"I'll tell you a secret. People in rural areas have no stress. They have their land. They plant their vegetables and grow their own chickens, sheep and cattle for meat. They walk long distances and life is nice and simple for them. We then go and show them our laptops and all these fancy Galaxy S9s and Huawei P20s that amaze them. Instead of building them, this breaks them because they feel inferior.

I personally wish most Africans had land, crops and livestock. This one time back in rural Lesotho, we spent one whole day looking for berries and peaches, while watching sheep graze. Then we relaxed and painted our tongues red with those berries. We also set a bird trap, caught a bird and grilled it. To me, it was a one day thing and I would get bored if I did it everyday, but that's because I know another way of life, unlike my friend who didn't at the time. No bills or crazy petrol hikes, internet and potholes. People in our rural areas are really happy.

You then find people online saying it's rural, undeveloped, poor and a lot of derogatory remarks, but I assure you, they are happy as they are and I wish the West and urban people like us don't influence them otherwise.

We often do not understand what exactly is being poor? A modernized view of development has tainted that understanding. A friend of mine once told me a story of her early career in Development work. In the story, she went to a rural community in South Africa with the sole purpose of identifying the poor to help them with basic needs, particularly food. Her interaction with the society wasn't successful because the people didn't consider themselves poor, in fact they chased her out of the village disputing that their status is not poor, but they also gave her a basin of groundnuts for her and her friends to eat".