Solo Traveling – The Global Entity

Health Emergency abroad: Solo Travel Strategies

julia.sarantes.andersson — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 15:35:38 +0000

The Global Entity

Health Emergency Abroad: Solo Travel Strategies

00:00 / 16:36

Eswatini healthcare for a tourist

I wake up in a sweat, my pulse is racing and initially I don’t know where I am. Immediately the brain is wide awake, something is wrong. I know that as soon as I start to move, I will hurl. In the dark I start reaching for my things, where did I put my shoes and jacket? Eswatini in June is midwinter and freezing cold in the mornings (around 10 degrees celsius). I throw something on in a hurry, skip the shoes, I can’t wait. I rush out the dorm room, through the bar area, out towards the toilets. It is just after four AM, the fog is so thick the light can’t push through yet. Nobody is awake to witness my sprint to the toilets. I make it, thank goodness.

After that, my deterioration goes quickly. I can feel how my capacity to think diminishes by the minute. By eight o’clock I show no signs of improving and I start to feel scared. What on earth is going on? Food poisoning? How much can a person actually puke? I have no money on my phone to call my insurance, I’m stranded. Not great, I know, but in my defence I thought I would be leaving Eswatini this very day. By nine o’clock I manage to send my friend Tanya, who lives close by, an ‘SOS’ sms. No explanations nor context, just simply ‘sos’. As I open my eyes half passed out on my bed an hour later, I see her standing in my door. The sun behind her, lights her up making her look like a saint. This day, she certainly was.

My friend arranged for me to call my insurance company and once they had directed us to a hospital nearby, she made sure I got a driver for the day. I don’t remember much from the drive there, there was so much fog in my mind that every thought was an effort. The hospital I get taken to feels like something from a movie in the 1930’s. Everything is analog and slow, even the staff stroll as they work. I sit on the wooden bench and wait for my turn, it feels like I’ve slipped into a time bubble. I look at the dust that swirls around, caught in a stream of sunlight coming from the window. Finally, it is my turn. The Swazi doctor is warm and present. It calms me down to talk to him. He takes a look at me and then my papers. “Sorry mam, we don’t cover this insurance.”

My heart drops. I put my head in my hands. It is already two o’clock in the afternoon and my visa in Eswatini expires tomorrow. The hospital my insurance is now recommending me to go to is in another city. I am cold, my stomach is only still for 10 minutes at the time and I can barely think. The last thing I want to do right now is to take a bus to a city I don’t know. The doctor looks at me with empathy and says that he will call the insurance and see if they can sort something out.

The nurses come in and put me to bed, they give me the winter blanket to fight the cold. When I was still shivering twenty minutes later, they put another thick blanket on top of me. The hours pass by and I manage to doze off a little. When I wake up, I feel a lot better. My stomach had quieted and I could feel my brain coming back to life. The doctor comes back into my room and tells me I have to go to the other hospital first thing tomorrow morning. I nod and thank him profusely for all the care they didn’t have to give me but gave anyway. I paid nothing. I knew that the next morning, I would be on a bus to Maputo, Mozambique. The hospital would have to wait.

Crossing borders when sick

Travel guide: how to cross into Mozambique smoothly

Do not yell at the border police.

End of guide.

Border crossing into Mozambique

Looking back, it wasn’t my smartest decision to ignore the doctors orders to go to the hospital in Eswatini, but at the time I felt I had little choice. I could not obtain a visa for South Africa and every time I tried to enter Mozambique they gave me trouble. Eswatini was the only country which granted me visa and welcomed me with open arms, I did not want to screw up that relationship. Especially now that I was sick.

In order to make the trip from Ezulwini to Maputo, I decided to not eat or drink anything until I had arrived in Maputo. I didn’t want to risk a public explosion of the insides of my stomach. When I got to the Mozambican border they told me I was missing papers. I pulled them up online but the officers wouldn’t have it. It had to be printed and of course, theirs was out of function. With a deep sigh of resignation I turned around and started pulling my bags back to the Eswatini side where there was a printer.

