Notes on Ghana

Published on by John Doe35 Comments

I spent 12 days in Ghana, specifically in Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, and Mole National Park. These are my notes, though this essay is more like Notes on Saudi Arabia with a bigger emphasis on the history of Ghana than my travel experiences.

Ghana has a reputation for being the “easy mode” of West African travel, in contrast to Nigeria being “hard mode.” Ghana speaks English, is a democracy, has been politically stable for 30+ years, has little ethnic tension, low crime, and is one of wealthiest per capita West African states. Altogether, this makes Ghana the (relative) success story of West Africa and I wanted to find out how that happened. A quick rundown of sources:

First, as mentioned in previous essays, Martin Meredith’s Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence is an amazing overview, and particularly useful for understanding Ghana’s first prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah.

Second, Jeffrey Herbst’s The Politics of Reform in Ghana, 1982-1991 is a lot less dry than it sounds, and is my main source for Ghana’s second key leader, Jerry Rawlings.

Third, I used a pair of interviews: Jerry Rawlings in 2015 and Corporal Matthew Adabuga in 2018, a former Rawlings bodyguard who wrote a tell-all memoir about Rawlings. Both interviews are fascinating and I highly recommend listening to them if you find the history here interesting, especially since Rawlings’s interview is obviously self-serving, and Adabuga’s claims are suspect, to say the least. Highlights include the (excellent) interviewer asking Adabuga, “do you take delight in killing?” and “why did you kill so many people?,” to which Adabuga responds at one point, “I have never killed anybody physically like that without any cause.”

Other smaller sources: The Legacy of J.J. Rawlings in Ghanaian Politics, 1979-2000, The Rawlings’ Factor in Ghana’s Politics: An Appraisal of Some Secondary and Primary Data, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way for Africa, a 1985 letter from the Ghana Congress of USA and Canada to the CIA, Ghana’s Foreign Policy Under Jerry Rawlings by Lucy Ansah, Kovsie Journals’s “a comment on frank gerits’ incorrect,” along with various Wikipedia entries and random articles I’ll link directly in the essay when relevant. Continue reading “Notes on Ghana” →

Notes on Mauritania

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I spent about a week in Mauritania, visiting the cities of Nouakchott, Nouadhibou, Zouerate, and a bunch of small towns over the course of multiple 10+ hour car rides and a train ride. As usual, these are my notes on my experiences and various rabbit holes.

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Notes on The Gambia

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I spent eight days in The Gambia, visiting Banjul, Serrekunda, Georgetown, and driving most of the length of this small country.

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Notes on Benin

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I travelled through Benin for about 12 days, visiting Cotonou, Porto Novo, Abomey, Ouidah, and Grand Popo. I spent a decent chunk of my time there writing about Nigeria, so I didn’t dig into Benin quite as much and this piece will be shorter than others.

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Notes on Nigeria

Published on by John Doe87 Comments

I want to thank Chris Quintero for all his help on my Nigeria/West Africa trip. If you’re interested in going to Nigeria, definitely check out his guide.

I spent 12 days in Nigeria, and saw the cities of Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, and Abeokuta. Even compared to my other travel writing, I have barely scratched the surface of Nigeria, but these are my notes on what I saw and various historical rabbit holes I went down.

My first big secondary source is Martin Meredith’s The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence, which gives a phenomenal overview of a huge topic with exactly the right amount of summary and detail.

My other big secondary source is Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa by Paul Kenyon which is narrower in scope, but somehow even better at storytelling history.

I also want to give a special thanks to the people who hosted me in Lagos and the person who connected me to them. The trip wouldn’t have been possible without them.

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Notes on Saudi Arabia

Published on by John Doe47 Comments

File:Saudi Arabia map.png - Wikimedia Commons

Edits – Various comments based on feedback.

In August, I spent a week in Saudi Arabia. I started in Jeddah, drove to Taif, drove to Abha, and then drove 600 miles to Riyadh. I wanted to go to Mecca and Medina, but as a non-Muslim, it’s haram (at least for part of Medina).

Compared to my other travel writings, this one has a lot more on the history, politics, and economics of its subject. Saudi Arabia has been one of my top travel destinations for years because it’s one of the most unusual countries in the world and it’s currently undergoing a massive transformation. Four years ago, despite possessing a per capita wealth level comparable to Western Europe, Saudi Arabia had:

  • Complete gender segregation, including forced gender separation in restaurants, mandatory dress codes for women, and a ban on women driving
  • Prohibitions on degenerate Western practices, including music concerts, movie theaters, and most advertisements
  • Enforcement of Sharia law by paramilitary religious police who could freely beat people with sticks

Today, all of this stuff is gone. Most Westerners could witness the change with their own eyes in 2019 when Saudi Arabia began issuing tourist visas for the first time. Other restrictions, including complete alcohol prohibition and a ban on any religious buildings besides Sunni mosques (there are a few Shia mosques), remain.

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Notes On The Balkans

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Pin on Travel-The Balkans / Balkan Peninsula

I spent almost two months traveling through the Balkans. In order, I went through:

  • Moldova
  • Romania
  • Bulgaria
  • Serbia
  • Kosovo
  • North Macedonia
  • Albania
  • Montenegro
  • Croatia
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Serbia again

I had already been to Greece and Slovenia, so I skipped them this trip.

This is too many countries for me to write a “Notes On” post for each of them (I started trying with Moldova, but stopped), so I combined it all into one big Balkans post. Given the many generalizations I make about a wide swath of people and countries, take my observations as sort-of-kidding-sort-of-serious, and generally more facetious than usual.

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Notes on Ukraine

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I spent most of April and some of May traveling around Ukraine, visiting the cities of Uzhgorod, Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odessa.

As with my other travels, I’ll write down thoughts and observations from my experiences, conversations, and research that I found interesting. I want to say upfront that I don’t think I have any brilliant insights on Ukraine or the war. If you consider yourself fairly unknowledgeable about the war (like I was before going to Ukraine), hopefully you’ll come away with a better understanding of the nature of the conflict and what it’s like on the ground.

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Notes on the Yucatan

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9 UNMISSABLE Things To Do In Riviera Maya, Mexico (2021 Update)

I spent eight days in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, primarily in and around the cities of Cancun, Valladolid, and Merida.

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Notes on the Dominican Republic

Published on by John Doe12 Comments

I spent eight days in the Dominican Republic, covering Santo Domingo (the capital), Puerto Plata, Sosua, and Jarabacoa. As with my other travel notes, I’ll try to avoid generic travel blogging stuff and focus on anything unusual I experienced or learned.

Dominican Republic | History, People, Map, Flag, Population, Capital, & Facts | Britannica

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