My Biggest Travel Annoyance

It’s something that we deal with every day.

A while ago Linda Ng shared her post about her biggest travel annoyances.

I read through them with interest but realized as a full-time traveler now, most of my travel annoyances are just part of my everyday life. It’s hard to discern the ‘travel’ annoyances from the regular everyday annoyances.

Then yesterday I saw Sandy Maximus’ post about her travel annoyances.

Again, I felt the same way as I did when reading Linda’s post. But when I started commenting on Sandy’s article, I realized that I do have one HUGE annoyance that I can certainly write about.

I hate being a foreigner.

This annoyance is REALLY prominent in places such as where we are now, Africa. We have been in Africa mostly since January 2020, 2.5 years. While we have loved most of our time spent here, we stick out like sore thumbs. ESPECIALLY in these days when there are not many other foreigners around.

Here in Uganda, and other parts of Eastern Africa we are referred to as ‘Mazungos’. Mazungo means foreigner, and we are called it about 1000 times per day.

While walking down the street we hear “hey Mazungo”, or “Mazungo give me money” or “Mazungo where are you from”. It’s not only from random people walking past us, but people will yell it from rooftops, they will yell it from a passing motorbike, or children will be playing in their yard and we hear a gaggle of screams and squeals followed by “Mazungo, mazungo, mazungo!” as they run towards the road waving at us frantically.

Okay, I’ll admit, the last one is pretty cute, usually. That is until they stick out their hand and say “give me money.”

It’s interesting as I had started to write a post about this a couple of weeks ago, but I was concerned that it was coming off as too privileged. Of course, I don’t want people to think that we take our privilege for granted. We definitely realize how lucky we are to have the ability to travel around the world in the way that we do. And that is why I don’t want to seem like I am complaining, but some days are just really annoying.

And it’s not just the fact that we get called foreigners that grates on our nerves, it's the fact that we are treated differently. We are constantly charged more than the locals, and we are never sure if the price we are paying is fair or not. Of course, being in a place where the cost of living is much lower than where we come from means that there is a big margin of error. Even if they charge double the price they usually do to each other, it is still inexpensive to us.

But that is beside the point. It’s the utter exhaustion of constantly having to haggle and barter prices, especially when we now know what most prices should be. And of course, over time those extra prices add up, and we are here just trying to survive on the planet like everyone else.

We are also treated differently by just everyday people. Many will bow their heads to us. We realize that it is a sign of respect, but we hate the fact that they feel like they need to treat us that way. Many are tongue-tied and completely afraid of us, and can’t even manage to get a word out. We hate that we intimidate people. After all, we feel like we are just like them, people.

In short, we just want to fit in.

We really didn’t notice that this was a thing until we spent 9 months in Morocco in 2020, then flew to Istanbul where we disappeared into the crowd. We realized then how tired we had gotten standing out in Morocco. It was the same feeling there as there were very few other foreigners in the country, so we became targets.

And we are at that point again here.

We do have some rough plans of heading back North soon, but the details still haven’t quite come together. We can’t wait to be able to just sit in a crowd of people and just feel like we belong and that we are accepted as equals. It will be nice.

In saying this, I will admit that my other biggest annoyance while traveling is the actual flying part. I would much rather take a bus than go through the hassle of dealing with all the hoopla at airports these days. But it will also feel really good to quickly get to another place, and be relieved of our current discomfort.

We do travel with quite a bit of stuff, so anytime we have to fly we stress out about our luggage. Plus, of course, going through the nonsense with security and covid rules is exhausting. So we don’t look forward to that.

We haven’t been on a plane since April 30, 2021, so we are certainly not used to flying at this point. It will be another fun adventure, I am sure.

But for now, we find ourselves in Uganda. We have one more commitment that we have promised to do, then we are free to be on our way.

We will see what transpires.

Thanks for reading about my biggest travel annoyance. Some days are better than others, that’s for sure!

xo Jill

Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We have now been on the African continent for over 2 years!

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