Entries about tourist

Some places like tourists, some places need tourist. And some places resent tourists. This is, of course, a generalisation. Areas are made up of individuals. Persons who have vastly different opinions about tourists. Some people make a lot of money from tourists. Others are proud of their cultural heritage and happy to show it to visitors. Others again think the influx of foreigners and money is altering their community for the worse or too fast, and sometimes it’s simply fairly annoying that people come and insist on taking people’s photo, while they are just trying to go about their daily business. But somehow, the sentiments that tend to be domination a given community tend to be in either one or the other end of the scale.

I’ve been visiting just about every type of place on this trip, and there are just about two general rules of thumb. The fewer visitors to a place, the happier will the local population be to see you. And the more the local individuals are part of the attraction, the less happy will they be to see you. I don’t blame them. Loads of tourists and travellers invade certain small areas of this world on a daily basis. Imagine being treated more like an attraction than a human being. Whether that is being a Maya Indian, a Tibetan monk or an African villager still living the traditional life.

Travellers and tourists (or the tour companies) make a load of money and social capital on these people. Granted – I make little money from my photos, though I do make some. But I do make a shit load of social capital projecting myself to the world as an experience and hardcore bad-ass traveller who goes where no-one else dares to venture... or… At least that’s what I like to think I do.

We – travellers and tourists – do so, without any form of appreciation to the people we often snap photos of. Way too many of us don’t even bother chatting to people before taking their picture. Too many of us don’t even ask if it’s all right with the people we’re snapping away at. It shouldn’t surprise that people in touristy places – particularly when the tourists are a lot richer than the locals – are asking for money if their picture is taken.

In general, I’ve been received everywhere with a mix of positive shock, open arms and a lot of offers to buy all sorts of crap. No exceptions. But some people and places just stand out as exceptionally friendly. The old man in upcountry Liberia who led me sleep in his village house when our car broke down in the middle of nowhere. The young guy in northern Burkina Faso who ended up paying my guesthouse bill for two nights. Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau as a whole.

Then there were the places that used to have a lot of tourism, but where it have all but disappeared because of political instability in the Sahel. In Mauritania’s desert region, a man invited me to stay with him for free and pay nothing for the three meals a day I received (except a few voluntary contributions). His hospitality paid off as I used him as my middleman in setting up a five-day Sahara Desert trek. Obviously, it’s possible to question whether his hospitality was genuine, but it was a win-win situation, with both of us coming out on the other side happy.

On another five-day trek, in Mali’s Dogon Country, I got to experience a place where a lot of people had been sceptical towards tourists when we first showed up. But as tourism suddenly dried up, they had realised how much it meant for the local economy. The Dogon’s are very conservative and traditional people, and they had had tiny contact with the outside world as late as the 1970’s. So the massive influx of tourists that began in the early 2000’s was received with some unease.

However, every hostel is locally owned, and there’s a small fee to be paid to every village visited. For a population who live off farming, primarily onions, the extra income counted for a lot. Plenty of people told me how happy they were to see me, and hoped that more tourists would return soon – even though they hadn’t been euphoric about them previously. The reason was simply. Tourists had a major impact on standards of living and had turned out to be of rather uninfluential on their traditional culture.

Lastly, here in Benin, I’ve hit places where tourists are less than welcome. First in a stilt village called Ganvié. It’s right outside Cotonou, so just about every foreigner in the country – even if they have time to see only one thing in Benin, go to Ganvié. It’s a short boat ride from town, and the Ministry of Tourism has set up a large departure platform. With government officials controlling the flow of tourists, I suspect that there isn't much tourist revenue going to the Ganvié community. They are busy fishing and getting on with their lives. I doubt they even asked for the tourist influx.

It doesn’t help that the only way to get around in the village is by boat. That makes it impossible to walk up to someone and ask if it’s okay to take their picture – so many visitors just snap as many photos they can before someone begins to yell that they should stop. The fact that most boats are steered by young boys, who’s inexperience makes it difficult for them to control the boat (but I’m sure they’re cheap labour), and guides who put pressure on them to finish the pre-planned tour quickly (so they can take another couple of paying visitors out to the village) only contribute further to the distance between locals and visitors.

The other place in Benin was at the temples and royal house in Abomey. The temples are still active places of traditional (pagan) worship, and royal families still live in some of their houses. It’s not surprising that people here prefer to live and pray in peace. However, here are plenty of signs making it clear which buildings that can be photographed or visited and which that can’t. However, even the buildings with "no photo" signs can be snapped. It just requires the visitor to show a minimum amount of respect. Find the house owner or priest, ask politely, and pay the small amount they ask for if they ask for any. Then it’s pretty easy to get a tour of the premise or snap as many photos as you’d like.

