I felt like I’d been lied to all of my life. When I was growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I’d never heard or learned anything positive about Africa or Africans. In fact, I’d mainly heard negative stories, except for the ones about the animals. Within my own family and among friends at school, to be called an “African,” was a fighting word. And of course, the media didn’t help. Most TV and newspaper stories then highlighted only negative stereotypes of Africans, like starving children with bloated stomachs and flies flitting about.
So when I first landed in South Africa in 1994, I didn’t expect to see anything much different than what I’d always heard. For sure, I definitely didn’t plan on staying longer than the three weeks I was there to cover the first democratic elections. My goal was to gain international TV news reporting experience, return to the US, and land myself a big-time anchor job with CNN
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