As a TikToker living in Nigeria, I was constantly exposed to ignorant comments. Now I use humor to show my followers how wrong they are about life in Africa.

• Charity Ekezie is a TikToker in Abuja, Nigeria who often received ignorant comments from viewers.
• They told Ezekie they think people in Africa have no running water, technology, or amenities.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Charity Ekezie, and it has been edited for length and clarity.

When I first joined TikTok in 2020, I never thought that my culture would be something special or unique that viewers took an interest in.

I was raised in Cameroon but for the past 21 years since I was 10, I have lived in Nigeria, a country where people from different cultures and who speak different languages all live together. Being surrounded by diversity has always felt normal to me.

After I'd been posting on TikTok for a couple of years, I noticed I would often receive racist comments about my skin tone and the fact that I'm Black, but I didn't take them seriously and mainly just ignored them.

It was when I started getting comments about African culture that I got really annoyed. People were asking me condescending questions about whether African countries have shoes or basic technology, so I decided to respond to them, and use my TikTok account to challenge their views about my culture.

But I did it with a twist — using humor and sarcasm in the hope it will lead people to educate themselves. And it seems to work.

I wasn't focused on posting content about Africa until one video I made blew up on TikTok

Throughout 2021, I mostly posted comedic videos where I would react to pictures of people who got bad haircuts or tattoos, known as fashion fails, and most of these videos would get tens of thousands of views.

I also posted a few videos wearing traditional African dress and encouraging my viewers to visit African countries. I noticed that a common question people were asking in the comments was, "How am I going to visit Africa if there's no running water there?"

I felt that these people were making jokes about an insensitive and incorrect stereotype that African countries are like a jungle, where we live among wild animals and don't have amenities, mainly because that's how Africa is often depicted in popular Western culture.

This stereotype really annoys me because it's steeped in racism and the idea that Africa is less developed than the rest of the world, but in reality, we have rural areas and we have urban areas, and if people are filming only the rural areas and telling you that's the whole of Africa, then that's a problem because they're not showing you the real truth.

I made a TikTok in response to these comments, where I stood in a big lake and danced with some friends, captioning my video, "when people say Africa has no water." After about a week, it went viral and currently has 22 million views.

This was one of my first sarcastic responses to the condescending remarks I was getting, and I found that people were agreeing and even laughing with me in the comments.

I now post sarcastic responses to people who make insensitive and unfounded remarks about Africa

I started making my responses as a joke, even though I don't think of myself as much of a comedian. I posted one response to a comment about Africa not having water by sarcastically saying people in Africa drink their own saliva while I had a crate of water bottles behind me.

In Nigeria, we generally have very sarcastic senses of humor. It often reminds me of the saying, "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer." So when people ask me an ignorant question on TikTok, I respond sarcastically to point out how ridiculous their question really is.

People have commented all kinds of misconceptions about Africa on my videos, like that we don't have airplanes and air conditioners, and I think people are largely doing this out of laziness to research. They're asking me these questions that they could easily Google themselves, and I was surprised to find out that many of these people are actually adults, not kids, who have grown up believing misinformation about life in Africa.

I want my videos to challenge people to actually pick up their phones and do their own research. For example, I made a video response to a person saying they think Africa is a country, not a continent, by sarcastically saying that South Africa is a village within Africa.

I hoped that some people who were confused or suspicious about what I said would then actually Google it to find out if it was true. In this way, I'm trying to educate others.

I want to keep posting videos that show people how diverse a continent Africa really is

I often wish that I didn't have to post content like this because it sucks having to educate people on basic information.

However, this opportunity has fallen into my lap, and I now see it as a necessity to prevent people from holding onto incorrect ideas about Africa, such as that all of us live in a bush.

I see myself as representing the whole continent now, and I try to post videos wearing traditional dress from different countries so I can show people more about various African cultures.

I think TikTok has been a really great vessel for passing along my message because video sharing allows people to actually see who you really are. Unlike follower or friend-based apps like Facebook and Instagram, it also allows you to easily share your culture with the world, rather than just with people you know.

But I do think that before commenters ask questions, they should do some research about Africa, so that they can base their questions on their own research and I can help them to learn more.

That way there won't be any need for me to explain an answer to an ignorant question, because African people don't owe anyone answers to ignorant questions.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.