I was thinking about Africa while listening to a guy talking on the radio about his experience there. He challenged the "naive assumption that a continent comprising 54 independent countries, encompassing more than 2000 languages, 3000 different ethnic groups, and an overall population of over a billion, can be one monolithic culture." 

The magnitude of the area any continent comprises is staggering, but what I got from the guy's remarks was how that kind of prejudicial assumption is very much like presuming the Americas before colonization also were culturally monolithic.

A place - any place - becomes 'news' mainly when something truly horrible happens. Genocide is sure-fire: Rwanda; Terrorism: Egypt. But the reality is much less polarizing: populations of people who, like people anywhere, are doing what they can to get on with their lives, live without violence in places where interracial life, tolerance, is a matter of survival. Where ordinary people meeting ordinary people in townships and cities recognize that there is a need for civic virtue.

Africa is a continent with many natural resources, colonized many times by many cultures. It still suffers horrifically from the effects of colonization. And although it it has that in common with the West, where else in the world is ongoing re-colonization so epidemic?

On average, Africans earn far less than their Western counterparts but there, like here, the real problem is not the actual GDP but rather, the distribution of wealth. Seeing, all over Africa, super-affluence living side by side with third world impoverishment should make western travelers feel right at home. Unless, of course, s/he hasn't yet ever taken a really good close look at the homeland's true conditions.

The reason millions die of diseases in Africa speaks of a shortage of childhood immunizations, a lack of basic health care. With normal vaccines, anti-malarials, standard hygienic precautions - condoms included - people can be generally safe and not fear contracting disease.

Ask yourself why measles is still a scourge, practically a death sentence, in Africa? Ask why 50% of the children in central Africa are either HIV positive, have full-blow AIDS, or have been orphaned by parents who died of it?

The wild animals of Africa are much more in danger from humans than humans are by them. Africa is daily becoming increasingly urbanized and populated, demands on the once-abundant natural resources has led to decimation of the animal population.

Africa today has more history than animals: it is, after all, where human history begins.  

So said the guy who was going on about Africa. I wonder how many people in North America are able to take Africa seriously? 

Discovering Nikos Salingaros is akin to discovering an ocean, a continent, even a galaxy. His response to the city as an evolutionary phenomenon is not Soleri's although there are some similarities. They did not know each other personally: never discussed such issues, much less debate them. 

In a nutshell, Salingaros proposes choices humanity can make, while also proposing that humanity can make choices about its architectural decision-making. His reference point architecturally is Christopher Alexander, whose book, A Pattern Language, has been an essential reference for architecture students since its first printing. 

I wish they'd gotten to meet in person, known each other as men know men, while both were still drawing air from the same planetary atmosphere. Their cultural individuality and unique character distinctiveness notwithstanding, I suspect they might have been pleased to discover their commonalities.