What Defines a Country?

Position: 45°37’02.0″N 122°40’18.1″W

Having criss-crossed the globe vertically and horizontally in the past couple of months, it occurred to me that our oblique definitions of first, second and third world countries are just that – oblique. The traveller, if they care, may well want to categorise the country they are visiting, if for no other reason than to describe it later in a letter or, heaven forfend, a blog.

While traditional categorizations include such opaque measures as literacy rates, gross domestic product, and perinatal mortality, such things are not readily assessable by tourists. Such measures require years of analysis, and we are looking for things that you might stumble over in the dark. Empirical measures are particularly important since many self-proclaimed “first world” countries are themselves wildly inconsistent across regions. Therefore, I humbly propose the following, easily observable means for determining which category of country you are in:

• Stairs – if the steps leading into your hotel are consistent top to bottom this indicates advanced construction practices found in the first world. A stubby first or last step will make you suspect you’re in the second world. No steps and a dusty threshold blowing discarded plastic bags into the reception room is more generally associated with developing, third world nations.
• Electric Kettles – this minor luxury is commonly found in former British colonies. After all, everything stops for tea, and you can’t make a proper cuppa without boiling water. Some rich countries lean towards coffee and one of a dozen varieties of machines for making it. The worst excesses of these are pod coffee makers. These noxious devices seal bad coffee in plastic cups that are filling waste sites faster than disposable diapers, and tastes about as good.
• Service Staff – since the pandemic, many first world service businesses have gone binary. By which I mean available staff are zero or one. Swathes of Europe now operate on an honour system. For example, marinas often no longer have a harbourmaster. Rather you sail in, tie up, and make your way to a kiosk to purchase a mooring ticket for your berth. The ticket is adhesive, like an airline bag tag and you attach it to your boat as proof of your honesty. The risk of a random check is low. I would put your risk of getting caught on any single day at less than 30%. Then again, it is difficult to make a quick getaway on a sailboat. In second world countries service industries from car rental agencies to restaurants are better staffed. An indication of lower labour rates. You can generally expect to find living breathing people to help you do whatever it is you’re trying to get done. Often, they are charming and interesting. A sign of the country’s good education system and limited job market. In third world countries mobs try serving you in ways that feel like little more than begging. This indicates two things, a lack of formal services for anyone other than tourists, and widespread poverty.
• Garages – fixing physical objects like cars remains a human endeavour. Our AI overlords may make a better diagnosis, but the costs of building a machine that will crawl under your car and change an oxygen sensor while discussing football is still a ways off. It is not surprising then that developing countries are well served by mechanics. At the edge of any village stands at least one garage, if not an entire street’s worth. Don’t mistake the small group of men standing around outside as a sign of quick service. There is usually one guy who knows what they’re doing. Everyone else is there to hand over tools or analyse the latest football scores.
• Cell Phone Service – when the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s, Russia’s satellite countries leapfrogged four generations of telecommunications technology and went all in on wireless. It didn’t hurt that in the ensuing chaos of the USSR’s collapse that stripping copper out of every building was a money-maker. The upshot is many developing countries went through a similar gyration and wireless services today are often much better than they are in the (archaically regulated) United States. Thus, if your smartphone functions more reliably, you are probably in a second or third world country.
• Generosity and Kindness– I was once told, “It is easy to be generous when you have nothing.” This is true. Once you strip away all the things that generate first world whines, what is left are simple human transactions. For example, in Mongolia we exchanged highly valued toiletries for directions. I was also told once that a person’s kindness is inversely proportional to how f****ed up their government is. Experience in some of the more darkly governed areas of the world confirms this observation. Combine a poor economy and an oppressive government and you may end up partying on cheap vodka well into the night.

You could argue a proper guide might add weighting to each score and provide a spreadsheet for calculations. Pshaw! The devil take such cerebral abstractions!

This list is by no means comprehensive. Each time we get lost we discover an aspect of humanity that restores our faith in it. Turning up as a tourist off the beaten track in need of a modicum assistance begs one of humanity’s oldest questions, “Can you help me?” From there all kinds of discoveries are possible. Try it sometime. After all, the adventure only begins when things go wrong…