The Dumbest Animal Alive... 80% of the world's farmed ostriches are concentrated in the very small region in southern South Africa
SA 101, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.
Africa is usually generalized as one entity to the outside world. If something happens in Rwanda, people generalize it with the whole continent and not just with the country. In fact, Africa is the second largest continent in the world with many very distinct cultures. Travelling through a small portion of the continent has made me aware of this. Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa are all very different with their own distinctive culture. Tanzania and Malawi are very poor countries while South Africa is the shining light in Africa in terms of development.
Throughout Tanzania and Malawi, I travelled using public transport catching minibuses and taxis from town to town. I felt perfectly comfortable being jammed into minibuses like sardines, often cramming over twenty people into a ten-seat bus. I grew accustomed to this and began to enjoy the experience because I never knew what would happen next. One ride in Tanzania included a drunken bus driver that almost hit a giraffe, a woman breast-feeding literally inches from my face and at every stop the bus would be swarmed with people selling anything from cell-phone credit to chickens. Bus rides quickly turned into miniature adventures where anything could happen. Malawi was similar in that people were crammed into buses that were definitely not road worthy and travelled long distances. Everyone was hot, sweaty and uncomfortable together and I never felt threatened.
The atmosphere quickly changed when I started travelling through South Africa. The country is very modern with great infrastructure. I call it the European offshoot in Africa. It is not that I don’t like South Africa. I like it a lot but it is not ‘Real Africa’ that I have grown to love. Modernization and development brings with it many problems that countries around the world are confronting and South Africa is no different. The main problem facing South Africa is the staggering 43% unemployment which fuels the ramped crime. This is the main reason travellers stay away from public transport while in the country. Most travellers hire cars to travel within South Africa because the infrastructure is first-class and there is no concern about police checkpoints that sometimes require a bride in other African countries.
I have grown to love each country for different reason while in Africa. Tanzania and Malawi are third-world countries that provided me with massive culture shocks. I was busy learning Swahili, getting accustomed to eating chewy bland goat meat, porridge (called Ugale in Tanzania and Nsima in Malawi), and other colourful local dishes that usually made my stomach a little queasy, and at the same time, sticking out like a sore thumb being the only white person in sight in many cases. It sounds terrible but I loved it. It was so new and exciting. That is probably why I have decided to leave South Africa prematurely.
In South Africa, I have experienced constant culture shocks just by walking through grocery stores or shopping centres. I will be the first one to admit that I did not fully understand the level of development in South Africa before I arrived, but I have met many travellers that had a much more skewed viewed of the country. I met one American traveller in a very nice mall in Bloemfontein, the capital city of Free State province. She was complaining that there were no lions or giraffes walking around the public parks or city streets. She was under the impression that elephants, zebras and various other species of wildlife roam about the streets unchecked by humans. She was so wrong that instead of being comical it became depressing.
South Africa is not identical to the States but similar enough to prompt my early exit. I am departing for Namibia to live with the Himba people in the Kaokoland. The region is in the Northwestern part of the country in the middle of the harsh Kalahari Desert. The Himba are said to be very similar to the Maasai but have been more resistant to change. It should be another massive culture shock but I will be happy to get back to ‘Real Africa’.
