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Premium: Josh Is In West Africa! · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  G'day humans. So I am in West Africa. As you do, as you do with April, you know,
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  every April, I'll have come to West Africa, so can up the sun. That's not true. West Africa's
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  fight. Well, I mean, where do you even begin in describing this trip so far? I'm sitting
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  in a hotel room in. It's the first time I've had a cold air conditioned room with Wi-Fi.
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  So now I have the opportunity to share some of my first observations with you. We've
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  been here almost a week. And this is a part of Africa that is not, this is not South Africa.
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  You know, this is not the Africa that has an infrastructure for tourism and has things
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  for you to see. This is the Africa that's just going about its own damn business and
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  doesn't give a shit whether you come or not at this point in time yet. It's, I haven't
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  seen a single McDonald's or 7-11 or something, which might sound obvious, but if you've
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  traveled much through the developing world in places like Thailand and, you know, India,
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  and you're familiar with a sort of developing world country that kind of rhymes a bit with
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  what we're familiar with. And I imagine not having been the places that other other countries
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  in Africa, which are more like that, which are more amenable to openness towards the
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  outside world, kind of understand what travelers want and need, know how to do an Airbnb, have
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  some level of credit card provisions, have various air-conditioned convenience stores with
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  the sorts of things that middle-class people like. Not that here. None of that here. And
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  it's fantastic. It is absolutely incredible. It's one of the first times in my life since
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  I guess I was backpacking around Southeast Asia in my late teens and early 20s, which
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  is, let's face it, going back two decades now, that I've had the experience of being
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  in places. And back then, even back then, you had to really stretch. I mean, we had to
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  go into the mostest parts of Laos to find villages that were essentially completely untouched
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  by tourism and have unfortunately now been ruined. You're welcome. You're welcome for
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  being the tip of that spear. Now they're full of, you know, they're full of bed and breakfasts,
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  full of Israelis smoking weed and drinking a lot of beer and party. Nothing wrong with
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  that. Just not exactly the vibe that I was looking for on this trip. The vibe I was looking
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  for on this trip. How did this come about? Everyone's saying, by the way, I'm not going
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  on the television show. I'm a celebrity. Get me out of here. This is not what this is.
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  I've received a number of messages as has my husband when people have seen like an
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  Instagram story of me and some random African airport. They're like, oh, congratulations,
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  Josh. I didn't know you were on I'm a celebrity. Get me out of here. Because obviously, there's
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  no other reason why one could be interested in understanding or appreciating the massive
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  variety of African cultures, except to go on a reality television show. So thank you
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  for that, that nod of faith in my own credibility and adventurousness. So no, I'm not on I'm a celebrity
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  get me out of here. I'm actually doing this voluntarily. Why? You say, Josh, you say there
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  are so many places you can go in this world. You could be sitting at my time at an infinity
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  pool in Bali. When you're doing a backpacking around the dusty streets of some African
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  hellhole. I'll say on behalf of my West African friends don't call the hellhole to begin
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  with. They don't appreciate that. I learned that the very first day. No, I didn't. That
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  would be rude. The reason is that during the pandemic, cast your mind back to the long
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  days of the lockdown, especially if you're in Australia in Sydney during the 100 plus
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  day lockdown in 2021 or in Melbourne during the 7 billion day lockdown that Dan Andrews
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  imposed for about 25 years. My thoughts and prayers with you. Then during those dark days,
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  I was chatting with an old buddy of mine who lives abroad, lives in Europe. We were
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  saying holy mother of God, when this thing's over, I just want to go somewhere totally
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  random, completely off the beaten track. Just go backpacking like we used to when we were
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  in our teens and early 20s. We used to go around Indonesia and India on various misbegotten
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  trips with no particular plan, just to soak up the differentness of it all. When there's
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  no more lockdowns and when there's no more threat of viral infection, life threatening
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  viral infection, because there are lots of viral infections that one can get here, which
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  I've had as my toilet will attest to, although it could be bacterial, I'm sure. Anywho,
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  then there's no longer a threat of this particular respiratory viral infection doing us any
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  harm. Let's go to a place and just lick everything dirty. There's just inhale other people's
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  breath, maybe patch a lot of people, give them a big old tongue kiss, random strangers
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  in the street, lick telephone poles, lick the ground. Just ingest as many dirty germs as
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  we can, in the glorious knowledge that it's probably not going to kill us. We thought about
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  places we could go Colombia was considered for a while. Going back to India was considered
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  for a while. That's so big. It's the whole universe in itself. You could do 100 trips
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  to India and never see the same type of thing. Except for Indians, you'd probably see
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  if you were them. Be a weird part of India, wouldn't it? If there were no Indians there,
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  you go, what's this corner of India? They go, wow, this is the corner of India where
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  there are only Texans. I didn't know there was a state in India where there's only Texans.
