Eritrea

Regardless of my interest in geography, history and social issues, I have to admit that my knowledge about Eritrea was pretty low. I knew the basis: Horn of Africa, independent after Italian rule and a war against Ethiopia, an "Italian style" capital, and well, what sadly you have to assume about mainly any African country, it's poor.

It seems like the second biggest group of refugees in the current humanitarian crisis are Eritreans, for example the shocking refugees camp that existed between last summer and this summer in central Paris under one of those beautiful overground metro tracks was basically populated by Eritreans, Sudanese and Ethiopians. So this woke up my interest in the country and made me go in search of some information.

It's very complicated to get a full idea of how the situation is there. The vision that most western media and governments promote is that Eritrea is a very poor and horrible repressive state. This article and this BBC documentarystand on that side. On the contrary, I found 2 fascinating documentaries, "A nation in isolation" and "Behind the Crisis"", that portrait a quite better image. Probably there's truth on both parts. On one side the goverment has made the economy, the health and educational systems improve and move forward, but is paranoid about dissidents and rules with an iron fist. Well, in a continent where hunger, AIDS and lack of education are so common, overcoming them at the expense of some personal freedoms does not seem such a bad deal to me...

I'll try to continue to learn about the country, cause apart from this intriguing/worrying political situation, there are some facts that make it quite interesting, for example:

• Roughly half of the population is Christian and half of the population is muslim and they live together without friction. Churches and Mosques stand close to each other without a problem.
• There are 9 main ethnic groups in the country, and again, there seem to be no conflicts among them.
• Asmara is a sort of masterpiece of Italian modernist architecture.
• Assab, the city with probably the most horrible weather in the planet (almost no rain, annual mean average temperature of almost 31 degrees and very high humidty. Notice that this contrasts with Asmara, that has rather pleasant climate.
• During their heroic fight for independence against Ethiopia, the Eritreans were considered the best guerrilla army in the world.