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Here's the scenario. A travel companion persuades you to come along, say, to visit a brother who is working there, in a typical African country like Benin or Malawi or Niger. What would you really expect your travel experience to be like? Describe your mental picture.
Typical African countries? Hmm let me dive right into that. 54 or more countries in the continent of Africa ...whew that's too much. Maybe I can get some answers from the 3000 different ethnicities and 2000 different spoken languages.
Niger is different from Benin, Benin is different from Cape Verde. ..so on ..
Typical African countries? Hmm let me dive right into that. 54 or more countries in the continent of Africa ...whew that's too much. Maybe I can get some answers from the 3000 different ethnicities and 2000 different spoken languages.
Niger is different from Benin, Benin is different from Cape Verde. ..so on ..
You don't know what "typical" means, do you?
1a : combining or exhibiting the essential characteristics of a group
My mental picture would be typical developing country conditions which I actually find quite stimulating. It would be a lot better and more interesting than going to a boring suburb in the USA or Canada.
1a : combining or exhibiting the essential characteristics of a group
I don't know if I can name a "typical" African country myself. A typical west African or east African or north African country, sure. But a typical African country is hard to touch on in my view due to the great variation in culture/language/geography/etc.
I’ll say theirs a massive difference between Niger and Benin. I have been to Benin not to different from Nigeria. Niger is so poor that thousands of Nigerien people go to the streets of Southern Nigeria (Arguably the wealthiest part of West Africa) and beg/panhandle. While Southern Nigeria is noticeably wealthier than other regions of West Africa it’s still dirt poor. Benin/Ghana/Ivory Coast/Nigeria/Cameroon are typical West Africa with Nigeria being we’re half of all West Africans living. Niger and Cape Verde are anomalies. East Africa and Southern Africa probably all have their own thing going on as well.
Maybe my thread is misplaced -- I expected it to ba answered by posters who have never been to Africa, nolt Africans already familiar with the nuances of African life.
Maybe my thread is misplaced -- I expected it to ba answered by posters who have never been to Africa, nolt Africans already familiar with the nuances of African life.
I've never once stepped foot in Africa, so I'll take a stab at it. My expectation of Africa has two components: urban and rural. I envision major African cities to be dirty, crowded, run-down, and generally unsafe. I picture their infrastructure as crumbling, with roads in poor condition and electricity supply being erratic. In short, I picture life in an African city to be a never-ending series of annoyances, or worse. (This is to say nothing of the occasional governmental overthrows or inter-tribal bloodletting.)
The African countryside, on the other hand, I picture to be stunningly beautiful; wide-open savannas with herds of various types of animals roaming freely; or deep jungles teeming with life. (Rural villages, however, I picture as being marked by subsistence-level poverty and Stone-Age lack of development.)
Now, those of you who are familiar with Africa, feel free to tell me how wrong I am.
I've never once stepped foot in Africa, so I'll take a stab at it. My expectation of Africa has two components: urban and rural. I envision major African cities to be dirty, crowded, run-down, and generally unsafe. I picture their infrastructure as crumbling, with roads in poor condition and electricity supply being erratic. In short, I picture life in an African city to be a never-ending series of annoyances, or worse. (This is to say nothing of the occasional governmental overthrows or inter-tribal bloodletting.)
The African countryside, on the other hand, I picture to be stunningly beautiful; wide-open savannas with herds of various types of animals roaming freely; or deep jungles teeming with life. (Rural villages, however, I picture as being marked by subsistence-level poverty and Stone-Age lack of development.)
Now, those of you who are familiar with Africa, feel free to tell me how wrong I am.
My experience in South Africa, visited twice:
Urban - clean, not too crowded, and generally unsafe...except in the townships which are dirty, crowded, and again unsafe. Logistics is excellent however - good roads and infrastructure outside the townships (which are esssentially dirt roads and tin shacks).
Rural - clean, uncrowded, and personal safety dependent on the region. Geography ranges from mountains to beaches to savannahs. Again - good roads and infrastructure.
Egypt, visited twice:
Urban - dirty, polluted in many of the big cities, bad traffic and crumbling infrastructure, generally safe because of extreme military and police presence, except during periods of political unrest. Subject to terrorism from time to time.
Rural - clean, uncrowded to virtually uninhabited deserts landscape for the most part. Logistics non-existent. Some rural areas are essentially lawless.
Even these are generalities. It's hard to classify, and Egypt and S. Africa have little in common with sub-saharan africa.
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