Even among seasoned African travelers, the first assertion is that the real Africa is sub-Saharan Africa--and Peace Corps seems to agree with this. Peace Corps has three regions for volunteers: AFR, EMA, and IAP - or Africa, Europe/Mediterranean/Asia, and Inter-America and the Pacific. But the "Africa" region is only the sub-Saharan African countries. Morocco, Tunisia, etc. are in EMA.
Some said the real Africa has to have "The Big Five" - i.e., lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo, and leopard. But that's silly as there are only 11 African countries that have all five (BTW, there are 54 or 55 countries in Africa, depending on what's recognized).
Some of the most commonly mentioned countries that aren't the "real" Africa include Morocco, South Africa, and Egypt. The one that got the most mentions as the "most real" during my admittedly unscientific meanderings online was Zimbabwe, At the end of the day, we know most Americans consider the "real" Africa to be a hot, dirty place with lots of disease, poverty, and wild animals and that's about as true as saying the same thing about the U.S. if you'd only been to the Appalachian and/or Ozarks area. At the end of the day, Africa is just as diverse--if not more so--than Europe and North America, and probably MORE diverse than, say, South America.
I have now been to nine African countries (Egypt, Lesotho, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Ethiopia) and if I had to pick some "commonalities" that would allow you to describe the "real" Africa, they would include:
- "Africa time" - this is similar to what I experienced in Hawai'i and basically means everything happens slowly. People don't rush. I always thought I was a "regular" speed walker, and maybe even a bit of a slow walker, but they take it to a whole other level in Lesotho and elsewhere here on the continent. I often find myself thinking, "Jesus! You have to make a serious effort to walk that slowly! Get out of my way!" You will often hear Westerners and even some locals emphasize when they want a meeting to start on time, and not on "Africa time" - which would be a vague approximation of the listed starting time.
- Things change constantly. Often, rules and regulations don't really exist and day to day you can have wildly different experiences at border crossings, government agencies, local businesses, etc. This drives some of the volunteers nuts, and would probably be more bothersome to me if I hadn't also had this experience in Kazakhstan.
- The driving is bat shit crazy. While vehicle fatality rates are also bad in Asia, I am blown away by the utter disregard they have here on the continent for rules of the road, stopping at lights, passing recklessly, and constantly,driving at INSANE speeds no matter where. You would be hard pressed to find someone here who doesn't know someone who was killed in an automobile accident (including the previous King of Lesotho) - or at least seriously injured. And yet, even though they all know this, it doesn't matter. It's actually one of THE things I honestly hate here and judge them on.
- A history of colonial oppression. As I recently mentioned on Facebook, Ethiopia is unique in Africa as the one country on the continent to defeat a colonial power militarily and not be subjugated at some point (Lesotho didn't get free of the British until 1967--four years after I was born). While this certainly explains a lot of the "challenges" many African countries experience today, I also saw a sad/funny note in a Comedy Central book that said something along the lines of "Africa's problems today can be blamed on two things: white people and black people. After suffering centuries of oppression at the hands of countries who had bigger guns, newly empowered black leaders took a look around and said, 'Hey, *I* can do that, too! :(
Next week, I'll share some thoughts on the African countries I've been to--including which seem the "most" African--and share my high and low points since living on the continent.
