Christina Lamb, the UK Sunday Times’ chief foreign correspondent, recently went on a ‘holiday’ that was described as a ship cruise around the ‘Unspoilt Wilds of Southwest Africa’. It was sold to her (and her husband) as a luxury 13-night cruise starting at the Congolese port of Pointe Noire and then moving upwards with stops along the way.
They had copious amounts of champagne and saw gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants, sea turtles and old slave markets. At one point, the Congolese Prime Minister, Collinet Makosso, even joined them aboard the ship for one night. To save you any suspense, she and her husband made it to the end of the trip safe and sound and he even managed to celebrate his 60th birthday on one of their stops. She’s a decent and experienced foreign correspondent so the full piece is worth reading if you’re interested.
But the thing that made me chuckle was this map included in the piece with all the places they stopped during the cruise:
There has been a war going on in Southern Cameroun for a few years now so their decision not to stop there is perhaps explained by that. (They stopped in Togo where her husband celebrated his birthday even though its not shown on the map as a point).
And Nigeria? That can only be explained by what we might refer to as Nigerian Exceptionalism. Or to put it in the language of social media — Nigeria is not a joke to anybody.