When I get back to the Mozambican border, the officers say I am still missing a paper. At this point I am fully convinced that this is the famous Mozambican corruption in action, something I have become all too familiar with. I have a full melt down, yelling at the migration police everything that comes to mind. It is not a graceful scenario. Somewhere between an indignant rant about right and wrong, in fluent Portoñol (a mix of Spanish and Portuguese), it dawns on me that it doesn’t matter. Whatever they say is what goes.

I turn around on the spot and drag my bags back to the Eswatini side. When I finally get back to the Mozambican border I am parched. The sun is so hot and I haven’t had a sip of water in over 24 hours. The officers ignore me for 30 minutes before they decide that I have been humbled enough. “Have you calmed down now?” The lady behind the counter says condescendingly. “Have you?” I retort, looking her straight in the eyes. For what felt like minutes, we stood completely still, measuring each other with our eyes. Eventually, without a word, she processed my passport and sent me on my way. Sometimes I just want to bite my tongue off.

I arrived in Maputo after dark. They drop us in Baixa, downtown Maputo, a place I don’t want to be in at night, alone, with all of my belongings. I quickly ordered a taxi through Yango, their version of Uber, and thanked my lucky stars that I had money on my Mozambican sim card since the last time I was there.

On our drive to the Base Backpacker, one of two backpackers in all of Mozambique currently, I ask the driver to stop by a shop so I can get some water and chips. I realise, I know this city now. Or, I know this place well enough to be ill here. I could feel how I start to relax, in some ways, I felt like I was home. The next day, I went straight to the Lenmed Maputo private hospital, where all the rich people and foreigners go.

Solo Traveler’s Emergency Kit: Border crossing
– Have enough cash with you, preferably in dual currencies.
– Get yourself a local sim card and ensure you always have money on it.
– Keep your phone charged but ICE contacts printed on paper.
– Note insurance-approved hospitals before you go.
– Keep your insurance info accessible at all times.

– Print everything! (booking papers, incurrence, passport, etc)

Maputo healthcare for a tourist

The hospital is huge and it is unclear where the main reception is. Each hospital department seems to have its own front desk and no matter my best effort I cannot understand the cuing system. Finally, a lady behind one of the desks directs me to the right doctor’s office. I walked through a side door and turned to some staircases that made me feel like I was on my way to sneak in at some club. But that wasn’t the case. The doctors office was cool from the AC and the receptionist chewed gum loudly.

Despite having been in constant contact with my insurance company throughout this whole ordeal, when I arrived at the doctors, my insurance papers have the wrong date. The process of international health insurance was hard and I will not bore you with how extremely sorry I felt for myself, sitting at the Lenmed parking lot, recording all my sorrows in my video diary.

No, instead I will share two observations about the Maputo healthcare. Firstly, the bureaucracy of even the most prestigious hospital is still going to be SLOW. It took me the whole day to see the doctor and do half the tests and get all the papers in order. Another week to finish the rest of the tests. Then it took me another two weeks to actually get the results, and a few more days to see the doctor and get the actual prescription. Lucky I had four weeks of visa…

The second thing I observed was that the concept of patient privacy is not commonly practiced in Mozambique, at least not at this particular hospital. As I had my consultation with the doctor, nurses and staff kept popping their heads in and asking questions about other patients. When I was getting my insides scanned, the nurses who seemed to be on lunch break, came in to gossip with the doc. The Swede in me was absolutely horrified! But I was too exhausted to do anything, too hungry to ask them to leave, or at least ask them to lower their voices. They all seemed so casual about it so I decided it wasn’t worth getting embarrassed about.

Maputo rescue and recovery

After the first doctor’s appointment in Maputo I felt relief. Then came the exhaustion. My plan had been to spend the month in Tofo, a Mozambican seaside town in Inhambane. But after the journey I had into Mozambique, on top of not having eaten properly for weeks (apparently I had carried the bacteria for over a month), I felt an intense need to stay put. I hadn’t gotten my diagnosis and medication yet. Just the thought of moving out from the hostel today, only to do it again a week later in Tofo, only to have to return to Maputo and ultimately Eswatini again within twenty days, gave me anxiety.

