by ⭐⭐⭐
Why would you go to Botswana when Brixton is right around the corner? That’s just one question Njambi McGrath has for kids on their gap year.
In this hour, McGrath has lots of questions for Africa’s once-and-former colonisers. “You want to give everything to Africans except visas.” McGrath notes the wry irony that the animals of Africa have great PR thanks to the documentary narration of Sir David Attenborough, while the African people are still somehow a mystery to be solved by Europe and the UK. She rails against the hypocrisy of people who want to give to African charities, only to spend 60,000 pounds on Bibles that could’ve fed and housed Kenyan orphans. Her audiences will learn of some even greater misdeeds.
But along the way, if as McGrath argues “Africa needs a spin doctor,” so, too, could she benefit from one. Her references are often more than a bit dated (Pablo Escobar, Ted Bundy, and in the most awkward moment, misgendering Eddie Izzard). McGrath doesn’t appear to be doing any of this maliciously, though it’s a tad ironic considering how not all of the gap kids heading to Africa have malice in their hearts, either. Just ignorance and/or naivety. McGrath raises many good points in this hour, but somehow loses the overall plot. There’s an hour to be had here to shine a light on how white people can somehow still cause more harm than good. That light just needs to be focused a bit better.
Njambi McGrath plays at Gilded Balloon Patter House during the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe
