25 Things I Learned in Africa

Well the last few days in Africa and the ride home was tumultuous to say the least. The day before we left someone came into my room and stole my I-Pod. I was pretty lucky as my wallet and passport were both sitting out, but apparently someone liked my taste in music more than they liked my money. Fine with me, an I-Pod is replaceable, while being stuck in the hellhole of a country called Botswana without a passport would have done much more psychological damage. The flight home was long and by the end of it my legs looked like that of a cabbage patch doll they had swelled so much. Of course when it came time to collect my bags, Delta/Air Botswana had left one of them (containing all my clothes) in Southern Africa. Sweet, Botswana wanted to screw me one more time for good measure. It took me a few days before I finally received my bag and could stop worrying.

I am very happy to be home in America and now that I’m over my jet lag I figure I should wrap up this blog. Thanks to everyone who made it this far and liked my long winded writing. I enjoyed hearing from everyone who emailed me and IMed me with their thoughts. So I’ll finish it up with a few things (25 to be exact) I learned from my stay in Africa.

1. Gaborone, Botswana is right behind Compton and just in front of Hell in the race for the “Last Place on Earth Someone Would Go for Their Honeymoon.”
2. Cape Town is the best place on earth to go for your honeymoon.
3. African people love to listen to Akon. And R. Kelly. A lot.
4. Nelson Mandela is probably the most important person in the world. For his birthday while we were in Cape Town Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Peter Gabriel, Pele, Kofi Annan and other world greats turned out to wish him well. George Bush wasn’t invited.
5. No matter how lame a place is (see Gaborone, Botswana), the right group of people can make it fun. The people I was with were absolutely wonderful and I will definitely be paying many a visit to OU.
6. Botswana as a country is in a lot of trouble once their diamonds run out.
7. The HIV problem in Africa is much more serious than anyone can imagine. There are so many different aspects to the disease, which attacks every facet of every culture that it was tailor-made for a place like Africa, where over 900 cultures and tribes interact. A virus finally outsmarted the human race.
8. Everyone talks about Darfur, but nobody seems to know anything about Zimbabwe. The economic crisis there is slowly escalating and there are over 100,000 refugees now, but no response from the West. I won’t tell you what’s going, but if you’re interested look it up.
9. There’s a reason America doesn’t donate more money to third world country NGOs. From what I saw, a lot of the money is wasted by inefficient businesses. Or it is stolen by assholes.
10. Banning homosexuality causes a latent gayness amongst the men in your culture. Trust me on this one.
11. Girls, if you think the guys in American culture are very forward and creepy when they hit on you, go to Africa. Then you’ll be hit on by both guys and girls. Maybe they will just kiss you without any warning or offer your friends money so they can dance with you. Yep, these things actually happened.
12. Although every one complains about our cell phone usage, Americans don’t speak on their cell phones nearly as often as Africans. Maybe it’s because cell phones are still novel to these people, but even during important business meetings, they have no problem answering them and talking for the duration of the conversation.
13. On the same note, Africans don’t understand good business. In each of the cities and countries I was in, we had issues with people who didn’t want to serve us because they were lazy or exchange our money because they had tiny creases or help us because they were chatting on their cell phone etc etc.
14. Something that would take 2 hours here takes 6 hours in Botswana.
15. Afrikaners are the most pompous, unlikable people in the world. Period. Apartheid is over, time to wake up guys!
16. The view from Table Mountain in Cape Town will have you saying “Wow” and have you appreciating your life and how blessed you are every 5 seconds.
17. The beaches in Cape Town are 1000000000x better than any beach I’ve ever been to in America. Or the Caribbean.
18. Yes, there are computers (even if they are 1992 models) and cell phones in Africa. No, Africa is not just a large desert and no, not everyone in Africa is malnourished and dying. In fact, as a whole, Africans are much larger than Americans.
19. African soccer is the beautiful game at it’s finest.
20. Canadians aren’t so bad.
21. George Bush is the most hated person in the world. It’s not even close, he's way in front of Bob Mugabe, the Devil, and Eminem.
22. Botswana is truly at a crossroads of development. It seems stuck in the middle, not knowing whether to return to its traditional values or to become fully westernized, a problem that will have to be dealt with before they can make any progress in the fight against HIV.
23. The one thing I’ll always take with me from this trip is being in the poor area of Gabs and seeing the little kids’ faces whenever they saw me (a white person). It was always the same expression, a mix of shock and glee, faces I’ll never forget. Somehow without even trying, I had made someone’s day just because of how I looked.
24. Unless you are a cute African poor child, never stare at someone for being different because if it ever happens to you, it won’t be enjoyable.
25. Count your blessings that you live in America. I think you need to leave the country to appreciate all we have here.

Thanks again to everyone for reading. It’s been a long, interesting ride and I’m glad to be back.
If you're interested in seeing pictures from the trip, they can be found here.
http://travel.webshots.com/album/560003159TqAwPV
http://travel.webshots.com/album/560000633ulAZjW
http://travel.webshots.com/album/560000704zhFxSX