On my third night back in Maputo, a friend took me out to dinner. He looked at me for a long while, we hadn’t seen each other in two months, since Bushfire. “Are you alright?” he asked. I started to cry. For a moment I was totally embarrassed by my emotional reaction, we didn’t know each other like that. He put his head to the side and in a brotherly fashion said “Talk to me.”So we talked.

He helped me organise a search for a room in the city. The relief I felt as soon as I had taken the decision to stay my whole visa in Maputo, was immense. Within an hour, I had replies from seven different people that I had met out and about during my first months in Mozambique. Nobody had anything right now but they all knew somebody who might have something. They all wanted to help. Right before we paid the bill, I had a showing for a room booked the very next day.

A new home in Maputo

I came to the showing the next day with all my bags in hand. I had already decided, this would have to work. I had met the father of the house quickly the night before, he lived smack in the middle of the city, on top of one of the infamous, ancient apartment buildings in Maputo. I cursed my inability to pack light as I pulled my luggage all ten stories up. As most older apartment buildings in central Maputo, it had running water sometimes. If you wanted a hot shower you had to boil the water. All laundry was done by hand and the electricity wiring could also be considered an adrenaline inducing, contemporary art installations.

In this particular apartment there was no freezer and only one hot plate on the stove was working. Furthermore, there was no lock on the room and I had no fan. But the family felt kind and it was available immediately. When they showed me the rooftop, I felt that I had made the right choice. What a view! I have always been a sucker for roofs but this one took the price. To one side, the buildings and intricate life of Maputo spread out as far as I could see. To the other side, the horizon of the ocean framed Maputo’s skyline in a promise of pink light and foggy adventures. I could feel the beat of the city in what I could only describe as my hollow body. I needed rest.

The following weeks I practically lived on that rooftop. Some mornings I rose with the neighbouring mosque call to prayer. When it finished, I opened the gate to the rooftop and started moving. It wasn’t exercise-exercise, just small, silly movements. Not silly as in stupid but silly as in fun, as in making me actually smile and laugh. At this point, I knew three things 1) my body was super weak 2) I needed movement and 3) I needed joy in order to heal.

On that rooftop, with music pumping in my headphones I jumped and did cartwheels, danced and tried to learn to stand on my hands. Anything to get everything moving again. Slowly but surely I started to regain my appetite. It was a very still month for me. I reconnected with a few friends. I went to a beautiful event at Associação dos Músicos Moçambicanos . But mostly, I spent my time alternating between my bed, the kitchen and the rooftop. I could feel how not eating right had come to affect my whole nervous system. I was an emotional wreck.

The sustainable solo traveler

It seems to be a pretty common trait amongst long term, female travelers, to struggle with food. The traveling lifestyle doesn’t really allow for routine easily. Furthermore, changing contexts often, doesn’t give you a lot of known things to mirror yourself to. If change is the normal, how do you notice when some of the changes aren’t normal? It is so easy to be in adapt mode when you travel that you suddenly find yourself outside of yourself. I needed to take a serious look at what my needs as a person were. Movement; Joy; Time. And oatmeal. God knows I like my oats.

The whole getting sick thing shook me a little in my travel confidence. I had felt so bad! Been so vulnerable. Unable to think and process. My insurance was definitely not up to emergency standards, making me as a solo traveler, quite exposed. In that sense, slow traveling provides a bit of safety as it allows me to build a network of contacts to ask for help. But this time I only realised five-six weeks into being sick that I even was ill. If I would have traveled or lived with somebody, I think my diminishing appetite would have been noticed quicker.

Hence, going forward, I need context and community. How to get that as a solo traveler seems a bit contradictory but you never know. Either way, the thought of social sustainable traveling and tourism being sustainable for the traveler as well as for the place and people we are visiting, started to become more and more obvious. It became so obvious, I was embarrassed I had not made the connection before.

