kindness vs. assertion as a tourist

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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onto today’s topic: kindness vs. assertion as a tourist ⛱️ 

while traveling, i defer to being openly friendly and kind to others around me (locals, other tourists etc.). after all, travel is such a great opportunity to form exciting friendships and learn deeply about other cultures.

of course, some tourist traps are to be expected in highly visited countries — i can level with those. locals making horrible comments and just being gross human beings though? i can’t get behind that. 😐️ 

my experience with the locals in tanzania hasn’t been fun. vendors basically harassing you to buy things, being overcharged and needing to haggle for every little thing, just walking down a busy tourist-filled street while being gawked and cat-called at … it’s really annoying and uncomfortable.

i remember at the beginning of this trip, i would happily reply with “poa” or “mambo” in response to every jambo thrown at me. now i walk down the streets of zanzibar with a rbf and ignore everyone LOL.

yes, i still really want to connect with locals, but at this point assertion is a better, more safe, option. we literally had to leave the beach near our hostel because we were so uncomfortable by locals taking pictures of my friends while pretending to take selfies, and random men getting so close to us while in the water.

another thing that shocked me is the absolute blatant staring that is normalized in the parts of tanzania that we’ve traveled. it’s not even a glance and then look away, it’s fully making eye contact and then just continuing to stare. not to mention when we visited a masaai village, each of us were split up individually and then basically coerced into buying something from their shops to support the village. 🦹‍♂️ 

yes, being open and kind makes for a better experience traveling, but you also need to know your worth and keep yourself safe.

verdict: don’t travel tanzania solo as a woman, unless you’re in a resort or something. fortunately, our big group of 10 made this negative part of the trip very minuscule.

a local-tourist dynamic shouldn’t enable being complacent with mistreatment.

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