[sangnoir]

> I envy this sense of adventure, but a lot of Africa is such a volatile place.

This generalization is so broad as to be useless (akin to "America is a racist, xenophobic place"). Africa is 54 countries and 1 billion people and countless cities and neighorhoods, painting with a broad brush is unhelpful. Only a handful of countries have active conflicts or instability, it is easy to avoid them on a trip such as this one.

[Edit] Here's a fun game that was featured on the Daily Show: see if you can you tell if a photograph was taken in Africa or the US[1]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHO1a1kvZGo

[pyre]

To be fair, this is about travelling across Africa rather than visiting a specific locale, that makes it more likely that you will need to pass through some of these "dangerous areas". Much as the other commenter here was mentioning getting robbed in Philly.

[sangnoir]

> To be fair, this is about travelling across Africa rather than visiting a specific locale

Africa is really, really huge - it has almost 4 times the landmass of the contiguous US. Avoiding specific locales is pretty easy.

[overcast]

Not when those places are the ones people want to be. Yes clearly driving out into the middle of the desert, or on top of the highest mountain, probably low risk from the populace.

[imgabe]

I think it's almost tautological that places with active conflicts going on are not places people want to be.

[overcast]

Sure, you can cherry pick it however you like. They also circumnavigated the entire continent in an old truck. Which means the likelihood of running into something not so pleasant, much greater.

[MarkMc]

When you are talking about a road trip around an entire continent, broad generalisations can be very useful. If two friends want to drive a truck to 20 countries, they will likely be much safer doing it in Europe than Africa - even with careful planning.

[sangnoir]

> they will likely be much safer doing it in Europe than Africa - even with careful planning.

Can you enumerate the dangers that the two friends will face in Africa - sudden malnutrition? If you are referring to armed conflict or the danger of being abducted by the local African warlord[1], then you might be happy to know that such dangers are highly localized and the high-risk areas easily avoided; after all, Africa is a large place (larger than the US, China and most of Europe. Combined[2].

1. Common trope

2. http://io9.gizmodo.com/africas-true-size-will-blow-you-away-...