Post: #1

Hello, after understanding civilization is harmful and must be avoided, I seek a small village in an undeveloped land. I wish to avoid electricity and consumerism...instead relying on tradition and my own hands.

What are the least developed countries in each continent (N/S America, Asia, Europe, Africa)?

Post: #2

Asia: Rural Myanmar/Laos/Vietnam/Cambodia
These Asian places sound very interesting...time to learn the language and buy farmland.

Africa: I hear good things about the peaceful country of Ghana. Also, Eastern Africa. Very good farmland/fishing and traditional cultures.

Euro: Mostly developed, but Rural Moldova/Ukraine may be ok.

N/S America: mostly developed, but central America has ok rural zones.


Anyone ever been to these areas? Especially undeveloped Asia/Africa?


Below are those 15,000 or less PPP/capita. Obviously the lower, the better.

Rank. Country. GDP ppp/capita. Year.

59  Mexico 15,270 2011
60  Uruguay 15,181 2011
61  Romania 15,163 2011
62  Saint Kitts and Nevis 15,154 2011
63  Belarus 15,040 2011
64  Palau 15,023 2011
65  Botswana 14,753 2011
66  Lebanon 14,709 2011
67  Bulgaria 14,603 2011
68  Mauritius 14,523 2011
69  Montenegro 13,612 2011
70  Kazakhstan 13,189 2011
71  Venezuela 12,836 2011
72  Dominica 12,678 2011
73  Costa Rica 12,236 2011
74  Serbia 11,919 2011
75  Brazil 11,719 2011
76  Macedonia 11,666 2011
—  World 11,640 2011
77  Iran 11,479 2009
78  Grenada 11,180 2011
79  South Africa 11,035 2011
80  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 10,812 2011
81  Peru 10,318 2011
82  Azerbaijan 10,136 2011
83  Colombia 10,103 2011
84  Dominican Republic 9,863 2011
85  Tunisia 9,415 2011
86  Saint Lucia 9,385 2011
87  Turkmenistan 9,184 2011
88  Bosnia and Herzegovina 9,089 2011
89  Albania 8,944 2011
90  Maldives 8,932 2011
91  Algeria 8,715 2011
92  Thailand 8,703 2011
93  Ecuador 8,486 2011
94  China 8,466 2011
95  Jamaica 8,065 2011
96  Suriname 7,891 2010
97  Ukraine 7,251 2011
98  El Salvador 6,877 2011
99  Namibia 6,826 2011
100  Belize 6,722 2011
101  Egypt 6,324 2011
102  Swaziland 6,099 2011
103  Jordan 6,007 2011
104  Angola 5,930 2011
105  Armenia 5,829 2011
106  Bhutan 5,810 2011
107  Sri Lanka 5,620 2011
108  Georgia 5,503 2011
109  Paraguay 5,419 2011
110  Syria 5,262 2010
111  Bolivia 5,130 2011
112  Morocco 4,986 2011
113  Guatemala 4,961 2011
114  Fiji 4,787 2011
115  Mongolia 4,764 2011
116  Indonesia 4,668 2011
117  Tonga 4,666 2011
118  Vanuatu 4,631 2011
119  Samoa 4,570 2011
120  Congo, Rep. 4,429 2011
121  Philippines 4,140 2011
122  Cape Verde 4,123 2011
123  Honduras 4,066 2011
124  Iraq 3,890 2011
125  India 3,652 2011
126  Guyana 3,445 2010
127  Micronesia, Fed. Sts. 3,440 2011
128  Vietnam 3,435 2011
129  Moldova 3,392 2011
130  Uzbekistan 3,310 2011
131  Solomon Islands 2,943 2011
132  Nicaragua 2,941 2011
133  Laos 2,809 2011
134  Pakistan 2,763 2011
135  Papua New Guinea 2,695 2011
136  Mauritania 2,571 2011
137  Nigeria 2,532 2011
138  Kiribati 2,531 2011
—  West Bank and Gaza 2,465 2005
139  Kyrgyzstan 2,424 2011
140  Cameroon 2,383 2011
141  Cambodia 2,372 2011
142  Yemen 2,349 2011
143  Tajikistan 2,340 2011
144  Djibouti 2,290 2009
145  Sudan &  South Sudan 2,141 2011
146  Gambia, The 2,135 2011
147  São Tomé and Príncipe 2,058 2011
148  Senegal 1,981 2011
149  Ghana 1,884 2011
150  Côte d'Ivoire 1,803 2011
151  Bangladesh 1,788 2011
152  Kenya 1,718 2011
153  Lesotho 1,715 2011
154  Benin 1,628 2011
155  Zambia 1,623 2011
156  East Timor 1,588 2011
157  Chad 1,531 2011
158  Tanzania 1,521 2011
159  Uganda 1,354 2011
160  Burkina Faso 1,310 2011
161  Nepal 1,256 2011
162  Guinea-Bissau 1,251 2011
163  Rwanda 1,251 2011
164  Afghanistan 1,202 2010
165  Haiti 1,179 2011
166  Guinea 1,128 2011
167  Comoros 1,117 2011
168  Ethiopia 1,116 2011
169  Mali 1,099 2011
170  Togo 1,042 2011
171  Mozambique 982 2011
172  Madagascar 972 2011
173  Malawi 918 2011
174  Sierra Leone 877 2011
175  Central African Republic 816 2011
176  Niger 732 2011
177  Burundi 608 2011
178  Eritrea 589 2011
179  Liberia 577 2011
180  Congo, Dem. Rep. 375 2011

