Where on Earth?

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where a group conversation has suddenly swerved into mysterious territory, and for some reason you seem to be the only soul in the room who has not the foggiest about the subject in question? The conversation deepens, the participants begin interrupting each other in their growing excitement to have their points heard. Those who are being ignored begin showing signs of visible distress, stamping their feet and performing theatrical face-palms in an effort to draw attention. It has all the hallmarks of the most important debate since Darwin faced the church elders and suggested perhaps all was not quite as it seemed, and it looks set to continue long into the night.

Yet still you are baffled. Any hope of suddenly being released from your (self-diagnosed) amnesia fades, and your confusion expands with the fervour of the conversation. Your face is a blank canvas, your jaw is slightly ajar. And then, after an indefinite amount of time, you gain some presence of mind, gather yourself, and begin nodding vigorously and making deep, gravelly ‘mmm’ sounds. Until, that is, someone presents a point that seems to be unpopular with the rest of the group, in which case you shake your head slowly, make tutting sounds and take a couple of steps back, as if fearful that that person’s apparent stupidity could be contagious.

But what next? What happens when everyone has drained every last drop of their ocean of knowledge on the matter? Gradually, faces eager for fresh perspective will begin to point your way, that’s what. And now you have a serious dilemma. If you blag, they will sus you out immediately and you will be exposed as the ignoramus you are. If you pretend to faint, everyone’s in for a long and tedious night at A & E. If you yell: “To Hell with you all!” and charge for the door… well, just don’t do that.

Do this.

“Fascinating! Sound points all round! On another note, what are all your thoughts on Burkina Faso?”

Now the tables have turned. Some hapless chancer might venture something about a Bollywood actress, or a Middle-Eastern beach garment, but mainly you will be met with intrigued silence and possibly a couple of vigorously nodding heads.

This is because most people have never heard of Burkina Faso, which is quite extraordinary considering it is not only a country, but a country with a population of almost 16,000,000, which is more than the populations of Iceland, Cyprus, Fiji, Slovenia, Jamaica, Ireland and Norway combined. It also has one of the most pleasingly named – not to mention most unknown – capital cities in the world: Ouagadougou. If this is a word whose pronunciation you are approaching with the same cautiousness as you might a king cobra, fear not, for it is more than likely you’ve already gurgled it – ‘wagga-doo-goo’ – several times during the first six months of your life.

Precisely why  Burkina Faso – which, for the record, can be found squished between Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and The Ivory Coast – has eluded such vast swathes of general knowledge for so long is confusing at best. Even more confusing, however, is that there are many more like it; in fact, one appeared in the above sentence.

Benin. Can you honestly say you’ve heard of Benin, or would be able to point it out on a map without squinting first? Perhaps you have, perhaps you could. A quick survey of the My Destination office, and by extension a group of travel fanatics, showed only about 30% claiming knowledge of its existance – though it should be noted a couple of those indicated this with vigorous head nodding. None could locate it on a map.

Less contentious is Guinea-Bissau. No one’s heard of that. Or Mauritania for that matter, which we hasten to add is not to be confused with Mauritius.

If you have so far resisted the urge to leap into the world of Google Maps, do so now and you’ll see that all the countries mentioned thus far can be found in the north-western bulk of the African continent. You could, therefore, be forgiven for assuming that outside this region, your geographical knowledge will return to normal.

Alas.

Have you ever considered a holiday in Suriname? Thought as much. If you do, you’ll have to head over to South America, where you’ll find it tucked into a pocket of largely uninhabitable land in the north-east of the continent. With just 64,000 square miles to its name, it’s the smallest sovereign nation in South America, having gained independence from the Netherlands in 1975. The 500,000-strong population is extremely diverse, ethnically speaking, with the vast majority living in the lowland coastal regions in the north. The rest of the tropical country, which apart from the Atlantic is bordered by French Guiana, Brazil and Guyana,  is covered with the impenetrable rainforests of the Amazon.

If, however, the mere mention of tropical climates makes you feel itchy, you might want to consider jetting off to Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked country enveloped by the mountains of Central Asia, where the temperatures are decidedly more biting. Kyrgyzstan’s rather charming – not to mention ironic – claim to fame is that it is the least-known country in the world. This claim becomes quite extraordinary when we take into account it covers almost 200,000 square miles of land, which places it in the top third of the world’s countries by size. And even more extraordinary when we consider the natives’ penchant for kok boru, for quite how this odd but massively popular little game has gone unnoticed, or indeed adopted, by the wider world is a puzzle in its own right. The sport is very similar to football, with two halves of 45 minutes and a fifteen minute break in between, and everything is supervised by a referee. The only three minor differences are that instead of running, the players are mounted on horses; instead of kicking a ball, the players lasso and launch a headless goat; and instead of eleven players on each team, there are ten.

Not a fan of horses? Fine, suit yourself. Go to Djibouti. There aren’t many horses there. In fact, there isn’t much of anything there, unless you count desolate barrenness, in which case there is rather a lot. It can be found on the east coast of Africa, cradled in the fragile arms of Ethiopia and Somalia, and like its neighbours, is poor.

Unlike its neighbours, however, Djibouti is stable and relatively safe to travel in. These two characteristics – poor yet stable – are common to all the countries featured in this article, and go some way to explaining why they are so unknown. Without money, tourism is stifled, meaning less people visit and, in turn, spread the word. Without bad things happening, for want of a better phrase, the world’s media aren’t particularly interested as there is nothing particularly gripping to report, which means these countries don’t find their way into our collective consciousness. To use the journalistic aphorism, good news is no news.

But it is good news nonetheless. Suriname, for example, has a freer press than both the UK and the USA. Burkina Faso is surrounded by some of the most troublesome countries in the world, but has managed to retain an enviable degree of calm and is a very safe place to travel, and its people are famous for their warm hospitality. The same can be said for the people of Kyrgyzstan. Djibouti is an oasis of tranquillity between two notoriously chaotic nations.

In short, this means that all these countries are begging to be discovered, and can be done so with relative peace of mind.

The great travel writer Paul Theroux once remarked: “The traveller is the greediest kind of romantic voyeur, and in some well-hidden part of the traveller’s personality is an unpickable knot of vanity, presumption and mythomania bordering on the pathological. This is why a traveller’s worst nightmare is not the secret police or the witch doctors or malaria, but rather the prospect of meeting another traveller.”

If you can in any way relate to this theory, you’ve found something of a solution in this article. If not, at the very least you now have some useful get-out clauses when faced with a situation where a group conversation has suddenly swerved into mysterious territory, and for some reason you seem to be the only soul in the room who has not the foggiest about the subject in question…

Bon Voyage.

Will Jones, My Destination
February 2012

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