Jambo, Selam, Sawubona, halo, dumelang, sanibonani, dumelang, salibonani, dumelang, hurini, inoali.. OK sorry if i got half of them wrong. Africa is a huge continent with so many dialects! Firstly id like to say, welcome to all of you from Africa who are here on Hive, and may have recently joined up! I'm sure it is very interesting and exciting for you to be here, and discover the blockchain and in particular Hive! This is a unique place with people from all over the world! We are all here for different reasons, but all of us are sharing and writing and upvoting and I hope commenting.
I've noticed lately a lot of people from different parts of Africa joining the ecoTrain community and its great to see.. Im happy to read your posts, and your ideas, views and opinions on so many things. It's impressive to see you all manage to write in English, as i know it is not your first language and in many parts of Africa there is no English spoken at all.
Africa is a special place, so big i should be careful not to generalise. I have once visited the country of Guinea many years ago to improve my djembe skills and had my first and only experience of the Guinea culture. IT was an amazing experience, I will never forget the incredible hospitality and full respect i was given by the community, and the strength of that community. I will also never forget the financial poverty, and limited access to opportunity for everyone. I am very happy that Hive presents an opportunity for you to make something to make your lives that much more enjoyable... I know it doesn't take much to make a difference!
On that note i would like to make a request, and also give some friendly advice to you and in fact everyone who is new here on Hive really. I am sure it must make you quite excited to have this opportunity, and yet i feel there are some issues and what i will call 'traps' that I would like to steer you away from. Hive is an amazing place, with room for all people of all nationalities but i think its important to understand certain things so that you do not end up having a disappointing experience.
Let me start with the simple request!
There are a lot of people on HIve who are quite protective of it, including myself, and have spent many years taking part in its growth and evolution. Its exciting to see it still thrive after so long, and continue to have so many posts. In particular i noticed the Question Of The Week that the 
From now on i have decided that i will no longer up-vote your posts unless they are at least 500 words long or more. I think that is a very reasonable minimum, and really doesn't take long or that much effort. You will have to spend just a little more time writing, but that is of course the point of posting! I ask you to dig a little deeper in your posts and write a bit more about whatever it is you are posting on.
I hope you understand this, and can make that extra effort so that i can reward you and hopefully make your day that bit more amazing! It's a real honor to be able to share this abundance with people from around the world, but it also needs to be beneficial to Hive and everyone who is here posting. Im sure you can imagine that those who do spend a lot of time writing and posting will not so happy to see so many short posts get rewarded.
SO, please take your time, write and then write some more! It is of course worth the effort and you might surprise yourself at what you come up with once you put that but more time into it.
A note on rewards in general!
I mentioned that I would like to also share some advice to help you stay out of a 'trap'.. That advice is simple, and yet very hard to really follow. As im sure you may have noticed, there are some people and posts that receive huge upvotes and others that get very little. It's so easy to get totally preoccupied with this aspect of Hive, and it is a shame because in the end you actually end up missing out on the best part of it. Let me just say that paying too much attention to upvotes makes your Hive experience very dull, quite sad, and almost always unfulfilling. Once you receive them, very quickly it feels that it is never enough, and even if you start getting good regular upvotes you will still end up wanting more, and never be satisfied. That is human nature!
So instead i urge you to focus on other things, and let the rewards be what they are. In many cases people receiving large upvotes have been here a long time, and in other cases they may just be friends with others who have a lot of Hive power. The dynamics of Hive are very complex and impossible to understand as each person voting has their own reasons for upvoting.
SO my advice to you is to ENGAGE! Write posts, but more importantly please engage with other people's posts. Read them, and respond with something thoughtful. It is the community that is really what brings any measure of joy or happiness here, and i think many people forget this and almost never comment or interact with others.
Once you start doing this im sure you will very quickly discover that you are having a much better time, and you will make friends and followers. You will see that when you comment on other peoples posts they will come and read and visit your posts and likely do the same. The thing is you have to start as there are a lot of people here and so the only way to get noticed is to put yourself out there and take an interest in what is going on. Its a bit like life i suppose!
A note on images
I notice also that many of you are not using images that you choose to go with your posts. A good thumbnail image at least is SO important and makes all the difference to your post and everyones experience reading it. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words!
Therefore I will share a few websites below that offer totally free to use images that you dont need to reference or ask permission for to use. They are called royalty free images, and you can just search and download them. Please try to do this when you post, you will see it makes a difference.
So here are my favourite royalty free image sites you can use!
- https://www.pexels.com
- https://unsplash.com
- https://pixabay.com
- https://www.shutterstock.com
- https://www.rawpixel.com/public-domain
Thank you for listening, and PLEASE share this with your friends and share this post to your blog! i hope to see some of you take this advice on board for the next Question Of The week and of course your other posts as well!
ecoTrain Question Of The Week 8.5: WHAT IS THE BEST KIND OF ACTION?
I leave you with one of my favourite songs! This song is dedicated to the people of Africa!