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Actually, a few years ago, we had a man killed a mile from my home and partially consumed by a mountain lion...who the next day, badly mauled a woman (she lived, but has suffered numerous plastic surgeries)...
Needless to say, this is EXCEEDINGLY rare, (first fatal attack in California in several decades, I believe), and hardly on a par with African wildlife...
Sounds like the Rancho Santa Margarita area... I was transfixed by reading that story. The biker who supposedly crouched down to fix his chain...and the woman who happened into the area on the heels of that?
The reason I was so fascinated is because I was constantly doing things outside in the Sierra foothills of Sacramento. In April 1994, a fatal attack occurred in the Auburn State Park trails as a woman went out for her nightly run.
There are some websites addressing these issues specifically. But in Africa, many people don't have proper refuge from animals that might prey on them. Hardly "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Sorry, but I think this view is used to downplay what really is occuring. Granted, I'm not trying to downplay the diversity of it's peoples and cultures, but I think it's the widespreadness of the devestation that adds to the horror of what is happening there. Zimbabwe, Sudan and Sierria Leonne are each seperated from each other by thousands of miles and yet the stories they churn out are all too similar.....
I heard it explained years ago at a lecture, that Africa is just plain one tough place to live, period. It would be very hard, (the speaker said) to easily form a civilization there. There are many more fatal diseases and much more dangerous wildlife than other places, even in the tropics. There are almost NO rivers that are navigable into the interior from the sea (except the Nile, and that's North Africa). All the other large rivers have rapids, etc, at their lower ends.
Most of North Africa is a desert so huge and so hostile that it STILL has no good roads across it...you could cross it, but not with any sort of 'cargo'...lucky to just get your SELF across.
The general 'gist' of the lecture was that Africa just has an extraordinary bunch of serious obstacles to human development, and is 'hard' on man, and 'hard' on anything he might build.....much 'harder' than the other continents..at least that was the speakers' view..
Sounds like the Rancho Santa Margarita area... I was transfixed by reading that story. The biker who supposedly crouched down to fix his chain...and the woman who happened into the area on the heels of that?
The reason I was so fascinated is because I was constantly doing things outside in the Sierra foothills of Sacramento. In April 1994, a fatal attack occurred in the Auburn State Park trails as a woman went out for her nightly run.
There are some websites addressing these issues specifically. But in Africa, many people don't have proper refuge from animals that might prey on them. Hardly "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Caused quite a 'stir' here...school nearby was 'locked down' for several days--(kiddies had to eat and 'recess' indoors)...and the park was closed for weeks. Lady still lives here, I think. The 'animal people' think the big cat had his stash of 'goodies' (the man--who nobody knew was there), and when the lady came along next day, the cat thought she wanted to 'steal' his food--so attacked HER so he wouldn't have to 'share'...pretty gruesome. Poor guy.
Sierra Leone and Liberia are both stable for the time being. Bush is scheduled to visit Liberia in a few days. Africa's current crisis zones would include southern Somalia (though not really the northern self-declared Republic of Somaliland), western Sudan (which includes Darfur), the Sudan/DR Congo/Uganda/Central African Republic border region, parts of the eastern DR Congo, Zimbabwe, the northern Central African Republic, northern and eastern Chad, northern Niger, Nigeria's Niger Delta oil region, parts of eastern Ethiopia (Ogaden region), parts of Algeria, and more recently, western Kenya.
Other parts are quite stable, and even have growing economies. Accra, Ghana, for instance. Angola has undergone quite a lot of development since the civil war ended in the 1990's. Mozambique as well. Countries like The Gambia have beach resorts popular with Europeans. Senegal has a thriving and growing tourist trade from around the world, and specifically markets to Americans who want to see historical sites associated with the slave trade.
Things on the continent are mixed. The idea that traveling "to Africa" means that you'll be set upon by lions and civil war straight off the airplane is just silly. If you fly into Dakar or Accra or Bamako or any other major African capital, you'll probably be taken by a hotel's shuttle bus to your hotel, which will probably have a pool and a nice view of town.
The average town in today's Africa isn't a rural village with huts and tribes. It's a small city of 20,000 to 100,000 people with a market, an internet cafe, some slums on the outskirts, modest houses around the commercial center, and maybe a few wealthier villas or houses centered near the government buildings.
But of course, it takes time to update stereotypes. Many Americans still think that cities in China look like something out of a 1930's Looney Tunes episode, with peasant farmers ambling between traditional tile-roofed huts. The idea that Chinese cities are now full of skyscrapers and freeways takes a while to sink in.
