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Journal of African trips

Africa, spring 1999 part II

Agelasto
2004-05-21 18:00:16

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recognize cats, and
most any animal with four legs, to have a higher level of intelligence than two-legged
humans.

It seems that the Earth has redefined how a species evolves. The peoples of the Earth, in
a master stroke of silliness, have decided that the way to evolve is through the
construction of nation-states. This is a silly notion when it works best, but when it works
poorly, as in West Africa, it adds new meaning to the word stupid. One of my favorite
descriptors in the English language is the term worthless, an adjective for which there
seems to be an inordinate supply of appropriate nouns. Nation-state heads my list of such
nouns.

Now, there are numerous silly nation-states, such as Andorra, Luxembourg and the like,
but these national jokes have no aspirations to ever being more than what they are,
incorporated as countries for some higher purpose than nation-statehood, usually involving tax avoidance, smuggling or selling postage stamps. The nation-states of West
Africa really think of themselves as nation-states, valuing themselves as important because
they are microcosms of the world?s greatest nation-states (so they perceive), like France,
Britain or the USA. Among the most silliest and worthless of these West African entities
is surely a little place called The Gambia (?The? is part of its name, so I will refer to it as
TG.) TG is named for the 250-mile river which is its distinguishing feature because it runs
through the center of the 30-mile wide country. To say that TG is a postage-stamp sized
country really defames philately. But it?s not even the smallest country in Africa; there are
six smaller nation-states on the continent (actually off Africa since they are all islands).
Ever heard of the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoros, for example?).

From my perspective TG?s sole reasons ...