Photo: maureen sill
Is it possible to re-imagine our understanding of dangerous destinations? Natalie Grant explores how to make the shift, though our understanding of risk and reward.
Preparing for my trip to South Africa was a blur of warnings, an avalanche of don’ts and watch-outs.
Once there, however, my dear friend Jess (born and raised in South Africa) explained the real meaning of the oft used phrase “This is Africa” (TIA) over two cool glasses of Savannah Dry. Essentially, that things here rarely work out like you expect them.
As we rambled about the differences in legality in our respective continents, she shook her head with regret and added: “The world’s gone soft.”
As many of us are undoubtedly aware, savvy traveling is a fickle see-saw; on one side, confidence can become arrogance, and on the other, caution can become paranoia. The former will get you into trouble, and the latter will deny you the best experiences.
The trick is to decide for ourselves how adventurous we’re willing to be, and, consequently, how much of the world we’re willing to experience.
Yet the mishmash of advice and horror stories with which the media inundates us makes it almost impossible to decide objectively. These occasionally useful hand-me-down prejudices are why people so confidently, and so foolishly, insist on branding country X as ’safe’ and country Y as ‘unsafe.’
Definition Of Dangerous
The area where Jess grew up is filled with more tragedy in one week than could fit in my local paper back home. It makes me ask: what defines a dangerous country? And how can we avoid letting fear paralyze us?
Worried parents say, “Go with a buddy.” Doctors say, “Get vaccinated.” But your backpack says, “What are we waiting for?”
I can’t help but wonder if I myself have grown soft along with the world, and if it’s possible to de-soften – to scrub away the sterilization
This is why someone who has camped out in Burma might still fear walking alone at night in Brooklyn, or why someone can improvise à la 007 when his car breaks down in Egypt but can’t change a tire in Montana. This is why so many of us crave those hard-knock travel lessons like junkies: because that kind of traveling very easily shreds the definition of ‘dangerous’ into tiny pieces of arbitrary, amusing confetti.
As I silently observe the strength of people here in Africa, something irrationally pops in my head – a law midterm I wrote in college about the elderly woman who sued McDonald’s because she was burned by their coffee. Jess is right. The world – part of it anyway – has grown much, much too soft.
I see the electric fences around everyone’s farms, the orphaned Zulu children looking for work, the wrecks on the highways… but I also see how vibrant and breathtaking the country is, and how everything – the volume, the emotion – is seemingly turned up.
I can’t help but wonder if I myself have grown soft along with the world, and if it’s possible to de-soften – to scrub away the sterilization until the resolve, the spirit, and the dirt under my fingernails to reflect those of the people who embody the hardness I so admire.
The World In Common
Sometimes there does seem to be an overabundance of crime and suffering in the world. The fact is, people act desperately when faced with desperate situations. And it’s difficult to comprehend the mentality of extremism without seeing extreme conditions with our own eyes.
Photo: maureen sill
Perhaps this is why we tend to label countries ‘unsafe’ – out of misunderstanding.
A developed-world upbringing can obscure one’s perception of suffering. For example, war that is so horrific and arbitrary from the front lines can seem, from our safe classrooms, simply necessary in the course of history – both as a mother of invention and as a primal standard for survival.
And yet the same human problems – like hunger or heartbreak – exist regardless of what side of the picket fence you call home. The difference is that we can usually find a way to distract ourselves from those problems, while the overwhelming majority of people in the world have their eyes peeled back Clockwork-Orange style.
Whether it’s poverty or consumerism that we battle, whether it’s governmental corruption or political apathy that undermines us… when the shiitake hits the fanfaronade, the world does have more in common than one might think.
Getting Ready To Live
A country is only ‘dangerous’ if you choose to define it as such. Without labels, all places on this earth have their upsides and downsides, have certain elements of risk that can be foreseen and unforeseen.
This is not to say one should charge merrily into Somalia and start teaching soldiers to line dance. Savvy traveling is all about the tentative and skilled balance between confidence and caution.
If we travelers can embrace our adventurous attitudes boldly and responsibly, we can help to alleviate those media-charged fears just by understanding them. This is not mere danger tourism, but a realization that life is continually chaotic.
There’s an old Chinese proverb: People in the West are always getting ready to live.
How many of us would, if we could, trade our Purell and SPF 70 for some wicked scars and stories? Think of your best travel stories; I bet they involve a mishap, a scare, or some averted danger that is your new party trick.
Every one of those surreal travel moments is another millimeter your comfort zone gets stretched. And though some of our loved ones will still worry when we travel to a ‘dangerous’ destination, we travelers know that the only real danger is pretending we are ever in control.
