Africa, Almost

A short pause, an incredulous stare, and an answer that hit me. “Morocco doesn’t count.” To be honest, I don’t even remember who I was talking to, who had asked me whether I’d been to Africa, and whom I’d told about Marrakesh. I remember, however, the answer. Now perhaps my conversational partner was simply mired in ignorance — there’s always the chance — but it’s the type of ignorance that has spawned a blog entry (like that’s a first).

Allow me to digress for a moment with a language that has very little to do with most of Africa. One thing I find I like in Spanish is the difference between the two words: saber and conocer. Both verbs can be translated in English to mean “to know,” but saber is more for knowing a fact, while conocer is having a familiarity with something. I’m almost positive I’ve given a deeper significance* to the latter than it actually has in most Spanish-speaking minds, but I like trying to work out whether I really know a place in a conocer sense.

I believe the basis of the “Morocco doesn’t count” comment had something to do with the fact that having been to that particular country hasn’t necessarily given me an understanding of the rest of the continent. Marrakesh’s culture, much like I imagine other cultures of Northern Africa, resemble Middle Eastern cultures maybe even moreso than they resemble those in other parts of Africa. But what is it, really, in my American mind that I must encounter to consider myself in Africa? Huts? Lions? Black mambas the length of the Erie Canal? Must there be more villages than cities, more sun-dried fields than beaches?

I took this in Washington, D.C. Does that count?

Cape Town may have been closer to whatever elusive ‘real Africa’ element I missed before, but what about the massive European influence there? The same individual could’ve easily told me that South Africa, or at least Cape Town, ‘doesn’t count.’

So where is it that I must go in order to know (in the sense of conocer) Africa? Is it Occidental Africa? Or the Eastern Coast? What about the Serengeti? Virunga? One of the Congos, then? By the logic established above, anyplace that isn’t representative of all of Africa somehow doesn’t count, and in a brilliant, well-thought-out (and thus definitely not one that I came up with just now) solution to my dilemma, I present the Hub Plan. The Hub Plan sets forth that I should visit Africa by region in order to better — though likely not completely — conocer the continent as a whole. It will still involve more research, of course. I’ll need to know how many importantly distinct regions exist, where best to stay within each, and which locations within each are best to visit. This could take a very long time, but again, it’s a very large and diverse continent — what else was I expecting?

In conclusion, I have no way of clarifying what was meant by the ignorant (or genius?) conversationalist rendered anonymous by my memory (or lack thereof), but I have my own travel conscience with which to contend. I need to know more of Africa.

*In a footnote that will likely derail everything I typed in the second paragraph, yeah, most of the time when you’re asked if you conoces a certain place, you’re just being asked if you’ve been there, not if you have a deep, spiritual understanding of the location. But that doesn’t help me with the point I’m trying to make, so don’t read this.