Dealing with the unwanted attention in Africa

Hello everyone. I have been asked a simple question recently when I chatted to a friend and I thought, let's tackle a simple question today rather than trying to take on a bloody complicated issue which has no simple answer (like what the upcoming general elections will mean for Brexit - I shall leave that for another time). In this recent conversation, a good friend from Singapore traveled to Africa and whilst she was there, the African kids kept yelling at her, "Japan! Japan!" As there was a major language barrier (this wasn't an English speaking country), she couldn't explain to them that she wasn't Japanese at all and she then asked me if I had ever encountered anything like that before, to which I answered, yes of course, all the time and not just in Africa - in South America, the Middle East and East Europe as well. Somehow these people forget that there are far more Chinese people in the world but Japanese people - but then my friend asked a question which I found most intriguing, "I don't know if those locals are trying to be friendly or were they trying to make fun of me, those encounters always made me feel very uncomfortable." So, allow me to answer that question in this post since I will be back in Africa by this time next week when I will be spending five days in Morocco to visit Fez and Meknes.

The short answer is that they were not trying to make fun of my friend and making her feel uncomfortable wasn't their intention - they were simply trying to be friendly but were up against a massive language barrier. So instead of saying something like, "welcome to my country! You must have come from far away, what brings you here to my city? What do you think about my country? What have you visited so far? Have you tried the local cuisine? Have many people from your country visited my city before? I hope you enjoy your stay in my country!" Nah, they can't say all that in English and asking them to come up with something as articulate in their native language is probably a big ask as well - so they simply resort to screaming, "Japan! Japan!" This is because they have extremely poor social skills as children - they have noticed that my friend is clearly of East Asian descent, but nobody has ever taught them how to approach strangers and strike up a conversation in a charming and non-confrontational way. At this point, some people may think, "how dare you - are you looking down on Africans just because they are poor? You can't make such assumptions. Poor people can have good manners too - those things don't cost a thing, you just need parents to teach kids good manners." I'm afraid it doesn't work like that; don't get me wrong, I have met very friendly and indeed charming people in Africa on my trips there but the fact is they have very different social norms in their societies and only a small percentage of the educated elite are familiar with what we have come to expect in terms of social norms according to our usual Western standards.

There is a huge difference between simply being polite and being highly articulate: being polite is very basic, it means simply using the right kind of words to convey respect during any kind of social interaction. Being articulate in this context however, means being able to choose the right words to get the right response from the other party and at the heart of that, it means being able to establish rapport. People with poor social skills simply see things from their own point of view, "hey, I see a foreign lady in my street, I want to know where she is from and what she is doing here." However, people with much better social skills would think, "there's a foreigner on my street, let's see if she needs any help or information since foreigners don't often visit this part of town." Do you see the difference? The second person is trying to see things from the point of view of the foreigner, rather than himself. For a lady traveling in Africa, of course it can be somewhat intimidating when people run up to you and yell things at you, even if they have no malicious intent at all and they're simply being curious. If you see the travel videos of people like Drew Binsky or Nick Fisher (aka the Indigo Traveler) in Africa, random people regularly approach them in the street in a rather rude way - by our standards, it is verging on harassment when someone barks at you, "where are you from?", when you're simply minding your own business. My default response to that question is, "why do you want to know? Why should I answer your question? Why are you interrogating me? Leave me alone." Of course, what they are doing is hideously rude by our Western standards, but then again, if you're in deepest darkest Africa, our Western standards and cultural norms simply don't apply there.