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  They're saying, oh, yeah, we've been here since 1862, not in India and inside. With the
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  exception of that fictional Indian state that I've just invented, there aren't many places
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  in India where you can go where there aren't Indians. Let's go somewhere where there are
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  lots of not Indians that are the types of people. For example, say Africans because we haven't
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  done a lot of Africa, not real Africa. I mean, not to be racist, but is North Africa
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  real Africa? If someone says, I've just been to Africa and you go, really, where? And
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  they go Egypt. Don't you feel a little bit calm? Well, that, well, I mean, I suppose.
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  Oh, I went to Morocco. Well, yeah, all right. Technically, technically, you went to Africa.
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  You didn't go to the real Africa. Well, I'm in the real fucking Africa, another
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  fuckers. This is the real thing. This is the real deal. So what's it, what's it like? The,
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  it's much more colorful in terms of people's dress and much friendlier and much more relaxed
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  than I'd thought outside of the cities. And oh, I should mention where West Africa is.
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  So West, what I mean by West Africa is if you picture the continent, you know, how it's
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  got the big jutty out bit on the top Western half, like it's kind of got a big boob on the
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  West before it goes down towards the bottom. That strip of bottom of the boob that goes
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  jutting out East West, that has a run of countries, Nigeria, Benin, Togo into Ghana,
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  and then Ivory Coast and around that. And those have quite a beautiful coastline, much
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  of that stretch, which is actually facing south, if you think of it. So it's not running
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  East West. So West Africa is that little, that little sort of stretch onto the boob. So
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  with the exception of the big cities, which are, oh, I don't have huge experience in many
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  of them, but I've been to two so far. Dirty, incredibly dirty, incredibly industrial,
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  incredibly smoggy. Some of them have huge trucks, spewing diesel fumes all over you, open
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  fetted sewer, all over the streets, just what you would imagine a developing world.
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  Hellhole, should we use the word Hellhole again, to look like. But that's sort of the rarity
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  because a lot of the population lives in towns. And so hopping along the coast from village
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  to village along what is really an idyllic blast of bright blue ocean, bright yellow sand,
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  some trees, fatched huts, and zero tourists, and zero tourist infrastructure, is kind of mind-boggling.
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  And the site at sunset, as you walk through the dusty streets of a town, seeing little kids
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  in their beautiful, bright uniforms walking along the streets, some who look like they're
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  as young as three or four literally. I don't know where they go, but they'll just be walking
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  home by themselves. It's one of those, like, I got to pinch myself and go, where am I?
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  And they have this sort of friendly reserve because I mean, imagine what me and my buddy
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  look like as we're walking down these streets. I mean, I kind of imagine what the locals
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  think we're doing here. Why are they here? Why are they in our little town? What do they
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  want to see? What's here? But I guess we sort of do look like superstars. I mean, we do,
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  don't we? I mean, I'm an adonus. Let's face it, of striking beauty. And we certainly look
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  at a place. So when one local kid, for example, has the gumption to break the wall between us,
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  and I'm always extremely gregarious anyway. So I'm always saying Bonjour to everybody,
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  oh, these are French speaking countries where I'm not just saying Bonjour to be pretentious.
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  That's the way they say hello here. And I'm fluent in French, so it makes things easier
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  to break the ice. When a child starts responding to that in a way that's positive,
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  then all of a sudden they kind of unleash this dam or this dyke and you have like a flowing river
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  of goodwill and other kids come running up. They want to pull out their phones and take photos
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  with you. And yeah, we quite a few of them have smartphones. They may not even have electricity.
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  They don't have sewage. There are little kids shitting in the streets and they have smartphones.
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  And you know, they'll come up and they'll, and yesterday we spent about 15, 20 minutes before
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  we had to drag ourselves away because word got around that we were doing selfies with some of the
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  kids in a local village that we were passing through. And they all come running up. Some of them in
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  colorful school uniforms, some of them wearing that kind of, I don't know, African third world
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  combination of a cheap rip-off like soccer polo shirt with an Emirates or Qatar Airways logo
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  emblazoned across the front and Adidas pants and like flip flops with socks on.
