In one of the first articles on this site, I wrote that the reason I intend to cycle to Africa is the most banal possible – I have nowhere else to cycle in October, except the southern hemisphere.
About a month and a half has passed since then, and my reasons for traveling are becoming more and more complex day by day. While reading everything I can get my hands on about Africa, I am becoming more and more obsessed with it. To the extent that it doesn’t really matter to me anymore whether I will go by bike or as a backpacker. But I must go downwards. Don’t get me wrong, I still plan to go by bike, I just want to say that Africa itself has become my goal.
At first, I was swept off my feet by Bantustan, then I started reading Zoran Ćirjaković, who traveled all over Africa, targeting the most fucked-up areas at a given moment and writing exeptional texts about it. This was followed by some scientific works, such as Danilo D. Babić’s doctoral dissertation, and African literature, which I just devour these days. Not to mention Toma Damnjanović anymore, coffee with him is invaluable to me.
I also started following Facebook pages and many groups related to Africa. Although it turned out to be a rather barren affair, as it is mostly Africa seen through beautifying filters, in a way that appeals to Westerners.
I am slowly realizing what kind of crap, first and foremost, Natonal Geographic is, but so are 99% of other Western NGOs that operate on African soil and that they are just instruments of globalization, neocolonialism, and neoliberalism. Not much humanism or philanthropy here. Exploitation of peripheral territories is essentially a liberal economy, one of its pillars, and that is how Western involvement should be percieved.
Make believe humanism of celebrities such as Clooney, Madonna or Angelina Jolie, although they sometimes do save a few people from starvation, causes more harm by presenting life in Africa through the Hollywood lens. At the very least, they divert attention from actual problems to marginal and minor ones, and mostly they divert it to themselves.
The only thing that seems meaningful and really directed towards the development of Africa, with respect for African culture and traditions and does not look at them as a tabula rasa that needs to be drawn on from scratch, according to the model that the authors consider to be the only correct and unquestionable one, is the idea of the African Union, for which, what a surprise, the most deserving is Muammar el Gaddafi. Of course, that is far from an ideal, as well, because the borders drawn by the Europeans in Africa are generally meaningless and do not consider ethnic, linguistic, or even geographical principles, and it is now difficult to edit them (although the financing of the AU largely depends on both West and East). And changing country borders is completely unthinkable without many more millions death.
And then we have an influx from the East, from China and India. As I’ve already said, in a far more honest way than the Westerners (first of all, because they admit that their aim is to make money and do not ask for any changes to the system, even when they are not in accordance with the ruling Chinese/Indian ideology) and with a greater benefit to Africans. Although they also bring with them problems of an economic, ecological or cultural type.
Basically, no one goes down there to help, but that is hard to expect in the first place, because people and states created by people simply do not operate that way. Problem is that by their actions they change the very being of the African man, they even change his history, so that they can mold him to their own preferences. And before all that they took everything away from him. Over 15 million Africans, mostly between 15 and 35 years of age, were taken out of Africa as slaves and then, like everyone else, they wonder why Africa never had a feudalism phase and why there was nothing like the industrial revolution in the West. So, who would rise a revolution? Children and the elderly?
All this I have said is not even the basis of thinking about the problem of Africa, it is only one part of it. At the same time, the real Africa somehow still exists and even thrives in some parts, which are still not completely under foreign influence. Bantustan assured me that the only proper way to travel to Africa is couchsurfing, because it is the best and perhaps the only way to get to know each other better. And, strangely, the cheapest. Whether you’re going to ride a bike or ride their horribly bad buses, or a combination of those things, is not of much importance. It is important to get to know people in the places where they live and in the way they live. And that’s impossible if they don’t offer it themselves.
Someone might, rightly so, say to me: Wait, you have your own Africa right where you live, why don’t you deal with that a little, instead of solving problems on the other side of the Tropic of Cancer?
The thing is, I don’t want to solve anyone’s problems. Neither ours here nor theirs down there. Just want to get to know them as much as possible.
Or is the adventure what I am seeking, I don’t have a clue anymore.
(the photo is irrelevant, but the blog theme require one, so I have to put something. This one is from Wikipedia)
