Central African Republic Research Paper

Living conditions in the Central African Republic are not the best. High chronic malnutrition rates remain a concern, with more than 1.5 million people suffering from food insecurity, one-third of the country’s population.
A typical meal consists of a dough like mixture of processed and dried detoxified cassava (gozo) or sorghum, accompanied by a sauce made of vegetables, poultry, meat, or fish. Wild game, killed in the dry-season grass-burning hunts, supplements the rural diet. At roadside stands, bakery bread and homemade fried bread (makara), sandwiches, barbecued meat, and other snacks are sold by women. Restaurants are frequented mostly by expatriates. Coffee and tea, prepared with sugar and canned evaporated milk, are popular in urban
centers. The inhabitants of the forest area subsist on cassava, bananas, plantains, palm-nut-oil, forest caterpillars, and the leaf of a wild plant (koko). Individuals, in turn, bring these foods to Bangui to sell at the market. Protein is at a low level in the diet throughout the country.
Most Central Africans rely on farming for their livelihoods. Men clear the fields, while cultivation is largely the responsibility of women, who grow cassava (manioc), corn (maize), millet, sorghum, rice, squashes, and peanuts (groundnuts) for their families’ consumption. Cash crops such as cotton and coffee, introduced by French plantation owners, are produced largely on small landholdings. Although Central Africans have for some time cultivated sugarcane and oil palms on a small scale, the country has lately undertaken efforts to grow both crops on large, mechanized plantations. The livestock population includes cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry, most of which are kept for domestic consumption. Pond-raised tilapia and river fish also contribute substantial amounts of protein to the diet. The tsetse fly reduces the area in which stock can be raised, but development programs to improve herds and herd migrations from Chad and Sudan continue to increase the number of domestic animals in the country.
Typical housing include villages located along and face the roads.
The typical dwelling, which must be replaced frequently because of termites. The Aka, for instance, live in small, one-room houses, which are created from flexible branches and covered with broad leaves from the forest. Elsewhere in the southern part of the country, people may live in wattle-and-daub houses with woven palm-frond roofs. Other people, particularly those living close to lumber companies, often take discarded planks from the sawmills to build their houses. Farther north some people, such as the Pana, live in round, mud-brick, one-room houses with grass-thatched roofs. A whole family lives in a single dwelling, the interior of which is divided, especially when the owners have been influenced by Western culture. In Bangui as well as other major towns throughout the country, people frequently live in whitewashed, fired mud-brick homes with wooden-shuttered windows and aluminum roofs.
The clothing in Central African Republic is mostly represented by button up shirts, t-shirts, shorts, and slacks for the men and colorful robes, headscarves, and bright jewelry for the women. The clothes of the women of the Central African Republic clearly steals the show, as the styles revolve around tribal and community affiliations which are very brightly and visibly
shown.
The Central African Republic has a big heart when it comes to sports, football in particular. Football / Soccer is the most popular pastime among the youth in most of the CAR. As a matter of fact, even the small villages have a makeshift football field and most establishments like schools and even churches sponsor a team either for girls or boys and, for the most part, both. Basketball, rugby, boxing and athletics are also quite popular.
For all practical purposes, no modern health care facilities exist outside Bangui, which itself has only one major hospital, and a few other towns.
A number of hospitals and clinics staffed and operated by missionaries provide relatively good care to those who can reach them. For the majority of Central Africans, however, little is offered by the poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed maternity clinics, dispensaries, and first-aid posts available to them in the countryside. Even the hospital in Bangui is below standard for minimal care; some private clinics are available to the wealthy in the capital. The distribution of medicine is extremely difficult given the inadequate transportation system. Malaria, leprosy, tuberculosis, nutritional diseases, AIDS, and sexually transmitted diseases are major health concerns in the country. The number of cases of sleeping sickness is also increasing.
Welfare benefits, including unemployment and maternity benefits, child-care allowances, and social security, are available to a small number of government and private-sector employees in the urban centres, but most people rely on their families and kinship networks, communities, and friends for what little help they can obtain. The country faces a growing number of homeless youths in Bangui and in the other large urban areas.
Many languages and dialects are spoken, including Arabic, Hunsa, and Swahili, but Sangho, the language of a group living on the Ubangi River, is spoken by a majority
and is the national language. French is the official language of government and is taught in the schools.