‘Where Is This Flight Going?’ and Other Basic Questions About African Travel

Africa is not a country, it has 1 billion people and 54 nations; that is more than the number of states in the US, generalizations this broad are a disservice. This article is the equivalent of "'Did you marry your cousin?' and other basic question about American marriages" with examples from Mississippi and Alabama. No offence.

>Another friend told me a security officer once confiscated the mangos he was taking as a gift — but only the soft, ripe, delicious, juicy ones, which the officer said were classified as a liquid and therefore banned.

> On the return trip the pilot announced the plane needed to make an unplanned stop — to refuel. The plane descended onto the runway in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and the passengers shuffled into the airport. The crew proceeded to take up a collection. That’s right: They hit up the Dakar Jaguars middle school swim team for gas money.

>Days before, the local paper had published a story about Camair-Co’s new fleet under the headline “Flying Coffins.” The government assured the public that the planes were safe.

>I bought my ticket and boarded the Camair-Co flight under lighted signs that warned of bans against flying with opium or uppers or “palm oil, honey, etc.” I’m not a savvy enough traveler here yet to know what the “etc.”

Pretty sure my comfort with ambiguity and 'agile' planning is a result.

You simply cannot plan for these eventualities. You have to become adaptive.

- An 18 hour trip to get roughly 300km. On the very last leg we took a detour in our bush taxi down what was very clearly only a bike trail. The van got stuck on a tree and as we waited one of the drivers took my bike off and just rode away. Turned out he was riding out to get someone from the village we were detouring to.

- During a 20 some hour bus ride to Ghana, a dude popped out in the road and shot at the bus. After the driver pulled over the guy came in and fired a few times down the center of the bus and husseled everyone off. I was just starting a vacation with a number of friends so they got _a lot_ of cash. Eventually when I felt brave enough to look up I saw the Ghana police firing randomly in the woods (Impressively they got there is about 10 minutes). As we were telling the police how much they toke, one of them said in adorable English, "Oh! They sure had a field day, haha".

- On a trip from Ghana we ended up hitch hiking and got a ride from a former head of the presidential guard in a sweet minivan. The dude was super nice but a crazy driver. Among the multiple times I thought we would die, he went to pass a long truck while another huge one was hurtling towards us for a head on collision. Instead of backing off or slowing down, he casually jammed the gas and swerved off road (which had a solid six inch drop) to get around it.

So many more hilariously insane experiences. Lots of fun.

And at the same time, it just glosses over the line "A hearty four-wheel drive could take [bad African roads] on, but the threat of kidnapping-prone terrorist groups has made some road travel extremely dangerous." Is the threat of organized violence prevalent enough to impact road travel on a substantial portion of the continent? That would be a big deal!