Any players from Middle East and Africa (MEA)? What is your experience like?

Being keeping track of Marathon since its release. A pity about the bad press in spite of relatively positive player reviews. Have watched quite a few Twitch streams and the game looks like fun.. Am not much of a PvP player (pretty poor at Tarkov and ABI) though I would like to give it a try. Only issue is my location (South Africa). Did some Googling and definitely doesn't look like there are any MEA servers (though a few hits did show temporary servers during the Server Slam events). There are a few AWS endpoints in MEA (South Africa included) so a bit disappointing that a whole continent is ignored and expected to play on high ping which for a PvP game is not ideal. Am not sure when the next free weekend is going to take place to personally try it out so in the interim would appreciate any players from MEA sharing their experience playing the game.