I have friends both black and white here in America who have exotic pets that if these were ‘owned’ by Africans or any other people, we would consider as “uniquely brave.” For example, a white friend of mine has a very big python snake in his house which he keeps as an exotic pet. I told him how in the world would he have such a thing in his house! I also have a white friend of mine, in fact a university of Kentucky graduate student. He has two baboons as his pets in his backyard. I am sure if he was an African, I would say, he must be uniquely brave to keep such animals as baboons as pets.

There is so much negativity about Africa and Africans, especially by the media which would like to make big bucks by telling stories which are out of this world, and they target Africa. Why? Africa has any natural resources, you name it, diamonds, gold, etc. If you have a computer, mobile phone, any electronics, you own, chips in there were made out of a mineral that comes out of nowhere else in the world, but Africa. Why the negativity about Africa? Well, simple. Those Americans who go to Africa make fortunes for being there, and, like you and me know, the West is very greedy, and they would not like everybody else to go there and see for themselves. So they make it sound nasty. They ‘doctor’ photos of Africa to look very unwelcoming, they take photos of the down and trodden Africans as representing Africa. Now those genuine Americans who go to Africa wonder where are all those places portraying Africa as terrible? All they see is greenery, traffic jams like in New York, skyscrapers, the Internet, people wearing business suits during business hours. nice families, nice universities, KFC, MacDonald’s, and so on.

Someone told me another reason that Africa is portrayed like that is because there are more intellectuals and well educated Africans in Africa that make Americans and other Western nations jealous. That could be true judging by the large number of African students taking PhDs in their fields compared to less Americans. So one wonders, taking out capitalism, and, by association, materialism, who is more educated. We Americans are so ignorant that we don’t even know much about our own country, the United States. Now that being the case, how can we know about Africa and the world?

Reminds me of dancing bears in India.

There, the people are poor and can’t turn to other work easily, so wild animals get tortured and chained to ‘dance’ for the tourists.

Corrupt officials won’t stop this – the only thing that will is if tourists stop giving money. Judging by some of the replies here, I guess there will always be some who think this kind of thing is ‘cool’ rather than desperately sad.

Given a free choice, my guess is the hyena would prefer to chew the guy’s leg off for supper.