Key Takeaways
- The article looks at daily window views in countries that rarely appear in global news, such as Niger (Africa), Lesotho (Africa), Djibouti (Africa), Timor-Leste (Asia), Burundi (Africa), Sierra Leone (Africa), Togo (Africa), Laos (Asia), Kyrgyzstan (Asia), Tajikistan (Asia), Madagascar (Africa), Cabo Verde (Africa), Guinea-Bissau (Africa), the Central African Republic (Africa), Vanuatu (Oceania), Papua New Guinea (Oceania), and the Comoros (Africa).
- It follows a simple day cycle—morning, midday, afternoon, night, and very early morning—to show work, noise, heat, fear, beauty, and rest through the frame of a window.
- It invites readers, in December 2025, to join a quiet global experiment: describe what they can see from their own window and share this idea with someone whose view is very different.
Story & Details
Global news in December 2025 still focuses on a small group of places. Many others stay almost invisible. Some of them appear on United Nations lists as “least developed countries,” with low income and high vulnerability, and studies show that large parts of Africa get only thin and crisis-heavy coverage in international media. Behind these labels are real streets, real houses, and real windows.
The focus here is on what daily life looks like when someone simply pulls back a curtain or opens a door in countries that are often treated as grey spots on a map: Niger (Africa), Lesotho (Africa), Djibouti (Africa), Timor-Leste (Asia), Burundi (Africa), Sierra Leone (Africa), Togo (Africa), Laos (Asia), Kyrgyzstan (Asia), Tajikistan (Asia), Madagascar (Africa), Cabo Verde (Africa), Guinea-Bissau (Africa), the Central African Republic (Africa), Vanuatu (Oceania), Papua New Guinea (Oceania), and the Comoros (Africa). The view is ordinary. That is exactly the point.
In the morning in Niger (Africa), a person opens a window or a simple doorway. The first sight is often dust and hard light. Children walk to school. Women carry water or goods in metal bowls or plastic containers. Motorbikes pass and kick dry earth into the air. Chickens search between stones for something to eat. There is no postcard, but there is movement. For the person watching, this first look can set the mood: it can feel like the start of a heavy day, or it can feel a little lighter.
In Lesotho (Africa), houses sit among highlands. A morning view reaches over green or brown hills, depending on the season. Smoke rises from low houses as fires burn for cooking or warmth. People walk in coats and scarves. Sheep and cattle move slowly across the slopes. The scene is beautiful, but beauty does not pay school fees or food. Still, standing at the window before work or study can make daily worries seem smaller for a short time.
In Djibouti (Africa), some windows look toward a busy port, others toward tight city streets or simple neighbourhoods on the edges. A person may see lines of trucks and stacks of containers, or small shops and children playing with handmade toys. The sky is bright and often promises heat. On a world map this is a strategic point for trade and military bases, but from a window it is mainly neighbours, traffic, and an open horizon.
By midday, the light is high and sharp in Timor-Leste (Asia). Hills around towns and villages turn pale in the sun. Clothes hang from lines between houses. Motorbikes climb steep roads and roll back down. Children come home from school, some in uniforms that are already dusty. A dog sleeps exactly in the path everyone uses. The country has a young history as an independent state and carries memories of conflict, but the view through glass at noon is simple: people trying to get through the day.
In Burundi (Africa), a window over a dirt road shows bright colour. Street sellers wear vivid dresses and shirts. Bicycles carry sacks, crates or bundles that look too big to stay balanced. Children play football with a worn ball in a space that is almost a road, almost a field. Someone sweeps the entrance of a shop or home, pushing red dust aside. The sound is thick: music from a speaker, the roar of motorbikes, loud voices, maybe a radio or a megaphone. For people here, this mix is normal; for someone used to quiet streets, it could be a shock.
In Sierra Leone (Africa), a room with a window toward the sea holds a kind of luxury that many tourists pay for. Water shines in the sun. Small boats lie on the surface or move toward the horizon. The sky feels wide. A room facing the hills or a crowded settlement shows another reality: metal roofs, narrow paths, children running, women walking with large loads balanced on their heads. Both views are true. Both exist next to each other in the same country, though only a small part of the world ever sees either.
Later in the day, light softens and shadows grow longer. In Togo (Africa), a street view in late afternoon glows orange as the sun sinks. Motorbikes weave through gaps between cars, pedestrians, and market stalls. Food sellers light fires and set large pots on them. Office workers leave for home, tired but still talking on phones. Someone sits on a plastic chair beside the road and simply watches. Headlines in other parts of the world rarely mention Togo (Africa), but here the city moves with its own fast rhythm.
In Laos (Asia), a window may open on a calm river, a temple roof, or a busy road lined with signs and heavy cables. In the gentle hours before sunset, monks in bright robes walk past. Tourists wander, looking at maps or phones. Neighbours sweep dust and leaves away from their doors. The sky turns pink or gold. Money, exams, jobs and travel papers stay present in many minds, but, for a small moment, the window allows quiet looking without planning or fear.
Further north and west, in Kyrgyzstan (Asia) and Tajikistan (Asia), many towns and villages sit close to mountains. A late afternoon view from a house or flat often shows sharp white or brown peaks, not far away. The sun hits those masses and makes them look still and solid. Inside, someone stirs a pot, scrolls through messages, or tries to finish homework. Another person thinks about leaving for seasonal work in another country. Outside, the mountains do not move. They are a reminder that some things change every season, and others hold their shape over many lifetimes.
