Perspective from Africa

Just the other day I was scheduled to take a trip to a neighbouring country, Cameroun to be specific so I decided to search for an alternative means of transportation apart from air travel. As we all know we can see little from the plane and I thought since the flight would be less than two hours from Lagos why dont I take a road trip or sea perhaps. So like most lazy westerners I hook up to the Internet and tried to find a means fo getting to Cameroun without flying. Well using the google search engine I found several travel advisories - mostly by air- of which about 95% were outdated. Maybe someone ought to open an industry for getting Junk off the Internet. Anyway I finnally found a blog by another traveller who described how to get to Douala by ferry from Calabar. That was perfect.

However my focus is not on the trip itself but rather what I digged up on my search of the so called travel advisory websites. The favourite phrase is "all foreigners travelling to this area should be cautious as there are high rates of armed robbery and the roads are generally in bad conditions and unsafe" Initially when I read this about Limbe and Douala in Cameroun I figured I needed extra security but then I realised that this was exactly the same phrase used for Nigeria in some other sites. Funny I have lived in Nigeria for 3 decades (I am a Nigerian by the way) and for some reason which I attribute to devine protection I have not encountered any single armed robbery incedent.

Dont get me wrong I am not saying there are no incedents all I am saying is the way Africa is potrayed to the world by those who have never been here is quite irritating to say the least. Especially subsahara Africa. Intresting enough those who have had the opportunity to come over here to Africa usually return with a changed impression about the continent. It is rather unfortunate that we cannot bring all westerners to Africa to show them some home truths.

In 2005 I took a trip to the US for a 3 week holiday and my I was really impressed by the crime rate reported on local television in Florida. Well its amazing that such stuff never gets on CNN. Ok I am not castigating my brothers from the northern hemisphere where the attitude is sometimes as cold as the weather rather I would appreciate it if we could all keep the stories seperated from the facts. Come to Africa where the weather is warm and so are the people. nature was born here and still lives here.