That’s pretty much it. With simple respect, taking an active interest in peoples' lives, and sometimes – just sometimes – move a little bit of cash from the wealthy tourist to the not-so-wealthy local, pretty much anyone will be welcomed. And if you don’t want to pay for the privilege, don’t get in the way of local life and don’t assume that people will be happy to be part of your vacation photo albums.

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I’ve made an observation. And I’ve thought pretty hard and long about that observation. But let's start with that actual observation and get to the thinking later. White people in Africa greet each other on the street. Everybody, from the traveller over the expat to the sex tourist and everybody in between. Even if there’s no chance that we’re going to start a conversation together – say, when I’m walking down the street, and an expat in an NGO jeep drives past me in the opposite direction – we’ll give each other a small wave or a polite nod of the head. Let me repeat that: white people, who are complete strangers to one another, greet each other on the streets in Africa simply because they’re both white!

Why is that? Is it racist? Does black people in Europe or Asians in Australia do the same thing? If someone could get back to me with that, that’ll be great.

I’ve even done worse. I’ve been pretty privileged with a number of visits I’ve received while travelling around here in West Africa. It’s been helping to keep me sane in a region were hostels, social guesthouses and other travellers are hard to come by. I haven’t kept score, but regarding fellow traveller’s I might have met someone about every two weeks. I’ve simply lacked other white people. I’m travelling in a region full of perfectly reasonable and friendly locals. It seems fairly unsympathetic, I not downright racist, to need people of my of my skin colour so badly.

Then again, travellers, no matter where in the world, also stick together. Expat creates what is famously know as the ‘expat bubble’ where they hang out with other expats.

The easy answer is probably that it’s all a matter of reference points. Travelling for the sake of travelling is a foreign notion for most people here in Africa, while for us in the West most people know it as a vacation. Being a university educated Dane with a global outlook, while most local are simply trying to get by, doing hard manual labour, doesn’t make it easier to have meaningful conversations much past the usual phrases of introduction. Not that I haven’t made permanent friends down here, though they too tend to be university educated people from the upper middle class – just like me.

Thus I have cherished the visits I have received. Where it’s possible to talk about things happening at home, things going on in the world (read Trump), travellers’ problems or simply speak in my native languish and make jokes based on a common frame of reference of cultural classics and internet memes… And on that note, I’ll change the topic for a brief moment.

My latest visitor, Bo, has headed home and I’ll be travelling on my own the last month my trip. But before I continue my trip alone, I have a visit to make my of own. Not only have I been privileged with visits by friends and family. I’m lucky enough to know friends who live here in West Africa. I know, what are the odds, right. It might be a 700 km detour, but as I hinted at, we travellers are willing to do a lot for the right company.

Pernille is a friend from university who works in a development project in northern Togo. With me travelling through Togo it’s an obvious visit to make. Living in Togo’s second city, Kara, in a compound with a handful Americans and two local families, Pernille isn’t totally isolated from the outside world. But it wasn’t difficult to see that the mere fact that my presence doubled the number of Danes in Kara excited her. Again, that common languish, and those common points of references do a lot.

What is interesting is that it’s not something that’s obvious when travelling around. Sure, travellers stick together in hostels or guesthouses to an almost sickening degree (including myself), but I’ve not necessarily been able to explain why that’s the case. Usually, I just attributed it to travellers being selfish douche bags (myself included). But having first my family and then Bo visiting, before talking with Pernille – who, after all, live with a bunch of Americans – helped this realisation along nicely.

While there are probably many reasons why white people greet each other on Africa's streets, it probably isn’t racists, though it can look like that. It’s a matter of recognition. Of finding some common references, some familiarity on this vast foreign continent where we – if we are honest – doesn’t belong. At least not in the sense that we understand or appreciate everything that is going on. Some of the same familiarity even extended to my visit with Pernille. And she lives with a bunch of other white people.

Thinking a bit about it, it does seem rather natural and human. Even though it sometimes make for rather odd situations of me waving fanatically at random white people driving past me.