Im just wondering why the media contiues to portray africa the way it does even in 2008. Alot of people including one's who claimed to be educated have the wrong impression about africa. I was talking to a older white gentelman in his 40's not to long ago. The man said when visting africa he thought he was going to be chased by lions and tigers. But stated he ended up staying in a five star hotel during his time there. He went to diffrent casinos and even went partying in a few clubs on some nights. What's sad is this man graduated from college and his opinion was tigers and lions. Imagine people who have never visited and only get their image from the media. South Africa has turned itself into a first world country.
Well, I can't speak for everyone but the idea of seeing lions and tigers in a natural habitat is appealing not negative. I can see hotels and casinos anywhere. If I think of Africa as a land that still has much natural beauty and wildlife, and would want to visit it for that reason. I don't see that as a bad thing. I think the media is probably attracted to it for the same reason - it's what you have, that we can't get where we live, syndrome.
Im just wondering why the media contiues to portray africa the way it does even in 2008. Alot of people including one's who claimed to be educated have the wrong impression about africa. I was talking to a older white gentelman in his 40's not to long ago. The man said when visting africa he thought he was going to be chased by lions and tigers. But stated he ended up staying in a five star hotel during his time there. He went to diffrent casinos and even went partying in a few clubs on some nights. What's sad is this man graduated from college and his opinion was tigers and lions. Imagine people who have never visited and only get their image from the media. South Africa has turned itself into a first world country.
Because African wildlife is the chief draw of the continent. And while that 40ish gentleman stayed in a five-star resort and went to discos, that was because he stayed in an area catering to tourists.
Meanwhile, even South Africa has large portions of poverty-stricken slums that would make the worst American slums look luxurious by comparison. What's more, the continued political violence, corruption, famine and instability of the continent make it a place where very little apparent progress is being made. After all, Africa is a place that has seen the miseries of Rwanda, Darfur, Somalia, Nigeria, Congo, and Zimbabwe over the past few years, just to name a few.
Meanwhile, even South Africa has large portions of poverty-stricken slums that would make the worst American slums look luxurious by comparison. What's more, the continued political violence, corruption, famine and instability of the continent make it a place where very little apparent progress is being made. After all, Africa is a place that has seen the miseries of Rwanda, Darfur, Somalia, Nigeria, Congo, and Zimbabwe over the past few years, just to name a few.
Thank you. Exactly what I was thinking. You can go almost ANYWHERE and find those oases of beauty and privilege that cater to tourists and executives.
That being said, there is STILL a lot of third-world conditions in Africa that are far behind what, collectively, North America experiences (and that includes Mexico and it's poorest corners). There are a lot of problems and that can't be denied.
The average town in today's Africa isn't a rural village with huts and tribes. It's a small city of 20,000 to 100,000 people with a market, an internet cafe, some slums on the outskirts, modest houses around the commercial center, and maybe a few wealthier villas or houses centered near the government buildings.
Sounds like a typical New England village set-up.
I meet a lot of Africans with HB-1 visas who are working as math teachers in the public schools in Massachusetts. The reason being that our public schools aren't producing sufficient numbers of graduates with adequate math skills, or any math skills.
Most of these Africans really look down on Americans as provincial, poorly educated, with weak family structure and lacking basic civility. They get that impression from working in our schools and meeting hundreds of typical American students and parents.
They work hard, save their money and invest wisely, and eventually go back to Africa with plenty of stories about the American savages.
Most of the "scholarship" that concludes European colonization of African nations is why they're presently in such a state of disrepair tacitly acknowledges that they're (black Africans) are unable to do anything for themselves.
You will find that most liberal excuse-making and grand rationalizations of African failure usually hint at this, although upon doing so, they immediately and furiously try to concoct some bizarre reasoning to explain it away. Hell, any time a liberal trys to address the disparity between races in ANY context, it usually originates with a mighty-whitey type syndrome that they think can be ignored as long as their intentions are good.
If you examine the world and see the almost comedic disparity of living that exists between any sub-Saharan African post-colonial nation and virtually ANY OTHER post-colonial nation that isn't African, you soon realize that, yet again, the excuses and blame only seems to apply when it's being used in the context of black people.
Why is it that these same set of excuses don't apply to people in India?
Brazil?
Ever see how China lived at the turn of the century? Christ, it was a bunch of crappy feuding warlords attacking, occupying and pillaging each other.... Of course, all of these nations suffered as badly- in some cases, profoundly worse than many African nations that presently live in an almost animalistic existence, but no, no, no.... It's the "white peoples" fault... Because it's so clear that the African nations that saw the lowest levels of white involvement have such a profoundly higher standard of living than the colonized ones
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. But stated he ended up staying in a five star hotel during his time there. He went to diffrent casinos and even went partying in a few clubs on some nights. What's sad is this man graduated from college and his opinion was tigers and lions. Imagine people who have never visited and only get their image from the media. South Africa has turned itself into a first world country.