When I was in Georgia earlier this year, I took advantage of the fact that I was in a very poor country and stayed in some very nice 5-star hotels since the exchange rate was favourable for me. So when I was in those 5-star hotels, the service was usually of a very high standard and the staff would usually speak some English but the moment I ventured out into the streets, I was interacting with a far more diverse range of people from Georgian society. So when I was in the expensive 5-star hotels, the staff were always able to consider things from my point of view - that's part of their training. "Do you need a map of the city? Do you need a taxi to the station? Do you need recommendations for a restaurant? Do you need to arrange an excursion? Do you need some information about the city?" You can see the recurring theme here - every time the staff approached me, it was to discuss my needs, my experiences and to double check if there was anything they could do to make my stay more pleasant. Whereas when I was out in the streets, there was a lot of people shouting "yaponiya, yaponiya" (Japan in both Russian and Georgian) at me. Of course, do note that the staff at the hotel were paid (and trained) to be very nice to me, delivering high standards of customer service by Western standards. The random people in the street were neither trained nor paid to be nice to me - I would have preferred if they just left me alone, the way I can expect to walk down the street in London without anyone harassing me in any way. But like I said above, when you're in deepest darkest Georgia, our Western standards and cultural norms simply wouldn't apply there.

Let me give you an example: I was in the small town of Tskaltubo visiting the Prometheus cave complex - this is one of the most amazing attractions in all of Georgia and because the underground cave complex is so big, all visitors had to be accompanied by a guide and you would visit the caves in small groups. Given that we had about a 30 minute wait before our tour started, I walked through the handicrafts market by the entrance of the caves and good grief, all the stall holders were shouting, "Yaponiya, yaponiya!" at me and I found that highly offensive. Good grief. Imagine if a black person came along to that same market, would they shout, "Africa, Africa!" at the black person? But all they wanted to do was to get me to try to buy something from them - it was winter, there was a lot of snow on the ground and there weren't that many tourists around. If anything, they were rather desperate to please me and establish rapport, but unlike the staff at the expensive 5-star hotels, they have not had the appropriate training on how to engage with tourists so they were rather blunt and clumsy in their ways. Unfortunately, there was this complete lack of sophistication in terms of their social skills, but we were deep in the Georgian countryside, in a place where things had not changed much since the days of the USSR. When the vendors realized I speak Russian, they then started engaging me in Russian and the conversation became a lot more normal - in Russian, at least. But of course, there was absolutely no malice on the part of any of the Georgian people there - they were certainly not trying to make fun of me or make me feel uncomfortable. These people were just uneducated and ignorant folks struggling to make a living in a very poor country, they were certainly not racist.

Mind you, this rule isn't limited to third world countries. I had recently written a post about a Singaporean woman who noticed a group of Singaporean tourists in London speaking with a strong Singaporean accent - she then approached the group politely and asked, "excuse me, are you from Singapore?" She got an extremely rude response from one of the men in the group and he made it clear that they didn't welcome her intrusion. She then took to social media to protest about her treatment, claiming that she didn't deserve to be spoken to like that. I analyzed that situation in my post and it boils down to one thing: when you're approaching someone, that interaction can be broken down into two broad categories. Are you offering the person something (such as in my 5-star hotel when the staff were making sure that I had everything I needed - from a city map to an umbrella - to have a great day sightseeing), or are you hoping to get something from that person (such as when the shopkeepers are trying to get me to buy something from their souvenir shops)? Hence if we feel that we're being offered something useful that we want, we're more than happy to indulge the other party - but if we feel that the other party is demanding something from us (our time, money, attention etc), then we're more likely to refuse to interact with that person. Hence when someone yells at us "Japan, Japan!" when we're walking down the street in somewhere like Africa or Eastern Europe, they clearly have nothing to offer but are demanding our attention, hence that's why we do not want to interact with such people, we just want to be left alone. Hence that is why that Singaporean woman got such a rude reception from her fellow Singaporeans in London - she approached them despite having had nothing to offer them, she wanted their attention; once they realized that, she got the cold shoulder.

