This article looks at what a normal Sunday feels like in countries that rarely appear in the news, and at a small experiment that links those Sundays together.
Key Takeaways
In one glance
- The focus is on simple Sundays in places like Madagascar (Africa), Yemen (Asia), Sierra Leone (Africa), Uzbekistan (Asia), Nicaragua (North America), Ethiopia (Africa), El Salvador (North America), Benin (Africa), Tajikistan (Asia), Sri Lanka (Asia), Burundi (Africa), Lesotho (Africa), Cabo Verde (Africa), Papua New Guinea (Oceania), Togo (Africa) and Mauritania (Africa).
- These Sundays mix work and rest: markets and church, football and laundry, long-distance calls and quiet meals, far from the bright centre of global media attention.
- A small experiment invites readers to share one short note about their own Sunday and to send the article to one person in another country, so that their days briefly meet on the same page.
Story & Details
Quiet mornings
In December 2025, another Sunday arrives in many places that the world rarely sees on screen.
In Madagascar (Africa), a Sunday morning near the coast smells of sea salt and wet sand. Someone walks to the beach, not to swim, but to look at the horizon and talk with friends. In a poorer area of the same country, people wake as early as on any workday. Sunday is also a day to sell vegetables, fruit or fish. The real comfort is not sleeping late. The real comfort is having a little time without hurry, to cook slowly, talk, or let music play through a small speaker.
In Yemen (Asia), this day may begin under the shadow of war and crisis. Still, life moves. Bread warms on a flat pan. Tea boils. A neighbour checks what is in the cupboard and decides whether a visit to a small market is possible. Children run between houses and play with simple things: stones, plastic bottles, old tyres. Adults look at their phones and wait for a message from a son, a sister or a partner who now lives in another country, trying to find safety and work.
In Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone (Africa), a Sunday morning often comes with music. A radio plays in a courtyard. Someone washes clothes in a bucket. For many people, Sunday is a day for church and loud, joyful songs. For others, it is the only slow morning of the week, a time to stretch tired legs and think about what comes next. The sea is close, the sun is strong and money is short, but the city breathes a little more gently.
In Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan (Asia), some cafés open later on Sundays. At home, tea steams in glasses on a low table. Grandparents, parents and children share bread, cheese, jam or simple noodles. They talk about work and exams, maybe about leaving Uzbekistan (Asia) one day, or about trying to build a future there. Outside, broad avenues hold old concrete blocks beside shiny new malls, as if two different times live side by side.
When it is eight in the morning in Madagascar (Africa), it is six in the morning in the Netherlands (Europe) on the same December Sunday. The clocks are different, but the feeling of a slow start to the day is easy to recognise in both places.
Heat at midday
By midday in Nicaragua (North America), the heat is already heavy. Many kitchens smell of rice and beans, fried plantain, eggs and warm tortillas. Doors are open. Fans turn. Families sit together and eat. A perfect Sunday might mean a hammock in the shade, music, and maybe a trip to a lake or the ocean, if a bus and a few spare coins are available. Others keep working: driving buses, selling food, or opening a small shop, because a day without income is a risk.
In Ethiopia (Africa), midday on Sunday often belongs to coffee. In many homes, beans are roasted in a pan, ground and slowly brewed. Small cups are filled again and again. While people drink, they talk about prices in the market, about rain and harvests, about family members in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia (Africa) or far away in another country. In cities, churches are full and lively. In rural fields, people still work, because crops do not follow human calendars.
In El Salvador (North America), Sundays often taste of thick corn cakes filled with cheese or beans, served hot from a griddle. Families meet at simple stalls or around plastic tables. Laughter mixes with talk about local football and quiet worries about safety and jobs. For many households, Sunday is the only day when everyone is home at once. Some families reach the beach. Others go no further than the nearest park, where children run and adults sit on benches and breathe.
In Benin (Africa), the Sunday picture changes from place to place. In big towns, churches and mosques fill with people, markets stay busy, and motorbikes weave through streets. In small villages, there is more dust, more trees, more sky. People who sell clothes, fruit or phone credit during the week may use Sunday to count money, clean their stall, visit relatives, or simply sit on a chair outside the house and watch the road.
Slow afternoons
In Tajikistan (Asia), many families have relatives working abroad, often in Russia (Europe/Asia). Sunday afternoon is a good time for long voice messages and video calls. Families speak about wages, rent and school fees. They speak about sending money home and about dreams of returning to Tajikistan (Asia) one day or bringing loved ones across borders. Children play outside between apartment blocks or in yards, under huge mountains that frame the town like walls.
In Sri Lanka (Asia), a Sunday afternoon may be a walk on a beach, a visit to a temple, or a quiet time at home with a fan turning slowly above. The country carries scars from war, economic crisis and storms, yet it still has bright jungle, busy stations and calm coves. Someone sells tea to visitors. Someone repairs fishing nets. Someone sits at a table covered in schoolbooks and prepares for an exam that could change a whole life.
In Burundi (Africa), Sunday afternoons are full of colour and sound. Young people play football on fields marked only by stones or sticks. Churches are busy again. Clothes in strong reds, blues and yellows hang from lines and move with the wind. Many adults have spent the week in unstable jobs, with prices rising fast and pay staying low. On Sunday, they still think about money, but they also talk, laugh, and plan together.
In Lesotho (Africa), a highland country inside South Africa (Africa), Sunday afternoons can be cold, even in December. Families gather around stoves or under blankets. Simple soups and bread are shared. Many people in Lesotho (Africa) depend on work in South Africa (Africa), so Sunday may be the only long moment of the week when everyone sits in the same room and no one is in a bus, a factory or a mine.
Night lights and small screens
By night, the Sunday scenes in these countries change again.
