Your Jacket Will Get You Killed In Africa
The other day I had the pleasure of speaking with a man from Uganda. We were both taking the train home and both of us being alone I felt the occasion was ripe for conversation. Let me tell you, it was quite ripe. The man spoke at lengths about the differences between America and Uganda, telling me about taxes, men who walk on water, real estate, why he no longer ate seafood, and how my jacket would get me killed in Africa.
My jacket is durable, warm, and covered in pockets; it is a surplus military jacket from West Germany and for wearing this jacket I would be killed in Africa. In Africa camouflage is the property of the military and if they find you using it then the penalty is death. As he said this he showed me that he was wearing a camouflage shirt underneath his jacket, a favorite of his, he claimed.
What struck me was that he had spent most of the preceding conversation telling me how great Africa was and how I should visit. As I reflected back on it I realized that most of what he had praised were merely tourist traps. This made me think about how people perceive countries and by extension those within them. If people think that Uganda is all walking on water and magic tricks then they proscribe a kind of exoticism to it and they consider its residents as different than them, not as ordinary people. How then, can they empathize with them?
Are tourist traps dangerous?