So let's analyze how this works in a very practical example: imagine if you're shopping at the mall one Saturday afternoon and a lady approaches you, she is flogging a new product and she clearly wants to tell you all about this new product. Now most people would run away at this point: I've never heard of this product before, I've never come across this brand before, I didn't come to the mall looking to buy something like that, I don't mean to be rude but please leave me the hell alone as I am so not interested and I don't have the time. But wait, what if we then noticed that this lady is actually giving away free samples - let's say the new product is a kind of fruit juice drink and she merely wants to give you a free can of that drink, so you can try the product and decide for yourself if you like the taste of it. Suddenly, you change your mind at once and think, hell yeah, I am most interested in your new product! I'd love to have a free sample please, thank you very much - so you join the queue as the other people around you realize the same thing: that this friendly lady is handing out free samples, making her the most popular person in the mall that afternoon. So imagine if I was at a market somewhere in Georgia or Tunisia, instead of yelling "Yaponiya!" or "Japon!" just to get my attention, the vendors in the market simply handed out little free samples to me to try to tempt me to have a look at what they are selling - I would be more than happy to indulge them in that kind of social interaction. So hypothetically, imagine if someone yelled at me "Japan Japan!" whilst trying to get my attention to give me a free sample, ooh I wonder if those two factors would then cancel each other out? Well I guess that would depend on just how much I want that free sample!

The thing is that we live in a very politically correct society and we are very careful about how we speak to other people in order to avoid causing offence in this very 'woke' society. We don't want others to think that we are misogynistic, homophobic, racist or any other kind of bigot. Let me give you an examples of how some of the normal rules that apply in the West don't apply in third world countries: I visited the Dominican Republic back in 2016 and it was truly unforgettable experience as I traveled across that country on public transport, mostly using AirBNB to get the ultimate local experience. One of the dishes that I fell in love with there was pica pollo - think of it as a super spicy version of KFC. It is one of the most popular dishes in the Dominican Republic. One evening in Santo Domingo, instead of staying out late for dinner, I went to one of these pica pollo fast food restaurants and we ordered a few pieces of fried chicken with some side dishes. Just to clarify, nobody speaks a word of English in these small fast food places - it was full of locals and we were the only tourists. So when my order was ready, the lady behind the counter yelled out, "oi Chino!" Now that would roughly translate to something like, "hey Chinese man!" But trust me, it did come across as rather abrupt and rude. Compare this to a restaurant in Missouri, America who received numerous complaints for referring to the skin colour of the black customers - they just noted that the customers were black, they didn't use any racially offensive words but still that crossed the line. Likewise in New Zealand, a restaurant got into trouble referring to a group of customers as 'Asians'. Again, this was considered highly offensive to even talk about skin colour or race in New Zealand. But of course, I was in the Dominican Republic and they have totally different social norms about talking about someone's skin colour.

However, I think there is a sliding scale as to when poor social skills slowly slip into racially charged insults - let me share with you another incident also from Latin America, this time from my recent trip to Argentina this summer. I spent quite a few days in the little town of Esquel in Patagonia, it was a good place to base myself whilst exploring Patagonia and I got to know some of the locals there, given how tiny the place was. Now there was this kid who was about 12 or 13 years old, I spoke to him a few times because I got to know his parents - I spoke to him only in Spanish all the time and one early evening, I ran into him in town and he was with a friend who was also about the same age. Excitedly, he asked if I could say something to his friend in Chinese and I just plain refused. I knew that if I did that, they would probably laugh at how strange Chinese sounded to their Argentinian ears and I was not prepared to give them the satisfaction of mocking my language. So instead, in a stern school teacher tone, I told them that we were in Patagonia - a bilingual part of Argentina where Spanish is spoken together with Welsh and I was more than happy to speak to them in either Spanish or Welsh and perhaps English, since I knew that the kids in the Argentinian schools did learn English as a foreign language. Sensing that I was pretty adamant in refusing to utter even a single word of Chinese with him, the kid and his friend lost interest and wandered off on their way through the town after that somewhat awkward social encounter. Now if he had approached me more respectfully and asked me to teach him how to say something in Chinese, then I would have been happy to engage that kid with an impromptu Mandarin lesson - but I could tell that he was after a quick laugh, rather than a language lesson. Being the adult, I was able to take control of the situation promptly and nip that in the bud.