However, just because it was obvious, did not mean I knew what that meant in reality. How do I travel in a way so I am sustainable? When I returned to Eswatini a month later, I was still a bit shaky on my legs but my mission was clear: I had to find a different way to travel. A format adapted to me. I didn’t want to be limited to a maximum of 30 days, that was way too short for anything to grow! If the traveling lifestyle was going to be working for me, I needed to do some serious changes in how I travel. What are the biggest travel lessons you’ve learnt lately?

Fear and Freedom: Reflections on Solo Travel as a Woman

julia.sarantes.andersson — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 22:06:10 +0000

The Global Entity

Fear and Freedom: Reflections on Solo Travel as a Woman

00:00 / 16:58

The best of traveling on my own

Traveling solo as a woman is the absolute best decision I have made for myself. I did my first solo trip when I had just turned 21 years old, after returning home from an internship in South Africa. I believe, solo traveling has the capacity to make or break you. Personally, it has forced me to be comfortable in the unknown as well making me more confident and assertive in what I believe in and want. Solo traveling as a woman has disproved and busted so many of my fears, prejudices and internalised definitions about myself and the world that doesn’t actually serve me.

Traveling on my own has in many ways set me free in how I identify and relate to myself. But it has also shown me how very gendered the world is. Solo traveling as a woman can in many ways be exhausting. For example, I have become hyper vigilant whenever interacting with authority like the local police or migration when traveling alone.

Too many times, the fear of rape has crossed my mind when I get stoped in the middle of the night by an officer who first takes my passport and then asks for my number in the same sentence. The abuse of power in this situation is completely ignored by the officer who sees no problem in asking for a bribe, a date and accusing me of a crime while cheekily asking for a kiss and if I have a local boyfriend yet.

More solo travel dilemmas: woman edition

While traveling in Mozambique, my time in Tofo was probably where I experienced the most limiting gender dynamics. So much so that I almost called this blog post ‘Two months in paradise: a hostile experience’. Here it wasn’t the police harassing me but the local boys and young men. April is during Tofo’s low tourist season and perhaps that can help explain the intensity and amount of unsolicited, quiet aggressive pursuits of attention from what is locally known as “Beach boys”.

The amount of attention, the demand to give, respond, finance, never ended in Tofo. It got exhausting to go out in the evenings because of the amount of No’s I had to say. And how firm I had to be. It’s not just that it takes a lot of energy to navigate, or that I am always having to police my impulse to not be rude, even when I should. It is the fact that underneath the gendering roles we play in the mundane, is the power dynamic of possible violence.

The term Beach boys is, often derogatorily, used to describe the group of young, local men who work or associate themselves with tourists. They either meet the tourists’ as instructors, guides or bartenders. Or they hang around on the beach trying to get lucky. Common trait is that they use their personal relationships with tourists for economic gain. Some people call it prostitution. Others call it capitalism and life.

However you may define it, I hated it. It made me uncomfortable as there was nowhere I could exist there without being expected to fill that role. It also made me see how deeply socially exploitative the tourism mechanisms can be. Had Tofo not been turned into the tourist destination it is today, who knows how these men and boys would choose to navigate the world.

Story time: solo travel safety in Tofo

One night I got a call from another female traveler. We had met a few weeks earlier in Maputo and had decided to meet up when we were both in Tofo. “Julia I am so sorry to call you at this hour I just don’t know what to do!”

The panic in her voice was evident. She tells me how she had wanted to ensure another tourist woman got home safe. The woman was way too drunk to go home alone when suddenly, the drunk girl’s supposed boyfriend shows up and wants to take her with him. My friend tells him no. She only knows that they’ve gone out on a few dates before but she doesn’t really know how close they actually are. The drunk girl in question is practically passed out at this point and can’t argue her case. The supposed boyfriend gets angry.

My friend continues. “I couldn’t do it Julia. She is so drunk and he is scary. But he got so mad when I said I was taking her home. He said I should to watch myself here, that he knows eeeeveryone here…” The fear is present. I swear under my breath. Just a few hours earlier we had been dancing and drinking under the stars together and now she was filled with fear. She continued telling me how he had trailed behind them until the girlfriend’s hotel and how she now didn’t dare to walk back to her own hotel across town. There are no official taxis here and she just didn’t know what to do.

