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The Embassy is laying off the armed escort requirement unless business requires us to venture over into its borderline failed neighboring states. Instead our group has been given a full time driver entrusted by the Embassies to chauffeur foreigners.

As for the Capital City, the international airport district is modernized with glassy office towers and well known business outlets like Pizza Hut, Shell, Best Western, Burger King, Marriot, Illy, KFC, DHL, and Nike – brands mostly unseen across the rest of the nation. The Capital City is also built up and modernized in its central area of Embassies, the Parliament, the National Universities & Museums, and along a strand of beachfront dominated by resort hotels catering to foreign travelers. I say “built up and modernized” as in wide/paved streets cleared of squatter settlements, operable traffic/street lights, and powered buildings with fenced off parking.

Outside of that though, the streets of West Africa are as visibly destitute as anywhere among the world’s poorest areas. I mention our local driver, because when driving us he hears our reaction to some of the shanty sights we’ve never encountered before – sewage runoff in the streets, livestock crossings whose cattle and goats stall traffic, people walking out in en masse everywhere, children lacking shoes and full clothing, people living out of plywood structures, and trash mounded in the streets. For our driver, this is his native land – the neighborhoods he grew up in – so after yesterday’s long day visiting a jobsite, we ask him over dinner whether some of the sights we’re unfamiliar with are reactions he’s already heard from other foreigners he’s chauffeured. He tells us that he finds us foreigner’s unfamiliarity mostly humorous. In return, by chauffeuring us he gets treated to restaurants and properties otherwise unavailable to most of the local population.

I didn’t have a lot of success taking pictures yesterday, though did capture glimpses of the widespread practice of head-carrying, especially by women balancing dish pails of bottled water and ice for selling to passing traffic – notice our driver reflected in the window:

That does not look good, by any stretch.

My crazy neighbor goes there fairly often for photography, some really crazy places, on his own.  His last two trips were to Ethiopia and Ghana.  He's about to go back to Algeria, but that's with some Italian friends.

We're thinking about South Africa.  We've visited Egypt a bit, it wasn't TOO bad, I'd go back.

He has some terrific photos and enters contests often, it's his hobby, in a major way.  He dropped $35 K on a new camera and lenses recently.

Turgay Uzer (@upgrademeforfree) • Instagram photos and videos


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmogwpuHeyE/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

unmanned immigration???

sounds like Texas