I hope I have demonstrated in the example above that we can be in control during situations like that: even if you do encounter some dumb kids who think that it may be fun to mock a certain aspect of your culture or language, you don't have to be the passive victim in that kind of social interaction. You can take control of the situation and wrestle control of the situation away from the other party, which was exactly what I did with those two kids. Of course, I am able to speak Spanish fairly fluently, that was why I was able to do that. Some people might think, "oh I'm sure these children are harmless, they are just curious." But I wasn't prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt since I barely knew this kid's parents and I wasn't interested in trying to humour their son, especially since that kid had such poor social skills. This also reminds me of another awkward situation during my mother-in-law's funeral when I refused to shake the hands of some of the Irish children from a family who attended the funeral. I could already sense something amiss in the way they were looking at me during the funeral: either they were wondering what the hell this Chinese looking guy was doing at the funeral or they must have heard that I'm the gay son-in-law. Regardless, I chose to snub them as dirty, poor, working class Irish kids - there's a certain satisfaction in denying the other party the chance to draw first blood in this kind of situation. So even in such situations, I will try to use my social skills to make sure I will deny the other party satisfaction.

But let me give you a real example of racist harassment to put things in perspective. When I was last in Morocco, I 'adopted' two older British ladies who didn't speak French and were a bit clueless - but they were such sweet, nice ladies that I couldn't bear to see them ripped off by the locals. They told me horrific stories about a young man who approached them on the first day, he kept following them till they allowed him to take them around Marrakech and he demanded a huge tip at the end of the day - we merely went sightseeing together. That was when I offered take care of them for the rest of our time there and I did it entirely for free because they were nice people. These two older British ladies were black and in Morocco, the locals have fair skin like the Arabs, they do not look African at all. So we were on our way back to our hotel one night, the two ladies were abruptly challenged by a policeman who was actually really rude with them in French, when they replied, "I'm sorry I don't speak French, I don't understand," goodness me - he threatened to arrest them if they didn't show them their passports right there and then. You see, a lot of Africans from English speaking countries like Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria would pass through Morocco as illegal immigrants on their way to Europe and this policeman had singled out these two ladies on the basis of their skin colour. I quickly took out my British passport and in perfect French, explained that these two ladies were British tourists - I defused the situation by being polite and respectful to the policeman whilst making it clear that they weren't illegal immigrants just because they were black. Once the two ladies produced their British passports, the policeman quickly changed his attitude once he realized he had been harassing a group of rich British tourists and quickly disappeared into the crowd. The two ladies were left shocked and upset, "what the hell just happened there?" That was what racist harassment looks like and it was very ugly.

I don't always challenge people when they do racist, offensive shit - remember the incident in the Santo Domingo fried chicken place when that Dominican lady yelled, "oi Chino!" at me? Well, I chose to let that incident go because whilst I was offended by her words, what she did was actually pretty normal in her culture and I was in her country. She was simply ignorant. Likewise with the street vendors in Georgia - I forgive them as they were ignorant, uneducated, country folks who unfortunately didn't know any better. But with the Argentinian kids, I was able to take control of the situation because they were kids - I'm an adult, thus I asserted my authority over them by reminding them that I was older than them by refraining from being friendly and used a rather stern, formal tone with them. As for what happened in Marrakech, yes the two ladies were up against a lot of racism because of the colour of their skin. Thankfully, as a Chinese looking foreigner, I wasn't targeted but it was awful for my two black friends to have experienced that kind of in-your-face racist harassment and that does put the other kind of unwanted attention I've been getting into perspective. In such situations, you have to realize there's only so much you can do to try to fix the problems of the other party: we're talking about everything from an astonishing amount of ignorance, sheer stupid, appallingly bad social skills and yes, even some genuine racism. But at the end of the day, even if you can't even begin to change the way they behave and think, you can always stand up for yourself by making it clear you're not going to allow the other party the satisfaction of getting what they want, that you're a strong individual who will never ever be a passive victim under any circumstances.

That's it from me on this topic. What do you think? Have you ever been harassed by locals when you were on holiday? How did you deal with the situation? Did you ever wonder if there was any genuine malice or racism involved or did it occur to you that these people may simply be uneducated ignorant folks who don't know any better?  What would you do if someone yelled out something like "Japan, Japan!" at you when you're just walking down the street when on holiday? Would that make you quite upset? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts please. Many thanks for reading.