History of Africa

Africa was discovered in the late seventeenth century when English explorers acidentally arrived on one of it's beaches and stuck a flag in the sand.  There had, of course, been native populations in Africa for around 2 million years prior to this, but it was assumed that they just hadn't noticed it.  The English explorer, Sir Ralph Reginold Ralph Mongumery Ralph had stumbled accross Africa by chance, after losing a bet with a fishmonger at Plymouth harbour that he couldn't sail out to certain death in uncharted waters armed with nothing but an English flag gripped tightly between his teeth and an empty potato sack strapped to his leg with some form of masking tape. 

But Sir Ralph got lucky.  While sailing along, listening to Radio 4, he noticed that the sound was only coming out of the left speaker.  Not realising that in the seventeenth century FM had not been invented yet, and that the Medium-Wave station was not being broadcast in stereo, ralph bent down to examine his radio (after first safely pulling his ship over onto the hard shoulder).  He fiddled with dials, he pressed buttons, he fought in vain to work out why it wouldn't remember all his presets, then accidentally changed radio station.  To his surprise he heard the song "Africa - By Toto". 

"How interesting", thought Ralph.  "Africa, by Toto. AFRICA.  That gives me an idea.  I now know what I must do!"  With that he dashed to the helm of his ship.  He turned the boat around, sailed back to Dover, and set up a small stall in the local market selling porcaline statuettes of 'Toto', the little dog from 'The Wizard of Oz'.   Raph died a year later of herpes.

Meanwhile, the Fishmonger, who up until now had seemed more like a minor piece of detail than a main character in this story, discovered Africa.  Possibly while on holiday enjoying a Whale-watching tour off the coast of Africa.

The Slave Triangle

One of the darkest sections of Africas long, colourful (except the black & white bits) history, is the period in which the slave triangle operated.  Thousands of English pilgrims, possibly on a dare also involving fishmongers, had sailed across the ocean to start a new life in America.  Being English, they obviously required several cups of tea per hour, with milk and two sugars.  Not having enough sugar for their tea, they set up many sugar plantations.  (You see how the story all hangs together so well).  Shortly after founding the sugar plantations they realised that they did not have a big enough workforce to make them profitable.  They required suagr pickers, accountants, health & safety inspectors, quality management consultants, and systems analysts.  They imported all these skills from Africa in the form of slaves, who helpfully got onto fleets of ships and sailed across the Atlantic to America, possibly because of the promise of Duty Free.

Once the slaves has disembarked the ships, and unloaded their cars from the car-deck, there was a lot of empty space on the ships.  On a bet with one of the Slaves who had come to America to work on the plantations as a fishmonger, the Americans filled the holds of all the ships with sugar from the plantations.  The ships then sailed back to England where they could sell the sugar.

Later, a historian, who didn't have a name, was looking at a map of the ships sailing from Africa to America then on to Britain and realised that it looked like a kind of sideways 'V'-shape.  Realising immediately that "The Slave kind-of-like-a-V-shape" would look distinctly crap in history books in years to come, he drew a line from England to Africa, and thus completed "The Slave Triangle".  This third line represented, shall we say, a tectonic plate line or something.

Note-  Some readers may accuse us of trying to re-write history, but please be assured that any re-writing we have done is only for the sole purpose of correcting grammatical errors in the original texts, like the typo on page 64 of the Bible.

Wildlife in Africa

Africa boasts a wide range of unique animals.  There is the Zebra (a bit like a horse but with stripes), the Giraffe (a bit like a horse with a long neck), and the Elephant (a bit like a horse but in the shape of an elephant.)

Most good travel agents will be able to provide you with details of Safari holidays in which you will be able to shoot most of the above from the window of a 4x4.