcast, I see that I
never found out what the man’s name was. Yet meeting him was a seminal
moment in the gradual collection of experiences we call context. Facts and
figures are the easy part of journalism. Knowing where they sit in the great
scheme of things is much harder. So, my nameless friend, if you are still alive, I
owe you one.
. He regrets in the end that he does not remember the
man’s name, implying that his name wasn’t all that
important. Not as important as his message anyway. The
ending is distinctive and different: Alagiah expresses his
gratitude, his awe, his acceptance, and his apology to the
nameless man who smiled at him amidst the sea of
suffering , all in one sentence: I owe you one.

Informal language- To personalize the message more and allows the reader
understand the complex world of the journalists
This article was an impressive comment on society: one that makes the reader
pause and ask themselves what the world has come to? The glance at two
different worlds, the poverty and suffering of one, and the apathy and coldness of
the other is made evident here. This is done through the eyes of the journalist: the
man who lives these two different realities. The person who sees the suffering
around him, feels the sorrow and pity which is expected from a human being, but
does nothing to stop it, instead is forced to exploit all that he sees for the sake of
his job and profession. Something which is so wholly against human nature
changes the journalist: it makes him cynical, detached, emotionally and spiritually
dead, and the search for the next big break, the next shocking tale becomes his
‘drug’, the high he craves lying in the suffering of others. It makes him nearly
inhuman, to the extent that he feels like an animal, a parasite living off other’s
lives.
The passage also arises several questions and emotions in the reader, as man’s
inability to feel for those who suffer from circumstances that he himself is safe
from is made evident. We are comfortable in our own lives, the mere day to day
troubles of fluctuating weather our main concerns while in parts of the world
people are dying by the thousands every day. The excuse of obliviousness is not
available to us, as the news publicize on the suffering of others. The reporters
and journalists fight their base instincts of helping those whom they see as marks
to get the story to us, those who are responsible for helping such people out.
They do their jobs, but we fail at them spectacularly. We remain unmoved,
unaffected, our ability to cope with everything making us adapt to the knowledge
that we just are more better off than them, so much so that we take this fact as a
right more than a privilege and do nothing to help them.
LANGUAGE
STRUCTURE
•The piece has a definite plot, and is from a first-person perspective
•The first couple paragraphs are structured in a type of note form,
with extracts from his notes he took
•The next few paragraphs are structured like a descriptive piece,
with lots of adjectives, detail, imagery and is very emotional
•The turning point of the story happens in the second-last paragraph
of the story, by resolving to write this story
•The heavy use of hyphens in throughout shows his flowing
thoughts and create a more informal feel of the piece
•Lots of questions help to involve the reader and show the writers
confusion