In Cabo Verde (Africa), on small Atlantic islands, the sound of the ocean mixes with guitar music and low conversation. Some people think of leaving Cabo Verde (Africa) for Europe. Some have already gone and come back. Others are sure they want to stay close to the sea they know best.
In Papua New Guinea (Oceania), a country with hundreds of languages, Sunday night may mean meetings in wooden community halls, soft religious songs, or simple family dinners by weak electric light or candles. In some areas, mobile signal is slow or absent. In those places, reading an online article at all is rare and special.
In Togo (Africa), small shops and street stalls still glow in some neighbourhoods. People sit on low stools or steps and eat rice, grilled fish or fried dough. They talk about politics, the high price of food, and hopes of study or business abroad. The street may be dim, but voices travel far.
In Mauritania (Africa), some Sundays end under a wide sky full of stars, in desert towns and villages. In the capital, Nouakchott in Mauritania (Africa), Sunday night can mean crowded streets, car horns, and sand in the air. Someone checks a phone and looks at the remaining data, then decides whether to watch a short video, send a few messages, or switch the device off and save credit for the week.
A small experiment with big meaning
These quiet Sundays unfold while many regions face a serious lack of local media. Researchers and journalists warn about “news deserts”: places where people struggle to find fresh, reliable news about their own community, because local newspapers and radio stations have closed or become too weak to report. Studies in Europe and other parts of the world show that large areas now have little or no original local reporting, and that this harms public life and trust.
The Sunday experiment in this article is small beside these big problems, but it speaks to the same concern. It invites readers to do two simple things.
The first is to write a short note about their own Sunday. Just four points are enough: country and city; the day and local time when the note is written; a few lines about what a normal Sunday looks like; and one thing that feels good about Sunday in that place.
The second is to send the article to one person in another country and ask that person to read it and send a similar note in return. That person might be a relative who moved away, an online friend, or someone in the same line of work in a different part of the world.
If a reader in Madagascar (Africa) writes a Sunday note and shares the piece with a cousin in France (Europe), and that cousin sends it to a friend in Kenya (Africa), three very different Sundays start to live side by side in one small chain of stories. None of this replaces careful reporting, but it creates a gentle map of ordinary life that crosses borders and goes beyond statistics.
A Dutch word for Sunday
Because this experiment often links back to the Netherlands (Europe), one small Dutch language detail helps connect the scenes. In Dutch, the word for Sunday is “zondag”. The word for morning is “ochtend”. A person in the Netherlands (Europe) might say “zondagochtend” for “Sunday morning”. On a map, Madagascar (Africa), Yemen (Asia) or Lesotho (Africa) look far from the Netherlands (Europe). In daily language, the sounds for the day are different in every tongue. Still, the feeling of a slow Sunday morning joins them in a quiet way.
For readers who want to see more of everyday struggles and hopes beyond simple numbers, a BBC Africa Eye documentary follows people in Kenya (Africa) as they talk about land, history and justice, showing how big issues are lived in real homes and fields [1].
Conclusions
A soft ending
Sundays in Madagascar (Africa), Yemen (Asia), Sierra Leone (Africa), Uzbekistan (Asia), Nicaragua (North America), Ethiopia (Africa), El Salvador (North America), Benin (Africa), Tajikistan (Asia), Sri Lanka (Asia), Burundi (Africa), Lesotho (Africa), Cabo Verde (Africa), Papua New Guinea (Oceania), Togo (Africa) and Mauritania (Africa) are not the polished weekends of travel ads. They are full of plastic chairs, cheap radios, shared meals, second-hand footballs, long walks to church, crowded markets and quiet worries about money and safety.
These days almost never appear on big news sites. They are easy to ignore from far away. Yet they shape weeks, years and futures for millions of people. The small Sunday experiment asks for very little: a short, honest note and one shared link from country to country. It needs no special tools or big campaigns, only attention and a bit of curiosity.
When more people write and read these simple Sunday stories, the idea that some countries are “nowhere” becomes harder to accept. Each description of a morning market or a late-night bus becomes a small light on a map that once looked empty. No country is truly invisible as long as someone is ready to describe a normal day and someone else is ready to read it.
Selected References
Further reading and viewing
[1] BBC News Africa. “Our Land, Our Life – BBC Africa Eye Documentary.” YouTube. A film about land, memory and justice in Kenya (Africa), from the BBC’s investigative Africa Eye series. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLFL8XlO9o8
[2] Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom. “What Are ‘News Deserts’ in Europe?” European University Institute, 2024. Short explanation of the news desert idea in a European context. Available at: https://cmpf.eui.eu/what-are-news-deserts-in-europe/
[3] Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. “What Exactly Is a ‘News Desert’?” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Overview of how the concept of news deserts has developed over time. Available at: https://www.cislm.org/what-exactly-is-a-news-desert/
[4] Journalismfund Europe. “A First Comparative Study Indicates the Fragile Situation for Local Media Across the EU.” 2024. Short article on research into local media and news deserts in the European Union. Available at: https://www.journalismfund.eu/news/first-comparative-study-indicates-fragile-situation-local-media-across-eu
Appendix
A–Z key terms
Global South
A broad term for countries in regions such as Africa, Asia, Latin America and parts of Oceania, where many communities have lived through colonisation, economic dependency and other forms of structural disadvantage, and where daily life is often under-reported in global media.
News desert
An area where people have little or no access to fresh, reliable and diverse local news about their own community, often because local newspapers, radio stations or other newsrooms have closed or become too weak to report.
Ordinary Sunday
A regular Sunday without major public events, centred on simple activities such as cooking, worship, rest, play, small jobs and family time, which still reveals a great deal about how people live.
Under-reported country
A country that appears rarely in international news or online attention maps, even though important and interesting things happen there every day in politics, work, family life and culture.
My Diary - Leonardo Cardillo 