Is the difference between a tourist and a racist really three weeks in Africa…??

Most travel blogs always write about how amazing and beautiful a place or a location is. Everyone hides the bad stuff, the ugly things. No one wants to buy the ugly truth. We all want to buy the dream, the beautiful, filtered wonder of the world. Who wants to buy cockroaches, racism, harassment and dirty laundry… I will give you a little bit of everything in this blog post. So...

Cape Town

What is the difference between a tourist and a racist? Three weeks in Africa…

This was something I was told once in South Africa when I first visited. First I thought he was crazy, I mean it was such a weird thing to say. He did laugh when he told me but I was skeptical to his intentions. But three weeks into my stay in South Africa I got my first experience of what he meant.

I would underline the fact that most of my experiences in Africa have been amazing. I love the continent and would recommend it to everyone. Africa gets under your skin and once you have been here you will always long for it.

Cape Town

South Africa and the first story

After spending a couple of weeks in South Africa, visiting Cape Town, Port Elisabeth, Addo Elephant Park and many beautiful places meeting many lovely and amazing people we settled down for a while in Kimberly. I traveled with some friends, one of them had previously spent eight months in South Africa as a vet student. We stayed on the farm he did his internship on. The workers there were nice and friendly. He knew them and he spent a lot of time joking around with them. One day we gave the workers a lift home to their location (township). 

A random location

We arrived at the town and my friend gets out of the car to say hi to some of the guys he used to work with, I stay in the car. Everything is nice. 

Suddenly one of the guys, still smiling says; 

R, empty your pockets!. 

Everyone is still smiling and joking around. R empties his pockets. He doesn’t have anything valuable; a stack of cards, a razor, a lighter, a bottle opener and a bit of money. He gives it all to the guy. Everyone, it still smiling. We get back into the car and drive away.

Me: Did you just get robbed?

Him: No, I gave the things. It is all good fun

Me: What had happened if you had said no?

Him: (looks at me straight); Well I didn’t, did I and you won’t either.

Later that night we bought back the lighter for half a bottle of vodka from the same guy because we couldn’t light the fire without a lighter. Everyone was smiling, everything was good.

Port Elisabeth

Tanzania, the second of my stories

The second time I visited Africa I visited Tanzania. Fresh start, new country, clean slate. And Tanzania was beautiful, splendid and amazing. I loved it. But after spending three weeks here I remembered what that guy once told me.

 

Moshi

Sometimes the difference between a racist and a tourist is just three weeks in Africa. I have never considered myself a bad person, or the definition of racist but after spending three weeks in Tanzania and being accused of being a racist several times a day I started thinking that if I started replying yes instead of no I might feel better. 
One episode that took place while I was in Tanzania was this. When I was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro one of the guides decided to climb into my tent one night and offer his services. He did respect it when I told him no. Regardless, I did not sleep at all that night. I was scared that he might change his mind, or that one of the other ones might have had the same idea.

This was just one example but I can tell you around 100 ones just like that. Like that guy who took a photo of all of us and asks to get a copy of the photo. When I blue-eyed sent it to him he started asking for marriage. When I declined he told me I was a big racist.
In another situation at our hotel, the pool-guy tells me I owe him a kiss if I want a towel at the pool... I can go on... so...

Was I being a racist? Was I just being overly sensitive? Let me set the scene for what happened at least five times a day to us. A random guy walked up to me.

Man: Hello you are beautiful. Would you like me to make love to you like no man has ever made love to you before? (this sentence can be substituted for more frank and vulgar versions, marriage proposals etc. but you get the idea)

Me: No thank you (sometimes thank you were left out depending on former vocabulary)

Man: Why? Are you a racist?

Me….

- And what do you reply to that?

- No, thank you? I don’t want to sleep with random strangers.

- I am not attracted to you.

- I don’t want to.

- I have a boyfriend.

- I'm having my period
- You smell..

(I think I can come up with around a hundred reasons for not wanting to sleep with every single guy that asked).

Moshi

But what can you say to justify not wanting to have sex (in various different forms) with a stranger, just because they ask somewhat politely? In the end, I started the very immature avoidance attempt of running, so whenever it became evident that a man, with a certain expression, was approaching me I would turn around and run/walk away obviously fast. Immature and not smart, but I just couldn’t come up with anything to avoid the situation. Anyhow, the school did tell me that if you aren’t book-smart (intelligent) maybe you are good at something else, use it… in my case RUN, Forrest, RUN. So I did.

But I was left with that one thought…. Is it really me who is acting like a racist here?

Africa is a continent of diversity in every aspect. I have enjoyed a lot of experiences in Africa and I have had a lot of lesser amazing experiences in the same places. Like everything else it isn’t black or white but rather those 50 shades of grey. I have plenty of blog posts on the beauty of Africa, and I will probably make a lot more. But I want to display the same diversity in my writing that reality possesses. So here is one of the darker scales of grey.

*Because it is my personal experiences I have chosen not to display any photos that can identify people or places, but just beautiful places from my trips to Africa.