Five Facts About Africa

  • Africa is the second-largest of the Earth’s seven continents – covering about 30,330,000 sq km (11,699,000 sq mi), which makes up about 22 per cent of the world’s total land area.
  • Four of the five fastest land animals live in Africa – the cheetah (70 mph), wildebeest, lion, and Thomson’s gazelle (all about 50 mph).
  • 90% of all malaria cases are in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • The world’s biggest hospital is in Soweto.
  • The world’s largest diamond was the Cullinan, found in South Africa in 1905.

Despite these fascinating facts, I know depressingly little about Africa.

I’ve read Guns, Germs, and Steel in which Jared Diamond hypothesizes that at the dawning of civilization, Africa’s geographical location was less than optimal. Diamond suggests that Africa’s climate and the lack of animals and crops that could be domesticated made everyday struggles in Africa even more difficult than in Europe and China. Thus, technological innovation, especially with respect to weapons of war, was practically nonexistent. This lack of modern weaponry made it easier for other civilizations to conquer Africa with “guns and steel”. The conquerers then brought germs that further weakened the African population. (I read the book more than 5 years ago, so I’m not sure if I have all the details right. And I don’t necessarily agree with everything Diamond proposes.)

I also know that HIV/AIDS is decimating Africa’s population. I’ve been fortunate to make contact with who is currently working in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). I also have a new LJ friend, , who has been in Mayotte for a while. And I’m hoping that KKB, a friend and fellow epidemiologist, who is working on vaccination programs in Africa and elsewhere will start a blog sometime.

Today, I finished reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver in which she tells the story of a missionary family in the Congo. The story is set in the 1960’s during the unstable years following the DRC’s independence from Belgium. I have never appreciated the mystery, splendor, and terror of everyday Africa until I read this book and now I want to know more.

It’s a funny thing to complain about, but most of America is perfectly devoid of smells. I must have noticed it before, but this last time I felt it as an impairment. For weeks after we arrived (in Atlanta) I kept rubbing my eyes, thinking I was losing my sight or maybe my hearing. But it was the sense of smell that was gone. Even in the grocery store, surrounded in one aisle by more kinds of food than will ever be known in a Congolese lifetime, there was nothing on the air but a vague, disinfected emptiness. I mentioned this to Anatole, who’d long since taken note of it, of course. “The air is just blank in America,” I said. “You can’t ever smell what’s around you, unless you stick your nose right down into something.”

“Maybe that’s why they don’t know about Mobutu,” he suggested. (Mobutu was the corrupt former dictator-president of the DRC.)

Vietnam has not yet been scrubbed clean of its smells. I’ll be taking a deeper whiff of the world from now on, including Africa.

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