It's never quite as bad as you think

When you hear “Russia”, what images come to mind? Cold, grey, forbidding?

What about “America”? Furious, divided, fast?

“Germany”? Efficient, humourless?

One of the aims of the Upside series is to show that the world is nuanced, that the picture we get of far-flung places is often two-dimensional and not terribly helpful. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. How often have you been to a new country to find that it is not at all as it has been portrayed in the media?

So this week, we set about to dismantle some stereotypes. Africa is not all war, famine and bad governance. Even its most unpredictable country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is capable of achieving great things, as Sarah Boseley and photographer David Levene found out.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Under the microscope. Photograph: David Levene/Guardian

Similarly, if Kazakhstan has a reputation at all (beyond the burlesque impressions created by Borat), it is of a vast, arid petrocracy that is probably still a bit Soviet. Phoebe Greenwood found something altogether different.

Play Video 13:10 The new green superpower? Oil giant Kazakhstan tries to wean itself off the black stuff – video

Afghanistan? Primitive, oppressively patriarchal? Yet still a place where a woman can climb a mountain if she’s determined enough.

And Britain? A drizzly ex-superpower paralysed by its permanent obsession with Brexit? Apologies, but that is one stereotype we can’t dismantle. Not yet.

What we liked

This al-Jazeera piece about an Indian man doing what he can to help children whose lives have been derailed by crime and murder. And this New York Times article about the introduction of electric school buses.

Also the glorious work of the Daily Overview, showing what the earth really looks like from space.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Down to earth. Photograph: DigitalGlobe/Rex Shutterstock

What we heard

Kathryn Crowter, via email:

I love the Upside. It gives me hope. I’d stopped reading the news. I was aware that burying my head in the sand helps no one and in many cases contributes to the problem but it was the only thing that seemed to help.

Now I can read some news and then an Upside story or two. It’s real – it’s not just happy fluff or an attempted distraction; it shows there are concrete ways to help and people doing it. So, thank you!

Mohammed Reza, responding by email to our quest to find the best words in the world:

We Iranians have many words in the Persian language, which don’t have a one word English equivalent, such as oskol (اسکول) which refers to a person, bird or animal who is a funny, witless but unaware of one’s hapless condition. Or jorbozeh (جربزه), an innate characteristic of a bold person willing to make an abnormally risky move for a worthless objective.

Where was the Upside?

With Patrick Kane, who describes what it’s like to have flesh-and-blood limbs replaced by hi-tech prosthetics.

Also, in the Guardian newsroom itself, where we celebrated a milestone: 1 million people around the world have signed up to support us financially, in one way or another. Your Upside editor even wrote a short poem to commemorate the moment.

If you fancy joining the million-person movement, click here to find out more.