Post: #3

I'm not sure you're a good fit for RVF. We're players and travelers, not exactly the type to settle down and become self-reliant.

Post: #4

You can't avoid civilization dude. Unless you find one of the few remaining pockets of hunter-gatherer tribes, untouched by agricultural societies, then you'll be in "civilization". The question is, what kind of civilization you want to be in. Some of the poorest ones are often the most unstable/dangerous as you have to content with war, disease, political instability, etc.

But anyway, I get your intention. And yeah, you can find peaceful, undeveloped farming/fishing cultures for sure. Here's a list of the most poor countries by Purchasing Power Parity Per Capita (i.e. an accepted measure of standard of living).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou...per_capita

Just looking at that, Kenya, Ghana, Laos jump out. I just got back from Vietnam too, which struck me as absolutely delightful (although I just stayed in Saigon and didn't go rural)

Just watch out for the dark side of wherever you're at. It's all fun and games until you break an arm, get a simple infection or spider bite, or say/do the wrong thing that makes a local flip out and go and fetch his machete. You'll quickly find a renewed love for "Civilization" and the hospitals, travel insurance, cellular phones and consular assistance that come with it. There's a reason poor people are often very religious - it's often an emotional buffer against the extremely harsh and unstable realities of daily life.

Post: #5

Yes, I agree that it can be dangerous, but I would rather die free and happy than live a sterile life.
If we were not taking risks, we would all just stay in our hometown and work in an office, get fat and watch TV. Too me, thats also a form of death.

I'm not so green...I have lived in big cities, rural areas, woods, and I have travelled several countries. I've got university degrees but prefer the purity of physical labor- digging the earth, searching for mushrooms, hiking dense forest. I was happiest in those places without tech and civ. I can see my goal.

Sometimes you need to take a risk and really live.

Post: #6

Sure, I hear ya. I totally get the yearning for getting back to "our natural freedom". I just got back to Bangkok, and even compared to Saigon, it seems gross. There's something fucked up about being squashed into a concrete jungle, surrounded by high-rises and elevated highways. And then, imagine the life of a local - stuck working long hours in an office 6 days a week, or cooking chicken on the polluted, stiflingly hot roadside for 10 hours breathing exhaust fumes. It's really wrong, on a biological level.

Out of interest, what are you planning to do for survival? farm, fish etc? Are you planning to earn money or trade, or purely live off the land?

Post: #7

(12-05-2012 04:25 AM)RichieP Wrote:  Sure, I hear ya. I totally get the yearning for getting back to "our natural freedom". I just got back to Bangkok, and even compared to Saigon, it seems gross. There's something fucked up about being squashed into a concrete jungle, surrounded by high-rises and elevated highways - it's really wrong, on a biological level.

Out of interest, what are you going to do for survival? farm, fish etc? Are you planning to earn money or trade, or purely live off the land?

I see this as a long term investment.

I am developing a profession that can help the local villagers. This along with hunting/fishing will support me and my future family.

Its a challenge, but I seek it.