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The aim of this blog post is not to frighten anybody. Nonetheless, kidnapping is a frightening topic to discuss and to write about. Yet, I would argue that it is also a necessary topic when travelling certain parts of the world. Hell, when I choose to go where I am going, not looking into this stuff would make going here twice as stupid. Simply because kidnapping is going to be the most serious threat to me in particular parts of West Africa. In particular Mali, Niger and, less so, in Mauritania and Burkina. But is this not just paranoia, you ask? Let us go through the numbers:
Since 2003, 95 Westerners have been kidnapped in 28 kidnapping incidents across North Africa (see map) and most of these kidnappings have been in the Sahel area. Sahara-Overland has a detailed page if you are interested, but the outcomes are as follows: 49 hostages have been ransomed. 18 were freed in army raids while four have died in failed raids. Two have been released voluntarily by their captors; six have been executed by them and four have died in captivity, usually due to health issues. 12 are still held by their kidnappers.
So, what is the good news? Most victims have either been living permanently in the region or have been part of larger organised tours. Out of those 95, only 15 were travelling independently and only three of these were not ‘overlanders’, driving their own vehicles. So I am not exactly part of the main target group. Further, no tourists have been kidnapped since 2014 in the entire Sahara. Then again, this might just be because fewer people visit the area due to the risk of being kidnapped…

The other sort-of-good news is that most hostages are being held for ransom and that the kidnappers are becoming excellent at keeping their hostages alive. To the point where a Frenchwoman with cancer received her medication even though she was held captive in the middle of the Sahara. Danes are not targeted either. This is because the kidnappers are well aware that individual governments, in particular, the German, Austrian, French, Swiss, Spanish and Italian governments, are willing to pay ransoms. Kidnappers, therefore, target nationals from these countries. The governments of cause deny paying any ransoms. Instead, the payments are handled by ‘third parties’. Ransom payments then appear as “development assistance” in the national budgets. The “bad news” here is that no Danes have been kidnapped in the Sahara prior to my trip and I have not been able to figure out how Danes have been released elsewhere in the World. So I do not know how the Danish government would position itself in the hypothetical case that I would need a ransom. Though I do fear, they are on board with the American and British ditto, who do not pay ransom. This, put bluntly, means that I have less of a risk of being kidnapped, but a higher risk getting executed should it actually happen. So that should probably be the first lesson: Know who is the target group, and the do not be part of it.

The second lesson would be to realise that the kidnappings are rarely spontaneous. By now they are most often planned, and well planned too. The perpetrators need a getaway route, a car and a hiding-place for the first few days. In most cases kidnappings last months, requiring, even more, preperation. The groups in the Sahara are indeed getting more professional, but even they need a few days to figure out your nationality. That means it is possible to take a few precautions. Not staying in the same hotel for more than a couple of nights goes a long way. So does mixing up your daily routines; taking different routes from, say, your hotel to the market; eating at a new place for every meal; avoiding empty streets, and not going out at night. These precautions should be taking when travelling in areas where kidnapping risks are high. Lastly, avoiding public transportation might be a good idea for certain trips. The alternative here is to get your hotel or local authorities to recommend you a reliable driver who can ferry you safely across rural areas where the government have less control.

Finally, anyone contemplating going to an area where there is a risk of kidnapping need to understand the mental dilemma this brings. I would not travel here if I were not ready to face the risk – nor should anybody else. However, this is a very selfish position to take. Just like suicide is a selfish act. My death or kidnapping will affect my friends and family far greater than it would affect me, and they had no chance to influence my decision about going here. Death is certain for all of us and once we are dead – like before we were born – we will not be around to worry about the fact that we are not alive. All the pain and suffering are left for those we leave behind.
But how great is the danger really? In 2012 10.000 people visited Mali (down from 200.000 in 2011). Out or those 210.000 visitors seven got kidnapped. So the risk is limited. Of the 10.000 people visiting Mali in 2012, just one got kidnapped. The other Mali-kidnapping in 2012 was a missionary living permanently in the country. And all eight people kidnapped got kidnapped in parts of Mali I do not plan to visit. In other words: I am still far more likely to lose my lift to the crazy traffic down here than to any terrorist attack or kidnapping. Not that I plan to get killed in any specific way down here – but if I go, I would rather do it while doing travelling – something that I love – than in a traffic accident back home in Copenhagen.

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And after all that uncomfortable and depressing reading we should probably end on a higher note. So here is a quote from Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life:

For life is quite absurd, and death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow.

So always look on the bright side of death...
(Whistle)
a-Just before you draw your terminal breath...
(Whistle)

Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true
You'll see its all a show, keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you

And...
Always look on the bright side of life...
(Whistle)