When writers like Ethan Zuckerman and Binyavanga Wainaina chide people for painting Africa with broad brush-strokes and remind readers that Africa is a richly varied continent of many different countries, cultures, and ecosystems, I nod sagely. I know better. After all, I’ve travelled widely and frequently in South Africa, Nambia, and (once) Zimbabwe, and even driven the Trans-Kalahari Highway through Botswana. [Update: Since drafting this, I've hit a bit of Zambia and more of Botswana, too.] And I’ve researched and planned trips to Mozambique and Malawi, though I haven’t actually managed to get there (yet).
So why was I surprised to find that Uganda is different?
The geographically erudite reader will note that the African countries I’ve previously visited are all in the southernmost portion of Africa, more or less between 17 and 34 degrees south latitude. Uganda is smack on the equator. My southern African countries all have a history of colonial rule, and the one I’m most familiar with — South Africa — is still recovering from the brutality of Apartheid. Uganda was a British protectorate, never a colony. Uganda has different ethnic groups, different languages.
Uganda is different. Duh!
If I stopped there, this essay would be a simple self-smacking of the forehead. In the “Think Twice” spirit, however, I’m going to dig a little deeper. Is there a moral here, aside from the always-apt “beware the trap of hubris”?
I think there is, and it has to do with the nature of knowledge, and the many kinds of knowing. I “knew” in an abstract, conceptual, and logical sense that Africa is variegated, but not in a deep enough way to affect my unexamined expectations. Perhaps this parallels the distinction between “passive” and “active” vocabulary. (A person’s “passive” vocabulary with a language is all the words she understands when she hears or reads them. Her “active” vocabulary is all those that come to mind, unprompted, for use when speaking or writing.)
Educational researchers know (heh) that there are many kinds and degrees of knowing, and that we don’t fully understand all that’s involved in the thing we blithely call “knowing” [Redish-2003tfp]. It’s complicated. For useful knowledge, we need to have the right “mental resources” in our heads, and we also need to have the right associations and triggers in place so that those resources are “activated” in the appropriate contexts.
When do I understand the concept of “force”? When I can spell it? When I can quote a definition? When I can recognize the presence of one in simple and familiar situations, or in subtle and novel situations? When I can use the concept as a tool to reason with in familiar contexts? In unfamiliar ones? I doubt there’s a person on the planet who can do all of these things in all possible cases, infallibly, so does anybody really understand “force”?
If that doesn’t hurt your brain enough, consider metacognitive knowledge: knowledge about your own knowledge. To quote my colleague and former dissertation advisor, Bill Gerace: “Sometimes you know something. Sometimes you know you know something. And sometimes you know you knew something, but don’t any more.” What’s going on there?
And, as Uganda has reminded me, sometimes you only think you know something.
