My parents have always said that the best part of having kids who move abroad is that it gives you an excuse to visit somewhere new. They were thrilled with the chance to send my oldest sister Simma to study abroad so we could take a family vacation to Edinburgh and go (mini)golfing in St. Andrews. Just as exciting was my other older sister Aviva's stint in Hawaii working on organic farms so we could spend a Passover break eating pesticide-free avocados the size of rugby balls on cheese and matzoh sandwiches while hiking around active volcanos. But it was with a good deal more trepidation that they agreed on a vacation to come see me in Mali, a place that maintains an off-the-beaten-path sense of romantic danger and uncertainty, in spite of – and I'm sure also because of – all my enlightening blog entires.
Deciding that the best thing to do to break in my mom and little sister to Africa before continuing to Mali would be to have them come with my dad to Ghana, the "Africa for Beginners" country, to make sure that continuing on to my mud hut in the bush was something that could be handled. They talked to their travel agent, I talked to my fellow PCVs who had travelled, and we decided on a general itinerary to see X, Y, and Z, hiring a guide to drive us around and help us out. It seemed like a fun plan, and as a well-adjusted resident of West Africa, finally moving to an Anglophone country, I figured I'd feel perfectly at home. So I wasn't expecting it to be there that I experienced some of the strongest culture-shock I've ever felt .
In Mali, I could speak Bambara fluently, I knew the value of the CFA Franc, could bargain accordingly, knew how to converse the way Malians do, eat rice and sauce with my hands, and basically feel like I fit in, aside from the glaring exceptions of my skin color and accent, and the odd unavoidable screw-up that even the most seasoned ex-pats are bound to make. I could walk down the street feeling completely unself-conscious because I knew that as soon as I opened my mouth, I could become, for all intents and purposes, a Malian. In Ghana, I didn't know the language, other than English, I didn't know the currency, the foods, or the proper way of addressing others. To make matters harder, I was staying in the fanciest hotels in every city (per my parents' insistence), I was being driven around by a local professional guide in a big white van, eating almost exclusively at hotels and mostly-white restaurants, and visiting all the typical tourist attractions. The whole country seemed almost like a exhibit in the Smithsonian: "look, but don't touch." I quickly began to feel like the thing I'd begun to pray I'd not soon again become: a Tourist.
I took some steps to make myself feel more like I was still living in the Africa I'd adopted as my home, but I knew deep down that all these steps were merely signs of self-consciousness and denial. I only drank the local tap-water, as opposed to the bottled mineral water the guide supplied us, despite how saline or rotten it sometimes tasted. I bargained hard for souvenir masks at the Artisan's Market, using the same benchmarks of etiquette and price-value I'd learned in Mali, but without the Bambara to give me "street-cred," I ended up feeling less like a savvy shopper and more like a stingy tourist brat. Within a few days, I was aching to get back to Mali, where I could feel the little thrill that comes with knowing that you are home, and can make a snappy retort in an obscure local language to anyone who says otherwise. Thinking about my situation, I began to worry whether I would ever feel comfortable traveling as a tourist again.
That all happened this past January, when I was still a Peace Corps Volunteer. Now I'm not. I COSed (closed my service) August 12 and that night, I was heading to the airport to fly north, over the Sahara, to Tunisia, with fellow PCV Zac for a romp around the country for a few weeks before I meet my little sister Rena at her study-abroad program in Rome and Zac heads home for the LSATs. I'd been excited to see the country from having read through the Lonely Planet's guide. Ancient Roman and Carthaginian ruins, endless desert landscapes, elderly Berbers wearing those red fez caps sitting in cafes all day, Troglodyte pit-homes and four-story-tall Ksour granaries that look otherworldly enough to pass as the setting for George Lucas's vision of Luke Skywalker's homeward in a few of the Star Wars movies.
*Danger Sign #1: Everything I was planning to do in this country was pulled straight from one of the world's best-selling travel guides.
Before I left Mali, I made sure to stock up a lot on AA batteries to power my discern and my camera, since I was worried that Tunisia, like Mali, would only be selling good AA batteries in the capital. The only frame of reference I had to Africa at all was the impoverished West Africa, which other than a few examples like Dakar, Senegal and Accra, Ghana, are places where one would be well advised to come over-prepared as opposed to insufficiently so.
*Danger Sign #2: I was planning to take a lot of pictures.
*Danger Sign #3: I don't speak Arabic or French, Tunisians don't speak English or Bambara, which means that even if we do get some respect from Zac's functional Arabic, and his more useful Fluent French, I'm still playing the "Silent Bob" to Zac's "Jay" and if we are a step above the standard tourist, it still doesn't help me feel any less out of place.
So clearly, all the signs point to me being sucked back into tourist mode. We acted like tourists and in turn, we were treated like tourists. We wanted a tour of the Ksour surrounding the southern desert town of Tataouine, tall, Dr. Suessian structures used as granaries and sometimes homes, and we couldn't even get the Lonely Planet suggested prices for renting a cabbie. We tried to bargain down, but with the combination of a strong tourist industry that allows for high pricing and the fact that we had fairly little in the way of bartering tools (there was usually only one tour guide in sight), we basically had to take what we were given or go through the whole painful process of looking for somebody else. Knowing that this kind of exploitation can happen at all means that we are constantly vigilant against the next perpetrator, and instead of spending all our time enjoying the views of the country and partaking in friendly banter with the locals, we are mostly just paranoid about what that friendly guy in a turban is REALLY trying to peddle.
