Backpacker hostels

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These little enclaves of tourists - gated, guarded, segregated - can really get you down. With their free internet, ;leafy garden, and cold beer, they seem attractive at first. And then, while sat in the garden surrounded by other white faces discussing the same banal topic yet they've discussed for the past five nights, each trying to out do each other with tales of daring, you begin to hear the Congolese rhythms from nearby stalls drift through the air, the sounds of car horns and bus conductors, protesters and traders, and you realise that life occurs outside the gates.

I'm clearly been here too long, from Nairobi, to the Maasai Mara, to Jinja to Kampala. It feels as if barriers are growing up between me and the rest of the continent. It's time to get out, to leave the tourist trail, to get back into life as it is for the majority of people who live between Cape Town and Cairo - beyond the security check, the wifi and the posh restaurant - and back into the food stalls, the hawkers, the hustlers, and the music stands.

Time to get back to Africa...

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Comments

[janno]

interesting blog
Being alone in office, I decided to check out your blog. Great to read some of your postings, thanks for sharing your experience with the rest of the world. And I have to give it to you, there is some occasional truely impressive wording: 'a wooden vessel seemingly held together by the prayers of everyone aboard' wow...