The Hunt for the “Real Africa”

So many travelers talk about the “real Africa,” you’d think it were an actual place.

According to these travelers, “real Africa” is obscure, only popping up in certain, often remote, destinations. Cape Town isn’t real Africa; Opuwo, an isolated town in northern Namibia, is.  Maputo (Mozambique) isn’t the real Africa; Lagos (Nigeria) is. Livingstone (Zambia) isn’t real Africa, but the villages just outside of it are.  Kruger National Park is real Africa, Sun City (South Africa) is not. If you spent the night in a small village in Swaziland, you had a truly African experience; if you hung out with a few local sculptures at a bar in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), you did not.