Last Thoughts on Africa

Friday February 18th. 

I'm about to leave Africa after 2 1/2 months. I've had an amazing time, seen lots of different things, met lots of people and had the opportunity to go on a number of excellent safari game drives. Here are some random thoughts and observations from my time here. It's more for me, and I'll probably add to it as things pop into my head. But here they are:

• the continent is not as daunting as I supposed, however, I would not want to be traveling the roads in my own vehicle, too many checkpoints and police checks
• the people are very friendly and are easy to talk to
• poverty is everywhere and very bad, but the people seem pretty happy
• I did not sense any kind of racism towards me as a white man
• the discrepancy between the abject poverty of the rural areas and the middle class people of the urban areas is staggering
• Coca Cola has to be the most ubiquitous soda in the world, not much Pepsi
• Africa does not have the same problem with dogs that South America has (South America has lots of dogs wandering all over the cities and in the country)
• agriculture is all by hand and mostly subsistence
• women do most of the work here
• women bend over at the hips to do washing or whatever
• thank somebody that Canada doesn't control traffic speed with speed bumps the way Africa does
• I thoroughly enjoyed what I saw of the continent, especially the nature, the culture was eye opening, and all the activities were great
• motorcycles are the main personal transport, lots of moto-taxis, Rwanda is the only country I saw that makes helmets compulsory
• from what I have seen, there is a lot of human pressure on the nature parks, villages, towns and Masai herdsmen are just outside each park
• public transport is by “matatu” or mini van
• the continent skipped telephone land lines and went straight to mobiles
• most people have cell phones, and air time is really cheap
• many places have no electricity for charging, as a result their are businesses that have sprung up charging money for charging batteries or mobiles
• Africa has so much to offer, so much to see, and I've just completed a sampler tour, I'd love to come back again sometime and see some more