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Travellers & Tales
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| Lira |
Have you ever been to a remote corner of the planet? What was it like?
It's not all doom and gloom: there's this.
A mate has just come back from South Sudan, a country that became the world's poorest right after it declared its independence from Sudan. And, incredibly enough, the debile government even found time to fuel a few skirmishes against its northerly neighbour, a country that isn't exactly a branch of Heaven on Earth either: You probably remember Darfur, about which I'll speak no further.
He said the place is hopeless. Upon arrival, everyone tends to feel pity and tries to do their best to lift them out of poverty. Just look at them! After a while, however, indifference kicks in, and once your efforts are shown to be hopeless, it's only natural to feel angry at them because they expect foreigners to do all the hard work... neglecting, of course, the fact that many foreigners already have their own interests on the area, and aren't exactly looking forward to making it as wealthy as Luxembourg. This isn't a particularly smart way to go.
Their capital, apparently, is nothing but a village, and not a particularly affluent one at that. There's the odd street with pavement, a building or two, and that's about it. We're kind to call it a state, because the South Sudanese themselves couldn't care less about their government: their family is what matters the most, and then their ethnic group. Once someone or something falls outside the group, it's a potential rival whose wealth may be pillaged as soon as you have the means to. And this is not exactly too difficult, as Sudan has been sponsoring South Sudanese militias, and South Sudan keeps funding Sudanese rebels. If there's a way out of this vicious circle, it's probably going to take a while for them to find it.
This is, of course, just his account. Have you ever been to South Sudan? Or have you ever been to a place very different from your homeland? What was it like? Share your thoughts :) |
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| Jarvmeister |
| I bet the internet speed there is . |
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| Lira |
Really? No one has an interesting account of a different country to share? :(
| quote: | Originally posted by Jarvmeister
I bet the internet speed there is . |
Except the internet speed takes more time to hit the ground :p |
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| Sushipunk |
| South Africa was a bit of an eye-opener for me, especially going through some of the shanty towns. |
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| Lira |
Tell us more about it :)
What is it about the South African shanty-towns that changed the way you see the world? |
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| Sushipunk |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Tell us more about it :)
What is it about the South African shanty-towns that changed the way you see the world? |
To be honest, I'd just never seen that kind of 3rd world poorness before. Just to hear people describing them as temporary towns, I didn't know what they meant, and was told "the places where they set up the towns flood regularly, and so the entire places get destroyed and re-built every year or two". :wtf: I mean, that's just nothing like Australia, or any country I'd been to before.
There was a travellers hostel set up in the Transkei area, which basically helped to fund a small township of people. My friends and I were staying there during the Freedom Day celebrations (celebrating the end of Apartheid, so you can imagine it's a pretty big deal). The hostel owner took my friends and I, along with a bunch of other people staying at the hostel, into the township that night and we partied like crazy, dancing all night with all the black Africans, it was ing cool, I'll never forget it :) There was a distinct difference in prices though, between a normal bar there and the bar they had set up in the township. We were buying beers for everyone in the township and paying like 1 or 2 Rand each ( all) for big 750ml bottles of beer :wtf: We were travelling on the UK Pound at the time too, so that was the equivalent of like 10-20 pence each. And there was joint after joint after joint of crappy, seed-filled weed being passed around everywhere. Every couple of drags there's an audible POP! and sparks fly everywhere :stongue:
Wish I could find all the photos from back then, I think they might have all been lost. |
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| nchs09 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Jarvmeister
I bet the internet speed there is . |
but then.. how can my nigerian cousin who is a prince send me so many emails with such ease? |
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| Sushipunk |
| quote: | Originally posted by nchs09
but then.. how can my nigerian cousin who is a prince send me so many emails with such ease? |
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| idoru |
| :stongue: :stongue: |
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| LAdazeNYnights |
Different places in South America were the most eye-opening for me.
First, Guatemala was really something else. Not Guatemala City, but instead we were on a sort of mission trip, affiliated with a group through which you can support a child with monthly payments. Saw a lot there.
At a later date, I did Argentina+Chile, spending 2 weeks in Patagonia and Ushuia. Amazing place with some really interesting people. I'll write more tomorrow -- |
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| Lilith |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
He said the place is hopeless. |
Fairly common western perception and judgement, if they actually want to see what collective lunacy is, go a few 1000km east into Somalia and that'll be a whole different perspective on anarchy.
When I was clocking up flight hours my 'charitable contribution to the world' was taking a few months of work each year, filling up a plane with doctors, surgeons, nursies, translator (aka, Master of Bribes and BS) and 2-3 bodyguards (Very loose definition of the word there...) Start at South Africa, fly up to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, across to Madagascar, up to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, (South Sudan = off limits, was a long civil war) Ethiopia, Sudan. Then back down to CAR, DR Congo, Botswana and South Africa.
Fairly much all but a couple of those countries where entirely dependant on the availability of av-gas and if they where currently shooting each other trying to figure out 'whose god is best', or the government had melted down into a free fire zone of 'who wants to rule'.
Can be critical all we want about it, but the simple fact is every other civilisation went through that level of bloodletting some time in its past or is on the verge of doing it again for those two reasons. Its part of the quintessential nature of us apparently, along with a number of the good things like a community who just wants its kids immunised so they don't get some horrible bloody disease, a couple that would carry their neighbour 20km in a wheelbarrow in 46deg C heat so they could get their broken leg fixed and continue working, then carry them back.
The western media often focuses on the negative, because it gets the most attention, so yes I've seen 8month old kids expire from diarrhoea/dehydration, people dismembered with farm implements and guns. It does happen.
But there is a difference you can do in the world, even if its a transitory thing where positive actions, not worlds, money and assuaging your own 1st world guilt, do actually have some effect. Quite a lot of the world would actually be a better place with people that just do things to help each other out without being asked and one of the areas of foreign diplomacy and trade has failed. Many people wouldn't hate americans and other developed countries nearly as much if they sold them tractors instead of surplus weapons stocks or sent in an education program instead of foot troops.
That is also to say, warfare isn't a pointless activity either as it can achieve some things like toppling a tyrant or stopping a destructive invasion, but it should be the last course of action instead of a 'viable alternative' that it seems to be amongst those who decide things in the last 20 years or so.
We're all much the same around the world at a fundamental level, the escalation of actions really comes down to how many meals you miss. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lilith
Many people wouldn't hate americans and other developed countries nearly as much if they sold them tractors instead of surplus weapons stocks or sent in an education program instead of foot troops. |
Actually, he was there as part of a peace programme, and spent a year in Juba and surrounding areas. Having seen poverty in our own country, he went there in order to try and save the world (or just improve it slightly, whichever came first)... but he was disillusioned after a while because no matter what he did, the locals took it for granted that he had to do it, and he was to blame if it didn't automatically lift them out of poverty. I don't know if your experience was similar in any kind of way (apparently not), so I wonder why you seem to be more successful. Were you on your own? Did you go there as part of a larger programme?
| quote: | Originally posted by Sushipunk
We were buying beers for everyone in the township and paying like 1 or 2 Rand each ( all) for big 750ml bottles of beer :wtf: |
Haha, I don't know how common it is in Australia, but in countries with big economic discrepancies (like here), prices can increase twofold in shops just tens of kilometres apart from one another.
That's the thing I love about the city next to my fiancée's farm. Everything is so cheap there :D |
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