One of the few saving graces is that unlike Mali, being a tourist in Tunisia is not nearly as brutally soul-wrenching an experience. As a tourist in a desperately poor country, one is constantly hounded to buy souvenirs, give money to beggars, help out "unfortunate" locals who come up with all sorts of rip-off schemes to lighten your wallet ("I was robbed at X festival! I only need you to come to the bank with me and loan me some money. You can give me your phone number and I will pay you back as soon as I get home, I promise!"), or simply pay ridiculous exorbitant fees for everything from taxis to bellhops. Here, bargaining tends to have a very take-it-or-leave-it mentality. If you don't want it for their price, somebody who does won't be far behind. And rather than shopkeepers who follow you down the street to hound you until you go into their store to buy something, they simply put air conditioning units in their shops – a perfect example of passive-aggressive marketing. Overall, compared to Bamako or other Malian cities, I never have a sense of doom when I go out into town that my affluence will precede me and lead me into a constant struggle to avoid taking the Sucker's Bet.
Anyway, we certainly weren't as ridiculous as some of our Western World compatriots. There was the middle-aged man walking through the Tunis Medina, a place cluttered with
mosques, Muslim theology schools, and women buying produce, wearing a button-down shirt but making no use whatsoever of his buttons; rather, he was exposing his corpulent stomach in a manner that's as offensive to a traditional Muslim as seeing girls in flashy miniskirts, who were also in no short supply. Just as bad was the number of people smoking cigarettes in the marketplace. I never would have guessed that it was taboo, but all we had to do was ask one cabbie who gave us a rundown of all the things Tunisians hate that tourists do – something anyone could find out easily. There are also the camera-fiends. Now I hate to stereotype and make cultural generalizations, so I will let one of tour guides do it for me. He saw me taking perhaps an excessive number of pictures and remarked that I was "almost like the Japanese people. They take pictures of EVERYTHING! Are you sure you're not Japanese?" Technically, there is nothing inappropriate about taking pictures, as long as they are not of other people, but the implication from the guide was strong: stop looking at everything through the camera and use your eyes and ears.
Now the fact of the matter is that not every trip I can take can be a two-year Peace Corps stint. I won't be able to count on knowing the language and being able to relate and empathize with the locals everywhere I go. If those are my demands, I won't make it very far beyond JFK International Airport. So why can't I just suck it up, treat the world as my oyster and be a tourist like everyone else? Why can't I just travel the world, see the exciting things there are to see, and hopefully have some serendipitous encounter with a chatty, English speaking local who enjoys being able to expand my mind me as much as I enjoy having my mind expanded?
Because I myself have been the main attraction too. In Matmata, where I began writing this article, there were at least a dozen huge tour busses and countless other small rented or touring company-owned 4x4s that come through the town every day, giving Europeans a look at the exotic Troglodyte houses carved out of caves and pits in the ground, giving a bird's-eye view of the town a moonscape crater-like quality. It's unique, fascinating, and quite photogenic; and it's very easy to forget that this is where Berbers live. This is literally their hometown that hundreds of people every week come to drive through, stare at, take photos of, giggle about, and leave without contributing anything except the odd souvenir or coffee purchase. Seeing this makes me think back to my Niantanso days, where starting two years ago and occurring even as recently as a month ago right before I left my village, I was the tourist attraction. With a combination of having a house situated on the corner of high-traffic intersection and the fact that I never lost my curious New White Guy appeal, I consistently and frequently saw locals and strangers alike strolling past or through my yard, often greeting, sometimes not, and usually making some comment about me and what I was doing which about half the time I could hear and understand. I felt like a zoo animal, or a diorama in the Museum of Natural History, and no amount of social integration ever really changed that.
It was the people who stopped at my house and talked to me who made me feel less like an exhibit. The out-of-towners who came by, asked me my business as a white American in a poor Malian village, and even invited me to come with them to drink tea were much more welcome than the mothers who pointed me out to their kids as they trailed behind, "Hey M'bamisa, look at the white guy! You see the white guy? I think he's sleeping. Bonjour, White Guy!!" They had no reason to think that I understood Bambara, and were probably too shy to come over and find out, but their garish excitement at seeing me at all is just as obnoxious as the flashbulbs of Nikons and the chatter of immodestly mini-skirted women sipping soda bottles on Ramadan in a Muslim country as they pass through the town that has become, through no wish of most of the locals, a living museum piece.
This is what I've come to realize in my travels, and this is what I beg for you all to adopt. I know you only get a couple weeks of vacation time a year and you want to take your tours of the new exotic destination as efficiently as possible. I know the most stress-free way to do this might be hiring a van to take you to all the most photogenic spots around the country inside of a day so you can get back to the hotel with the buffet of familiar Western-style foods in time for dinner. But ask yourself what you are really getting out of this trip? How different is it from watching the Anthony Bourdain special on the Travel Channel? Find locals who speak your language and try to get a more in-depth perspective on what you are seeing. Eat at the hole-in-the-wall restaurant where other tourists fear to tread – if it's freshly cooked, it's safe to eat – and eat the cuisine the way everyone who lives here does, and save a bundle of money on it too. Learn even just a tiny bit of the local language, even if it is just the greetings and thanks you and how to find the restroom. Ask people before photographing them or their homes, and when you do, if possible, engage in conversation so they don't feel like they are being used. Buy souvenirs not at the major artisan's market in the middle of the capital city, but from independent merchants who sell their own products on the roadside by the less-frequented sights, since they charge less, need your business more, and generally sell the same quality products anyway. Learn the standards for dress, PDA, and other general public behavior and abide by it and you will see far fewer glares and snickers directed at you. Do all this, and you will find yourself having a richer, more memorable experience, acquire a deeper understanding of where you went, save a surprising amount of money, and dispel the stereotypes of the Obnoxious American Tourist.
