Dumelang

[wwidsith]

Botswana is one of the great development success stories of Africa, with a GDP growth higher than even the Asian tiger economies.  And it really shows.  The roads are all paved, there is a sense of infrastructure, tap water is drinkable, people are well educated and ambitious. It almost doesn't feel like Africa at all, except that everywhere there

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[weofodthignen]

Actually, except being able to see the edge of town, that's how I felt about Reykjavík. Of course I was there in '79, and it's continued to absorb most of the population of the rest of the country since then, but there wasn't much there there, as someone famously said about LA. With far less reason. LA has a downtown - R'vík has a couple of vaguely open spaces and a duckpond. You can miss the parliament, it's so small, and both the university and that abominable white church are in suburban-looking parks. There are a few shops and lots of little houses, much of it with tin roofs and clapboards. Back then the newest stuff was wool shops for the tourists, and the hotels were all small too (and disconcerted when I tried to eat in one of their dining rooms). Akureyri feels like a little town and has the well kept wooden houses that usually signal age in northern Europe; turns out that's because it's a Danish town. R'vík feels like a nomad camp that got permanentized.

Now of course it will turn out you have been there in the past 5 years and they now have high-rises :-)

M