Travelling in North Africa

I'v been reading a book by an American women, Nina  Sovich called "To the Moon and  Timbuktu". It's a story of a woman's perspective travelling in North Africa, a journey in which she try's to resolve her conflicting  desire to pull away from the cloying conformity of Paris and her ambivalence to her containment within her marriage to a Frenchman.

The description of her living and travelling amongst people who in many ways are the antithesis of her upbringing, the men traditionally machismo, the women bonding in their femininity. Gender role play, each living a parallel existence, is fascinating.

A description by her when she was out one morning, caught my attention as being the curse of Africa.
I quote :-
Then we enter the old colonial quarter. The houses are beautiful, pale yellow bungalows with terracotta roofs and floor to ceiling windows,and wooden shutters to keep out the heat.
Most are falling apart which adds to the melancholy air. Sheep wander amongst the ruins and creeping vines burst through the fallen roofs. Squatters have pitched burlap tents and planted vegetable gardens in the front lawns of the formally grand houses. Children chip away at the plaster walls with sharp metal sticks. A few properties have been put to good use and turned into nurseries run by women who sell tomatoes and Mellon vines, but few if any of the houses are still inhabitable. By the river French expats have resorted some bungalows and those are truly lovely.

 

I'm about to mention this when Amadou (her guide) makes an angry motion toward one of the houses and says with bitterness, "The French. They control everything in this country".

This is symptomatic of Africa. A blame game is always to hand with well meaning but misguided people wishing to make excuse after excuse for the undeniable misuse of assets simply because they didn't fit the pattern of life which the indigenous people feel ancestral and to which they cling irrespective of the cost.