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I presume?' fame) in the late 19th century. Stanley chose this epithet not
because Africa was perceived as malevolent, but rather because it was a place
into which few outsiders had ever ventured and a place nobody fully
comprehended. Today, despite looming large in the global consciousness as
its challenges are widely discussed in the world's media, Africa continues to
be misunderstood.
To those with a penchant for adventure, romance or wildlife documentaries,
Africa holds a lifetime's worth of dreams: tracking legendary animals across
acacia-dotted plains, encountering remote cultures that time seems to have
forgotten or exploring the monumental remains of past empires. To those who
keep their heads out of the clouds and focussed on the apocalyptic hype created
in the news, Africa is a place of incessant nightmare: famine, poverty, crime,
corruption, disease and war. To all who visit experienced Africa travellers
included each step into the `Dark Continent' brings further enlightenment on
the true nature of this fascinating place.
Considering Africa's vast size (the Sahara alone could swallow most of the United
States) and its diversity of wildlife, landscapes and cultures (how does 1800
realities. Cape Town's gleaming shopping arcades welcome the affl uent while
poverty and constant struggle continue unabated in suburbs nearby. Harvest
cycles and family life in rural villages carry on at the same tempo as that of their
ancestors. Remote tribes, like those on Lake Turkana's shores, exist in harsh
environments yet exhibit pride and happiness that would make those in
materially rich societies blush. Yes, poverty is widespread, but sadness and
wanting are not.
brought peace to former trouble spots Mozambique is a stellar example, with
others such as Rwanda, Burundi and (more tentatively) Angola slowly following
suit. Meanwhile, Africa's famines through the years have achieved such notoriety
that many countries remain scarred by the images of starvation and drought long
after famine has ended. The biggest victim of this phenomenon is Ethiopia.
Despite being one of the most traditionally fertile and well-watered nations (it
supplies over 80 per cent of the Nile's water), travellers, with images from Live Aid
still on their mind, continue to phone the world-class Ethiopian Airlines to
enquire whether there will be food available during their fl ight.
stature and equatorial glaciers of Mt Kenya have even led the Kikuyu people to
artworks in their own right, many consider them simply backdrops to another of
Africa's masterpieces: its fabled wildlife.
The history of Africa's people is a long and storied one. After all, Africa is
considered to be the birthplace of humanity, where `ape men' branched off
or rather let go of the branch and walked on two legs down a separate
evolutionary path. Since those very early beginnings, numerous empires and
civilisations have risen and fallen across the continent. While the infl uence of the
ancient Egyptians is widely known, the prowess of other civilisations such as
Ethiopia's Aksumite kingdom, which spread Christianity into Arabia and gained
tremendous wealth by trading with Egypt, Syria and India is little known. As
well as shaping many of Africa's present-day cultures, the empires of old left
behind many physical traces of their grandeur: the pyramids of Egypt, the stelae
and rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, to name
only a few.
ugly heads. And while the 20th century brought independence to most African
nations, the ensuing grim economic realities often due to old colonial policies
and foreign loans with strings attached meant that many countries were more
power vacuum created by the end of colonialism led to numerous civil wars,
some of which still continue today. But the greatest blight of the 20th and early
21st century is the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which aff ects Africa more than any other
place on the planet: 5500 Africans die from the disease every 24 hours.
Although Africans could easily despair in the face of the HIV/AIDS catastrophe,
many are looking to the future with optimism. The G8's debt relief to date is already
showing dividends in many nations, including Tanzania, which has used its savings
to fund education and eliminate school fees three million children have returned
to school. Now, if only the West would remove the trading shackles from Africa,
Africans would have a truly fair chance to pull themselves out of their current
morass. Some Africans cringe at the idea of economic growth, globalisation and the
Westernisation of their traditional cultures, but others question why they should be
held back from the same fi nancial prosperity experienced by many Western
nations. But in some areas, such as northern Kenya, pioneering remote
communities are showing that it's possible to blend both worlds. They are thriving
thanks to novel ecotourism projects designed to preserve both their vibrant culture
and their surrounding wildlife, which would otherwise be under threat. So it just
may be that sustainable ecotourism is the key to retaining the essence of local
cultures in an Africa that is becoming more and more globally aware.