a response to "world's worst places"

west point from the ducor roof

when i first saw morovia at #5 in recently published gadling blog post, “world’s worst places: top ten places you do not want to visit in 2012”, i indulged a moment of gloating… take THAT, friends in kinshasa. I am SO MUCH TOUGHER than I was six months ago in kathmandu. I even posted it to facebook along with my stock “expat in liberia” pictures of a jaunt to the roof of the ducor. i positively glowed with EAW-y self-congratulation. but when you think about it, the flawed and kinda neo-colonialist assumption underlying this whole post is that, from nepal to nicaragua, angola to afghanistan, the world is just a buffet of rugged travel adventures for those intrepid (and privileged) enough to taste of them; that the highest goal a nation could have in terms of development would be to make it appealing for tourists, instead of making it better for the people who actually, y’know, LIVE THERE. in one paragraph, it managed to conflate all of monrovia with west point, and everyone in west point with the idea of (“ew! gross!”) open defecation. it’s an almost elegant dehumanization of an entire country, if such a thing exists. and yes, it’s true that, except for the well off and those (like me) living in a rarified expat bubble, life can be pretty tough, and is definitely lacking in amenities like electricity and plumbing. but that doesn’t mean anyone gets to take 3.4 million people, and reduce their joys and sadnesses, cruelties and kindnesses, and all the complexity of human experience in between to an oversimplified narrative of anarchy and squalor that would make robert kaplan blush. and christ on a cracker…the vice guide to liberia is “great”?? no. no it’s not. i don’t mean to imply that the author is a somehow a bad guy. the introduction even seems to hint that the author wanted to make folks conscious of #firstworldproblems bias…but a “list” post? on the huff po travel blog? he should have known that was doomed to backfire.