Perhaps this mentality could be captured in a new phrase: T.I.L. – This Is Life.
What do you think about the definition of dangerous travel? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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8 Comments... join the discussion!
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LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, I live in South Africa and you’ll never believe this, I and two girl-friends of mine were stranded in the middle of a game reserve in Mozambique because our vehicle wouldn’t make it through the sandy pass. Our biggest fear was coming face-to face with Elephant – many of which roam the reserve. To my amazement, mankind outshone itself when a car of German tourists arrived (the first humans we had seen in 2 days). They parked some distance away and piled out of the vehicle to observe the crocodile infested Estuary. They were accompanied by a Mozambique game park ranger. A friend of mine Caiktin noticed through the corner of her eye that they were ‘posing’ with the ranger’s AK47 rifle for photographs with the barrel of the gun pointing DIRECTLY towards us… FLAT on the deck we all were (a second-nature reaction here in Africa where we are exposed to many gun-related/violent crimes on a day to day basis).
What are the odds of being in the most DISTANT place from any civilization and getting a gun aimed towards you by no other than a group of completely harmless tourists! I’m sure had it been the other way round, they would not have batted an eyelid. Can you naaaat do that!? Story told…number 3482 times by Kollin Funch.
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Hmmm this sounds vaguely familiar… almost as if I were there.
You forgot the man-eating sharks, the gaboon vipers, being tear-gassed, getting a car stolen and being circled by locals during a moment of sudden isolation atop a camping trailer post-dusk. Now that’s a good time.
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awesome read… I feel very much the same way. Shiiiit…I know the US is probably more dangerous than most developing world countries (at least it feels that way)
But danger is more than a physical menace, it is the way you view the world…↵ -
I really enjoyed this – the razor’s edge between paranoia and confidence sums the dilemma up so well. Traveling to Sudan in late 2009 had me losing whole nights of sleep wondering about the danger, but when I arrived, I found families and people just like the ones I knew at home – similar in more respects than they were different.I felt soft – and that’s coming from South Africa.
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Very nicely said.
I think a lot of what people proclaim as “dangerous” is a product of being oblivious of their surroundings – and that includes the people in those surroundings. If you go loudly talking in your accent/language, flashing around your wealth and calling attention to yourself, you are asking for problems. First, observe.
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It’s so funny to read this because my friends from the RSA/Zim/Zam/Namibia are sometimes almost offended by ‘TIA’, because it’s almost exclusively used by people who have just arrived (>2 months) in Africa to describe some kind of screw up. If you think about it, it’s like saying “Africa is a screw up” or you know you’re in Africa when someone is doing something that’s less good/efficient/intelligent than what we would do in the rest of the world.
That’s obviously ridiculous.
Not to mention the fact that Africa is huge and has a wide range of infrastructure and history – I defy anyone to summarize a continent with an acronym.
I was sharing a ride with a bunch of missionaries in JNB who were reacting to an extreme delay (which caused me to miss my flight) with jovial “TIA” comments which were a way of saying “wow, we’ve really gone past civilzation! This is part of our amazing foreign experience!”
In the RSA and most things run like clockwork, in some cases more efficiently than in North America and on par with Europe (hello waiting in a Canadian train station for six hours because VIA Rail can’t keep on schedule in the winter… or ever, or the time my Greyhound driver decided he would have an impromptu unscheduled hour long coffee break ten minutes before my final destination). Johannesburg is a 24 hour city where on time is late. So-called ‘African time’ is something that applies to Nigerian social invitations, not a broad transcontinental method of scheduling. It wasn’t TIA, the driver had screwed up!
Anyways. I like your revised meaning, if there has to be one: you know you’re in Africa when things could go any number of ways (good or bad) and people around you have a realistic perspective of the world as a complicated, sometimes unsanitary (!), place.
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I’ve been to what some might consider to be dangerous places and have never been robbed, mugged, or injured. Certainly, there have been some ‘moments’, but nothing I would consider extreme. I believe a sense ’situational awareness’ will save many a traveler from bad experiences.
For instance, on a recent trip to Bahrain, a group of drunk Saudis were walking in a group on an intersecting alley. I waited for them to pass rather than allowing them to walk behind me as I planned on walking in the same direction.
Then there are moments where no level of awareness will save you. So, practice your smile before hand. Also, try to dress and behave as if you fit the circumstance, leave your jewelery in the safe, and don’t get too drunk in public. I can’t recall the total number of drunk tourists I’ve seen become victims of pickpockets in Prague, but you might be surprised.
When you feel the hair raise on the back of your neck, get out. It might already be too late.
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