Debes, Ergo Potes
(You Must, so you Can)

Post: #8

Get yourself to Georgia. No visa hassles on property ownership hassles. A mild climate with fertile soil and welcoming populace. You could buy a house in the rural areas very cheaply I'd guess and then find work on the local collective farm. Would be a unique way to spend a few years and might make for an interesting book at the end of it.

Make sure you read Walden if you haven't already. A lot of his conclusions and experiences would no doubt chime with you.

Post: #9

Ok, so you want the real deal?

Travel to the Andaman islands. It´s a small island chain just west of Sumatra, but it belongs to India. There you could try to join the Jarawa or the Sentinelese.

Quote:The Jarawa (also Järawa, Jarwa) are one of the adivasi indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands in India. Their present numbers are estimated at between 250-400 individuals. Since they have largely shunned interactions with outsiders, many particulars of their society, culture and traditions are poorly understood. Their name means "foreigners" or "hostile people" in Aka-Bea.

Along with other indigenous Andamanese peoples, they have inhabited the islands for at least several thousand years, and most likely a great deal longer. The Andaman Islands have been known to outsiders since antiquity; however, until quite recent times they were infrequently visited, and such contacts were predominantly sporadic and temporary. For the greater portion of their history their only significant contact has been with other Andamanese groups; the experience of such a lengthy period of isolation almost completely lacking in external cultural influences is equaled by few other groups in the world, if at all.

Quote:The Sentinelese (also Sentineli, Senteneli, Sentenelese, North Sentinel Islanders) are one of the Andamanese indigenous peoples and one of the most uncontacted peoples of the Andaman Islands, located in India in the Bay of Bengal. They inhabit North Sentinel Island which lies westward off the southern tip of the Great Andaman archipelago. They are noted for vigorously resisting attempts at contact by outsiders. The Sentinelese maintain an essentially hunter-gatherer society subsisting through hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants; there is no evidence of either agricultural practices or methods of producing fire.

(...)

Their island is nominally part of and administered by the Indian Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In practice, however, the Sentinelese exercise complete autonomy over their affairs and the involvement of the Indian authorities is restricted to occasional monitoring, even more infrequent and brief visits, and generally discouraging any access or approaches to the island. It is therefore de facto autonomous.

From 1967 onwards, the Indian authorities in Port Blair embarked on a limited program of attempts at contacting the Sentinelese, under the management of the Director of Tribal Welfare and anthropologist T. N. Pandit. These "Contact Expeditions" consisted of a series of planned visits which would progressively leave "gifts", such as coconuts, on the shores, in an attempt to coax the Sentinelese from their hostile reception of outsiders. For a while, these seemed to have some limited success; however, the program was discontinued in the late 1990s following a series of hostile encounters resulting in several deaths in a similar program practised with the Jarawa people of South and Middle Andaman Islands and because of the danger of introducing diseases.

In 2006, Sentinelese archers killed two fishermen who were fishing illegally within range of the island. The archers later drove off, with a hail of arrows, the helicopter that was sent to retrieve the bodies. To this date, the bodies remain unrecovered, although the downdraught from the helicopter's rotors at the time exposed the two fishermen's corpses, which had been buried in shallow graves by the Sentinelese.

That´s the most undeveloped you can possibly get. If those paleolithic people don´t kill you on first sight and you manage to become a tolerated curiosity amongst them you may very well be able to live the life you desire. No civilization, just survival of the fittest. Sometimes you just gotta take the risk.

Post: #10

(12-05-2012 03:56 AM)MSW2007 Wrote:  I'm not sure you're a good fit for RVF. We're players and travelers, not exactly the type to settle down and become self-reliant.

Who says chasing pristine jungle poosy isn't his true goal?

Post: #11

Here you go,buy a village for $12 in Europe: http://telegraf.by/en/2012/04/belarus-pr...2-dollarov

I saw empty villages and houses for sale in Belarus for $500 all the time. Nobody wants to live in the villages and hence when Dedushka and Babushka dies their urbane grandchildren don't want the hassle of owning the house. You just have to think of what to do with the village,maybe just become a despotic ruler of your own little land and erect a statue to yourself.

Post: #12

(12-05-2012 02:03 AM)Grontor Wrote:  Hello, after understanding civilization is harmful and must be avoided, I seek a small village in an undeveloped land. I wish to avoid electricity and consumerism...instead relying on tradition and my own hands.

What are the least developed countries in each continent (N/S America, Asia, Europe, Africa)?

I am suprised noone said!!!