The Volunteer

A villager is stuck at the bottom of a dry well.  There is no way to climb out.  His situation is desperate.  He cries for help.

An NGO worker from the capital hears his cries for help.  He peers into the well and sees the helpless villager.  "Can you help me get out?" the villager asks.  The NGO worker thinks he has a solution.  He throws money down into the well, and then walks off.

The next day the villager remains stuck at the bottom of the dry well.  He continues to cry for help.  A missionary hears his cries and arrives at the well.  He stares down into the darkness at the poor villager.  "I need someone to help me out," pleas the villager.  The missionary is sure he has the solution.  He throws a bible down into the well, and walks off.

By the third day the villager is losing hope, but continues his cries for help.  A Peace Corps volunteer arrives at the well.  He looks at the helpless villager.  "Please, I need help!" the villager demands.  The Peace Corps volunteer does not know what to do.  There is no way to pull the villager out of the well.  He thinks for a moment.  Then, he throws himself into the well.

Once he has made himself comfortable next to the villager at the bottom of the well he realizes "God help me, I am broke and have no idea what I'm doing."

Africa?

I am about to leave to "do" Peace Corps Morocco.  Having recently been in Mali, West Africa, friends ask me "oh, are you excited to go back to Africa?"  The question throws me off because of the word 'back' and the word 'Africa'.  The word 'back' throws me off because I am not going back to where I was at all.  Africa is a continent, not a neighborhood.  To say that I am going back would be like a European visiting Mexico City for a summer and then going to Quebec a year later expecting to run into the same Mexican friends.  The word 'Africa' throws me off because I forget that Morocco is a country in Africa.  There is snow in Morocco.  There are Mediterranean beaches.  There are no elephants, or zebras, or lions, or grizzly bears, like there are in the rest of Africa.  Moroccans are not black people.  They speak Arabic.  They're Muslim.  They are nothing that our stereotype of Africa says they should be.

But the crazy thing is, Morocco is as much in Africa as any other country on that big landmass.  An area as massive as the continent of Africa carries immense cultural diversity.  It is impossible to point out one country and say "that is the real Africa."  Therefore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying that Moroccans are Africans. 

However, two terms exist that divide Africa in two: North Africa (eg. Morocco) and Sub-Saharan Africa (eg. Mali).  Like all regional terms, defining them is difficult, and determining their boundaries even more so.  Sub-Saharan Africa is suppose to refer to countries below the Sahara, but the term is loaded with other meanings, and countries like Sudan (light green) can't decide what side they want to play on.  These are the countries south of the Sahara:
 

Is the Sahara really so big to split a continent in two?  Look at the climate map below.  "Holy shit," you might say, "there is an enormous desert in Africa!  I mean, that thing is massive!  How did the first humans even get out of Africa?  Egypt looks scr- oh wait, that blue thing must be a river.  But damn, Libya looks totally effed.  There is no way that any human south of the desert has anything in common with humans north of the desert."

Now here are maps of Islam in Africa and Arabic in Africa.  Whoa!  They spread way beyond the Sahara!  Looks like the Sahara wasn't mighty enough to stop the flow of cultural exchange/displacement.  Suddenly, North Africa includes several more countries.  And Sub-Saharan Africa needs to change its name to Sub-Sahelian Africa or Sub-Semitropical Africa.  It's almost like you could just call the entire north half of the continent a part of the Middle-East.  Or call it the South-West Middle-East.  That might be confusing.  See how hard it is to define and name regions?

So where does North Africa end and Sub-Saharan Africa really begin?  Where the desert starts?  Where the desert ends?  Where people stop speaking Arabic?  Where people stop praying to Allah?  Where people become black?  Where you see the first elephant?

More importantly, how necessary is it to divide Africa into two?  Just because Europeans used to be very familiar with Mediterranean Africa and had no idea what was going on beyond that doesn't mean we need to maintain the division, right?  Or maybe Western ties with North Africa and the Arab world are unique enough that it would be impossible to think of Africa as a whole, or 1,000,000 mini regions?  Notice how I'm all questions and no answers?  Even that last sentence was a question!  Regional geography is hard.

I've learned something though.  Take a look at Mali and Morocco in the Maps (Morocco is top-left and Mali is the big butterfly shaped one inbetween Mauritania and, oh forget it.  Look it up).  They are kinda near each other, and Islamic, and Mali even speaks some Arabic.  Not to mention both were French colonies and use French as an official language.  Maybe I am "going back to Africa."  And yes, I am "excited to be."