Friday, October 05, 2007

Travel update

I did look at some French-speaking African countries. Morocco is currently very popular with Europeans looking for something different (and cheaper). Here is one good Morocco blog by an American.

The main drawback is that these are very Islamic countries and although foreigners are left alone, a Moslem who converts to Christianity is not treated well there. (Since under Sharia the penalty for apostasy is death, I suppose they're making progress, technically.) Perhaps not coincidentally the LDS church does not have much of a presence there.

So we're going to leave these off our list. Besides the part about your religion making you a second class citizen, the church is also a support group of sorts, and when contemplating a drastic change like this it's nice to know that there will be some people there with whom you at least have religion in common.

Madagascar was the only French-speaking country that did have an LDS church presence. But it seems very, very third world. (One ISP I found touted as a selling point that their equipment only uses 25 watts! "Easy on batteries, generators, or solar panels!") Their recent history probably has something to do with that.

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