Night changes what can be seen. In parts of Madagascar (Africa), streets have few lamps. From a window, houses and trees sink into darkness, and stars become clear. Many people sit outside because their rooms are too hot. A television plays loudly in one home. In another, music from a mobile phone fills the yard. A baby cries. A dog barks. Someone laughs at a joke. Through the window, the night is not empty; it is full of small scenes that overlap.
On an island in Cabo Verde (Africa), a window may face down a hill toward the sea or across roofs in a higher neighbourhood. When the sun has gone, points of light appear in lines and clusters. Music floats through the air. People talk in doorways or on steps. A motorbike or car passes every now and then. The ocean may not be visible in the dark, but its presence can be felt in the wind, the salt on the skin, and the damp air.
In Guinea-Bissau (Africa) and the Central African Republic (Africa), the night can be very dark when power is weak or absent. From some windows there is almost nothing to see but shapes. Still, voices carry clearly. A neighbour’s radio sends out music or news. Human figures pass as faint outlines. In such hours, common worries sit close: how to find enough money, whether the area is safe, who is ill, and what the future may hold. The window is not only an opening to the street; it is also a mirror that throws back the face of the person who is watching.
Then there is the deep night and the very early morning, when most people sleep. In Vanuatu (Oceania), Papua New Guinea (Oceania), and the Comoros (Africa), a person awake at three in the morning may see a sky thick with stars, a gentle rain on corrugated roofs, a quiet sea, or an empty road. Someone works a night shift in a hospital or a port. Someone sits beside a family member who is ill. Someone lies awake because of the heat, or because thoughts refuse to stop. The wider world does not record what they see at that hour, but it is still part of the real story of these places.
The idea at the heart of this article is to turn these images into a shared practice. Readers are invited to send a short message or comment with four simple facts: the country and city or town where they are, the part of the day it is, what they can see from their window or door right now, and one thing they like and one thing that hurts or tires them about that view. They are then encouraged to pass the same invitation to someone whose window is very different: a person in another country, someone in a rural area if they live in a city or the other way round, an online friend who often talks about their neighbourhood, or a relative who has moved abroad.
If many people do this, then a small experiment begins to take shape. A window in Niger (Africa) with dust and chickens connects, in a quiet way, to a balcony in Laos (Asia) over a river, a high-floor flat in Kyrgyzstan (Asia) facing mountains, a front step in Sierra Leone (Africa) near the sea, or a house in Vanuatu (Oceania) listening to the wind before dawn. None of these places need to wait for breaking news to appear in someone else’s field of vision. They can be seen through the words of the people who live there.
At the centre of it all stands a simple truth: even a “boring” window—one that shows only a wall, a narrow alley, a few cables, some dust and a scrap of sky—is still a view onto the world. Through that small frame, it is possible to watch seasons change, children grow taller, adults age, shops open and close, and moods shift from hope to fear and back again. The value lies not in how impressive the view looks, but in the act of paying attention to it.
Conclusions
Everyday life in Niger (Africa), Lesotho (Africa), Djibouti (Africa), Timor-Leste (Asia), Burundi (Africa), Sierra Leone (Africa), Togo (Africa), Laos (Asia), Kyrgyzstan (Asia), Tajikistan (Asia), Madagascar (Africa), Cabo Verde (Africa), Guinea-Bissau (Africa), the Central African Republic (Africa), Vanuatu (Oceania), Papua New Guinea (Oceania), and the Comoros (Africa) rarely leads international bulletins. Yet from each of these countries, someone looks out of a window or a doorway every day and reads the world in light, dust, noise, water, traffic, and silence.
The simple act of sharing these window views can soften the flat, grey image that often surrounds less reported countries. It suggests another way to think about the idea of “least developed” or “far away”: not as empty labels, but as places where mornings begin, nights fall, worries build, and joy still shows up in the middle of it all.
In December 2025, when data dashboards and news feeds remain crowded with a small set of locations, looking out of a window in a quieter corner of the map and describing what is there becomes a small but real kind of storytelling. It does not solve structural problems. It does, however, make it harder to see any part of the planet as a blank space.
Selected References
[1] United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). “UN list of least developed countries.” Accessed December 2025. https://unctad.org/topic/least-developed-countries/list
[2] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “The least developed countries (LDC) category.” Accessed December 2025. https://policy.desa.un.org/least-developed-countries
[3] United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). “Human Development Reports.” Accessed December 2025. https://hdr.undp.org/
[4] United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). “The Least Developed Countries Report 2022” [YouTube video]. Accessed December 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d302G7PwTl4
[5] World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). “Global media tell only part of Africa’s story – new report shows which outlets perform best and worst.” Published September 2024, accessed December 2025. https://wan-ifra.org/2024/09/global-media-tell-only-part-of-africas-story-new-report-shows-which-outlets-perform-best-and-worst/
Appendix
Everyday view
This term refers to the ordinary things a person can see from a familiar place such as a window, door, balcony, or yard, including people, streets, buildings, sky, plants, animals, light, and weather.
Grey countries
This phrase describes countries that appear rarely in international news or data dashboards and are therefore treated as blank or low-detail areas in the mental maps of people who live elsewhere.
Least developed countries
This is a formal United Nations category for states with low income, weak human development indicators, and high vulnerability to economic and environmental shocks; several of the countries mentioned in the article are placed in this group.
Window experiment
This is the simple idea of asking people in many different countries to describe what they see from their windows at about the same point in time and to pass on the invitation to others, creating a chain of everyday views that cross borders.
My Diary - Leonardo Cardillo 