Africa: What 99% of Travel Vloggers Won’t Tell You!
Today, I was watching videos about helpful strategies for living abroad, like how to stay in your (African) country of choice for good, the best visas, and things like that.
Then I saw a critic leave their opinion and it went something like this…
“The one thing that 99% of these YouTubers that are using fear tactics to get us to Africa, is they rarely if ever tell you about the political climate, tribal wars, or any type of unrest on where they are.”
And I know for a fact that we’ve never told you all stuff like that and it got me wondering.
Why don’t we?
Oh, I remember.
Because we don’t live in those countries.
So there’s nothing like that to report on that front.
In general, we all definitely tell you about the political climate and levels of corruption we have seen or that’s recorded in that country in question.
In some countries, it’s as little as giving a security guard 5,000 Tanzanian shillings (less than $2) to help them buy some local fried chicken with fries. They don’t make a lot of money and in our experience they’re totally non-violent, just asking for a favor. If we don’t pay it’s fine, they let us go.
Or it can be a much larger problem. But it all depends on where you live and where you and your family feel the safest.
My family definitely avoids trouble as best we can and stay up on the local trends, cultural norms, and world news – in moderation.
But know this – we won’t ever knowingly lead you astray. If we know something that can help you, whether its a warning or a resource then we will share it.
It’s up to everyone to design the environment best for them and their family – this should be a given, but for some I guess it’s not.
We really do have the power to create our lives, we don’t have to listen to what the haters and naysayers tell us.
Years ago, my family listed out the things we desired most about the first African country we wanted to live in, and at the time, those wants and needs added up to us living in Rwanda for 9 months.
You get the BEST of me when…?
That’s that question we each had to answer for ourselves if our move was going to be successful – well one of the questions anyway.
To help us answer that question, we made an outline that included:
- The food we wanted
- Our ideal climate
- Perfect community setting (expat region where our friends lived)
- Medical care
We listed a total of 9 options to consider which you can get in our free ebook.
Our advice? Get alone in a quiet and peaceful place away from everyone else – relax. Be intentional, and become the Designer of your world.
Record your wants and desires for your ideal country with a pen and paper or the voice memo app on your phone. Just capture it and use it to guide you toward the perfect location for you and your family. You can even make it a fun family project!
And on perfection – look, no place is perfect for everyone, but any place can be perfect for you, or the next best thing if you know what you want.
The truth is, a lot of people (not you guys I hope) are afraid to move abroad and they’re especially afraid of the continent of Africa. They have allowed Western media and propaganda to frighten them away.
Meanwhile, the same Westerners come to Africa and (some of them) exploit it in ways great and small, and the rest of us are none the wiser.
My dad likes to say, “You’ll find what you’re looking for if you look hard enough.”
It’s his spin on Christ’s quote, “Seek and ye shall find.”
It’s true.
The Algorithm Is Your Friend
Over the weekend, I was scrolling Instagram when a new travel account crossed my feed. It was a video of a Black family of five sharing the 28 countries they visited in 2023 in rapid succession!
You read that right – 28 countries in one year!
But check this out, I wasn’t following them, and I’d never seen them before. So how did this information find me?
The algorithm.
Seek and ye shall find.
Whatever you look for online, the algorithm will help you find it – good or bad.
Almost 3 years ago my family started planning our exit from the U.S. to find something different abroad. We’d never really watched many videos or read articles about living abroad – traveling and vacationing maybe – but not living.
We started out on YouTube to see how these people had done it. One video turned into 5 and then that turned into a few dozen. Before we knew it we were down a rabbit hole for months on end.
YouTube and Google alerts kept pouring in every time a new study about visas came out, healthcare options for retirees, investment opportunities and on and on.
We were looking for all the ways we could thrive outside of America, ideally somewhere in Africa. And you know what?
The algorithm helped us.
The next thing we knew we were getting affordable health care when we got sick from doctors who actually listened to us.
The next thing we knew we were losing weight and full of energy from eating healthier and fresher local food with little to NO GMO in it.
And next thing we knew we were hosting movie nights in our new house in Kigali, Rwanda with our friends!
The next thing we knew we were regularly enjoying fresh mountain air and a warm climate that didn’t hurt my dad’s joints.
It’s possible for you too.
What you focus on gets BIGGER (also my dad).
So now I get why so many are afraid to venture out. They’re only researching the scary and terrible aspects of living abroad anywhere on Earth, and then the critics seek out an audience to share their fear with the rest of us.
Really they’re just pushing their terror onto us.
And all the while we’re trying to affirm your suspicious that there’s beauty, safety, and opportunity abroad if you know where to look.
And you don’t have to look very far.
You found us after all. 😉
Write your vision. Map out what you want. Go out and live your best most epic life abroad.
Thanks for reading!
~ Josiah & the Bradley Family