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  You know, so those are the gangsters and they come up with a certain swagger. And when you take
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  the selfie with them, they give the self, they flip the bird to the to the to the camera,
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  like as if they're better than you. But the moment you start actually engaging with them and
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  teasing them a little bit and pushing back, they melt and open up and actually a kind of star
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  struck somehow that they're, is that they're with someone from who, who hails from afar and looks
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  like people in movies to. So yeah, I guess it's as exotic for a lot of the people we're meeting
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  as it is for us. Other initial observations, it's hard to get to, it's hard to get to West Africa,
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  it's from Australia at least. From Europe, my friend was coming from Europe and he was like,
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  well, it's not that hard, you can get a flight. You know, there's a fair, there's a reasonable
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  amount of lift. You can certainly go through Ethiopia, Ethiopia, Ethiopian Airlines has,
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  has quite a lot of large footprint globally. Not, I mean, Africa's massive. So even to get from
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  Ethiopia, Ethiopia Airlines hub in Addis across to the West is like a six hour flight, just a
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  pop from one side across to the other. Nonetheless, that's the way it's often done. So my,
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  my friend was googling about one of the flights from Milan to Addis. And the flight number is
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  flight 737 from Milan to Addis. Now, if you want to test it, you can get out your old smartphone
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  there and you can enter into Google, Ethiopia Airlines 737. Are you a good student of history?
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  Are you a good student of aviation disasters? 737 in addition to being the flight number of,
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  one of these Ethiopia Airlines flights also happens to be the model of aircraft that crashed in one
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  of the most horrendous and horrific air disasters in recent times, which was the 737 max crash when
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  Boeing created this Turkey of the plane that, that drive it, drove itself into the ground and
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  plowed it to the ground, annihilating everybody on board and vaporizing them a few years ago.
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  Now, when that happens, it's common courtesy that the airline changes the name of the flight.
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  That was a flight from Addis to Nairobi and it was flight 302 and they've changed the flight
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  number that that flight number no longer exists because they don't want people, you know,
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  looking at flight and go, oh, I'm on flight 302. Holy shit, that's the one that crashed. So they
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  just changed the number of the flight. What they neglected to do was change the flight number 737.
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  So that was heartening just to be reminded of that, especially as I was flying in a 737 max on
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  Ethiopian Airlines from Addis Ababa to Kodonu, the capital of Benin. And that was fun. I mean,
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  even just transiting, you know, Addis Ababa, this huge Ethiopian airport was interesting.
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  As you're barreling down the road, and I've got to say Ethiopian Airlines is a great airline if
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  you had the opportunity to fly them. They're fine. They're not, it's not, they're not Air India or
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  some horrendous, you know, developing world shithole, shithole airline. They are, so you're barreling
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  down the runway in Addis and just as you're about to reach takeoff speed on the side of the runway
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  lying on the grass is the burnt out fuselage of a crashed passenger liner. It's just sitting
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  there like like to remind you, I guess, of what's possible at this most risky moment in your flight.
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  It's a nice touch. Are they using it as like a memorial or a museum or something?
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  Personally, I'd move it, I'd move it a few hundred meters away, so it's not right there as you're
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  taking off. The boarding process was great. He says with a slight ironic
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  rye smirk, you get the gate number and I came down reasonably late from the lounge and it's
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  like half, about half an hour before the flight's supposed to leave, so boarding should be winding
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  up at that moment. It's always impossible. There are certain airlines especially in the developing
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  world who have ridiculous boarding times where they claim that the flight boards 90 minutes before
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  departure and closes 60 minutes before departure, so all the idiots who believe that chop really early
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  and then have to sit by the gate. It's just a way of hurting passengers and having them ready
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  and making them not cut it too fine. I, being a seasoned traveler, completely ignore all such
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  requests and just walk down when I know that I know the gate's not going to close until 10 minutes
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  before the flight is due to leave, so I go down half an hour before it is madness. It's mayhem.
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  It's not just a single gate. What there is is a departure hall that you come down into on an
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  escalator which contains about eight gates in a long stretch with big windows on the side which
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  lead us to buses and the buses will take you out to the plane and there's a gate area which you
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  can enter which is just before the door to go out to the buses and outside of that gate area,
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  there's an area to wait, the waiting area. The waiting area is so jam-packed with human beings,
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  you can't even shuffle through it. It's just a solid block of African bodies.
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  So I spot a, what looks like a nun or something. A little, she looks like she's got gumption.
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  You know, you can sometimes tell. You can sometimes just tell that a human being knows their shit.
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  And I was like, I reckon that nun knows what she's doing. So I get in her wake. You know,
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  I'm like a race car just going into the slipstream of another race car. Then I just hide behind this
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  little four foot ten African nun as she's powering, she is powering, man. They're a huge black man
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  who just part. She is moses with the river. And I'm in her wake. I'm one of the disciples
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  just crossing across. And we get to the, we get to my gate. And there's nobody, there's nobody
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  in the actual gate area.