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I'm amazed at how Vegas built up over a few years when everyone who goes there beats the House.

My Dad traveled to some West Africa and central Africa countries like during the 80s.  I remember him telling me that nobody painted anything or managed the landscape since the French liberated these colonies.    He has some unsavory memories. 

you don't have to go that far to take photos or drink beer

This is him at the "Immigration Office" between Botswana and Namibia.  He says it's pretty basic.  He's an interesting fellow and will be our guide in Istanbul in September.


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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:

I know you can't say but I'm going to guess it is either Guinea or Ivory Coast.

Balboa Island, Newport Beach 

I know you can't say but I'm going to guess it is either Guinea or Ivory Coast.

One of those yes. But none of those are the nation we’re spending the most time in. Not to be annoyingly secretive but I’m supposed to be interviewed at the end of this trip and I want to be able to say I didn’t reveal whereabouts.
 
Yesterday our driver (Kobi) arranges for us a visit to shopping market. To keep the hustlers at bay, Kobi connects us with a local guide name Yemi to mediate pricing the various merchandise we eventually buy.
 
On the drive there, the Know-It-All among our group (always wearing loud Hawaiian shirts) obnoxiously lectures us on “standing our ground” when haggling. “Whatever they ask you better talk their offer down to half that amount or walk away,” he demands.
 
Our group draws immediate attention not just in the market, but anytime we’re off the hotel property. That attention quickly turns to getting hustled for money, solicited for whatever the street venders might be hawking, and potentially getting surrounded by marginal crowds. We can’t go anywhere.
 
So it’s helpful to have Yemi mediate our market experience. Several of us know what we’re here to buy, including myself: a stack of postcards, an Africa-themed painting small enough to fit in my luggage, and a carved Christian cross of the kind that’s posted on the walls of many businesses and homes. I avoid haggling, willingly (over)paying their initially offers at a total of $60 in their currency.
 
As the lady among us takes the most time shopping, ultimately spending about $150 worth on dresses, the Know-It-All makes an obnoxious jerk of himself by aggressively haggling to the point of insulting shop owners. “It’s ok to let yourself get ripped off,” I tell him while the lady among us is fitted for dresses. “It’s not even about saving money. It’s about winning the interaction!” the Know-It-All insists. “I don’t think winning is the polite approach here,” I try to reason.
 
Yemi walks over, wanting to renegotiate items that the Know-It-All walked away from. The Know-It-All carries on his clownish haggling even more, blind to the better deals he’s offered. Yemi is as insulted as the shop owners. Resentment calms when, out of site, I tip Yemi ($15) for guiding us through the market.
 
On the ride back, passing by sights of overwhelming street poverty, it’s my turn to lecture. I emphasize to the Know-It-All that however much he thought he was getting overcharged is worth gladly (over)paying, like I did, because that dollar difference goes miles further here in the Third World than however much is saved in his First World. I hold off telling him how clueless, ungenerous, and unappreciative he comes across.
 
The Market: