People, you’ve never seen a country like this. There have NEVER been a single election here. One man has been in power for all the 30-something years of the nation’s entire existence. None of the social networks, like WhatsApp work here properly. With VPN or without VPN, you can’t open them up. Locals are not allowed to leave the country. They’re not allowed to buy US dollars. You can’t even freely buy some fuel and drive around the country - that requires a permission. Yet bizarrely, it’s very safe and clean, and you won’t see here the endless slums like in most other African countries. Foreigners can safely walk around here, and locals greet them with a smile. This is Lyadov, and today we’re in Eritrea, the most closed-off country on our planet after North Korea. The poverty here is staggering, and the nation is ruled by one of the world’s most extreme authoritarian regimes. And yet, local people here are astonishingly, unbelievably kind.