Happiest Countries in the World

What are some of the first words that come to your mind when you think of Africa today?

I gave myself 10 seconds to think of the first words that come to my mind: Poverty, HIV/AIDS, Hunger, Tribal Diversity, Biodiversity, Animals, Violence, Homelessness, and Orphans. Out of 9 things that came to my mind, only 3 words were positive.

I genuinely tried to think of some positive aspects about Africa, but in those ten seconds, I couldn't. It's really depressing, but are you surprised? I'm not.

In English, the class discussed the role of newspaper of U.S. media in the perception of Africa this past week. We examined articles from the 50's/60's and modern-day news about Africa. Many of the students found that most of the American newspaper researched were sending out messages encouraging Westernization and portraying African Independence-seekers as rebellious and violent. Modern-Day Africa is basically portrayed as a problem-stricken country in newspapers today.

Interestingly enough, this week the class also learned about search engines and this 'bubble' that's created when searching from your personal computer. The idea of this 'bubble' was to create an algorithm that would filter searches and look at patterns in your searches in order to pull information most relevant to you. While intent is to get relevant information to you first, it has the potential of offering biased and one-sided information that we'd WANT to hear according to our preferences. Even if we'd like more information on the positive sides of Africa, there's a roadblock to more knowledge.

I think with the sole information I've receive about Africa in the U.S., I honestly can't imagine living in a place where I'd fear for my life everyday. I'm happier in the U.S. knowing that I have security of my life. But does that necessarily mean that Africans are unhappy or unhappier than I am?

Over the weekend, I tried to research lists and ranks of the happiest countries in the world. To my (un)surprise, Western Countries like Canada, U.S., Scandinavian Counties, and Australia are what ranked the highest on the first few google web page searches. After swifting through the pages (yes, there is more available than just the first 10 searches), I found that Nigeria was once ranked one of the happiest countries by BBC in 2003: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3157570.stm.

I tried to search more about what BBC had to offer about Nigeria, and found a publication of May2011 http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2011_entrepreneur/BBC_GlobeScan_Entrepreneur.pdf that shows a survey of Nigerians being satisfied with the entrepreneurship opportunities offered to them.

So maybe we don't have all the information to make judgements about Africa? Despite the problems in Africa, maybe people are happy?

Then I came across the HPI (Happy Planet Index). This organization came together to find a way to rank the happiest planets in the world, coming up with the following equation:

HPI = Happy Life Years

Ecological Footprint/Resources consumed

At first, an ecological footprint confused me as a a factor of happiness, but it can have an impact on your future. Happy Life Years is measured by a survey of Life Satisfaction multiplied by Life Expectancy.

This map shows a ranking of HPI scores in terms of the three categories. If all 3 categories are good or close to healthy, the country is marked green, whereas if 2 or more categories are poor, it is marked red.

WOW! Look at this result! The U.S. and Africa are both marked red! This was an interesting discovery. In terms of happiness and life satisfaction, U.S. ranked well, but in terms of ecological footprint, the future of happy lives in the U.S. is about as equally bad as a place like Africa, where everything but an ecological footprint is a problem.

Of course, ranking something subjective like happiness has its flaws, which even this organization offers as a disclaimer, but I found that this site did a pretty good job. I also learned that "more" doesn't always mean "happy" and that taking care of our resources also plays a huge role in our happiness.

I especially noticed this as I was reading the Poisonwood Bible, where Leah notices and in fact, envied the family who were laughing together and were so happy despite the problems in their life with living in poverty, losing 2 children, etc.

It is true that Africa has its own struggles and variety of problems, but it doesn't mean that they aren't happy. It also doesn't mean that they are happy. What I've learned is that I simply can not assume that since we, Americans, don't have the problems in Africa, we are happier than them.

In the Poisonwood Bible, Nelson tells Ruth May a secret of thinking of the safe place after death. In retrospect, this actually gives people comfort in dying than fearing their lives. While problems might seem extremely bad to us here in the U.S. and they really might be as bad as we understand them to be, Africans could be learning to cope as best as they can and still have a bit of positivity to get through life; in that respect, maybe as, or more, positivity than the U.S...