Mount And Blade Unlocked

A lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth

On the first morning, discovering the city, I already can not help but feel cheated again by the sensationalism of our society that has since long neglected due to the contact belly.

was a vain effort to repeat, there is always more or less trapped in the glue of illusion pictures that make you take a (necessarily) a sad accident to claim generality. It is thus all the images we are shown on Africa although now the time gives the appearance of the sensational stories or authority of reflection.

Everything I have ever seen in Burundi before my departure was related to the terrible murder of albinos, whose members turned into amulets or different elixirs of longevity, good health and sustainable peanuts are sold by Wizards ...

This is not a single item on which I'd dropped at random from my research in preparing for my departure, no, it's a deluge of unhealthy images chosen deliberately to revulsion. It is telling mothers the most dreary details of the death of their child, remains on display as if they were stagnant from the carcass of a sheep abandoned after Eid el-Kebir. Modesty spared no pain, after all it's so far out there, where-it already? Ah ... Africa! Misery, all that these practices of another age, this wild country inhabited by witches and women half naked. We enjoy without the say of the horror of these images, at noon in front of Canal +, and the beautiful medal of our civilization is shinned it for cheap ...

course these atrocities exist, but why did you choose to talk? Qu'apportent truly these images except the satisfaction unconscious of a perverse curiosity? Why now? Why not all the other countless atrocities committed in every country in the world? And why is not it an article, but a complete set of media that gets stuck, as if he had to pass the pipe as a courtesy, good thing the week has to go everywhere. Doe has heard on the radio? Well I've seen on TV! Ah! it was horrible, the pictures and everything!

And someone up there, satisfied, rubs his hands. Air contrite, even a little bit ...

Contradicting the lie was the Honourable Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died in 2007, which I highly recommend the reading of Ebony and Travels with Herodotus, and all his other books published in French elsewhere.

It summarizes, with the same punctilious concern for accuracy that characterizes his other texts, this abrupt transition between two antagonistic realities of the world in the reflection of the media:

( full )

"Advanced technologies have led to a proliferation of media. What are the consequences? The main finding is that information is a commodity whose sale and distribution can yield significant profits. Formerly, the value of information was associated with various parameters, especially that of truth. It was also designed as a weapon to promote political struggle. The memory is still vivid of students who, at the time of communism, the streets were burning copies of party newspapers with cries of " The press lies to us! . Today, everything has changed. The price depends on the information demand, the interest it arouses. What is important is for sale. Information will be considered worthless if it is unable to interest a wide audience.

The discovery of the commercial aspect of information has triggered an influx of big business to media. Idealistic journalists, these dreamers in search of truth who ran ago newspapers were often replaced at the head of media companies, by businessmen.

All those who visit the editorial offices of various substrates can easily see what change. Formerly, the media were installed in buildings of second category and had offices close, dark and poorly laid out, swarming with journalists ragged and penniless, surrounded by mountains of records in disarray, newspapers and books. Today, just visit the premises of a major television: the buildings are stately palaces, all marble and mirrors. The visitor is guided by -hostesses models through long corridors caulked. These palaces are now the seat power which had formerly only the presidents of states or heads of government. This power is now in the hands of the bosses of the new groups media. "

Here in Bujumbura, I must admit that the image I had formed the "fourth most poor in the world ", differs significantly from the reality that I learn to discover. I expected it jumps me down the throat of the plane. For now it is not. The streets are clean, in good condition. So far everything seems to work just about if not the first time, at least second.

Prudence, of course, and reserve not apply to an entire reality I dread just experience a night and my first hours here.

But still, I can not repress a certain feeling of shame in discovering the distance between the image that had me unconsciously built in its true purpose. A sense of shame that is echoed in the ridiculous abundance of my first aid kit ...

But I am vigilant and look to see what the future holds for me ... I'm still in Bujumbura, the capital, but soon I will go into the mountains, where life is harsher in Kayanza, twenty kilometers from the border with Rwanda.

Jibril spent a week there ... and has an uneasy smile when he hears that I will spend two months ...