Even though it was late, I rushed to the owner of my hostel and explained the situation. She allowed me to borrow the hostel truck and one of the staff members to go look for my friend. After 15 minutes of driving out into the dark outskirts of Tofo, we find my friend carefully looking out from a gate. She is so grateful and relieved and cannot stop thanking me.

We ride back to her hotel on the backside of the truck looking up at the stars. I take her hand, squeezing it tightly as she continues to apologise profusely for interrupting my night. Sitting safe on the truck she starts feeling like she turned something silly out of nothing. “Always call.” I look her dead in the eyes and say it again. “Don’t feel stupid. You’d feel really stupid if you were dead. Always call.”

She nods, a bit baffled by my serious answer. But that is how I felt. After dropping her off at her hotel and waving goodnight it hits me, who would I call if I needed to? In South Africa I have a solid network of women who love me and who would drive out in the middle of nowhere if I needed it. Here, I am very much alone.

Looking over at the driver, I am reminded again that I, in many ways, exist at the mercy of others. Especially when I travel. Coming from a hyper individual society, this insight is therapeutic on many levels but as a woman, it is terrifying at worst and limiting at least.

A Solo Female Traveler’s Safety Contradiction: Negotiating Independence

julia.sarantes.andersson — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 12:40:47 +0000

The Global Entity

A Solo Female Traveler’s Safety Contradiction: Negotiating Independence

00:00 / 12:32

Traveling as a young woman

When I was 21 years old, I did my first solo trip ever. I was flying to South Africa to participate in my friends wedding. It was so exciting! I drew up plans of everything I wanted to do on my own, who I was going to visit and booked everything well in advance. Since then, I have changed How I travel a lot. Now days, I try to leave as much space open for life to happen to me instead of me deciding it beforehand. But some things, I feel never change.

When traveling alone, I have often found myself feeling dependent on the men in my surroundings. Specifically, I feel dependent on their presence when I want to go out at night or explore a non-touristy area. It’s not that I am afraid of being attacked by a stranger, rather it’s a way to protect myself from unwanted advances and conversations that I get as somebody that is visibly a foreigner. As nice as it can be to get genuine compliments and attention, this is not the type of interactions I am referring to now.

Being a white, young woman traveling on my own makes me an easy ‘target’, not just for harmless curious interactions but for people who see mee as a walking money bag or sexual object to attain. That attention can sometimes feel constant and limiting when I travel. Especially when I am out at night in party environments and people are a bit intoxicated, lines can easily get blurry. Unless I am perceived to, so called, belong to another man. Many times people assume that I am together with one of my male friends and I do not correct them since it enables me to be more free from attention.

What is Solo Travel Security?

When I write about Travel Security, what I really mean is freedom of movement regardless of your gender, race, religion, etc. In other words, that I am free to move around, feeling safe, regardless of who I am or how I look. But since it is specifically I, Julia, writing these texts from my experience – freedom of movement is mostly restricted because of my gender. Not by anybody actively telling me not to go somewhere, but rather as a culmination of my internalized security strategies, fears and gender roles in society.

Creating security as a solo traveling woman, in comparison to doing it at home, is no different. The only difference is that when I am traveling, I am often in a completely new context where I don’t know the social codes, cues and norms. This is of course a huge difference and one that makes all of the difference. I just wanted to underscore and underscore again, that this is not a geographically specific text. Even though my examples are from my experiences in Mozambique and South Africa, I would say you missed the point if you think these problems, structures and norms aren’t global.

Creating security is something that I more and more come to believe can only be created together with others. No matter how much the patriarchy tries to teach women that they are responsible for their own safety, my personal experience is that if somebody has ill intent – it will not matter who you texted that you were going where or what shoes you were wearing to be able to run, you will still be in a shit situation that forces you to think and act outside of the security strategies you had prepared.

Despite knowing this, that security is created with others and cannot be created alone, as I travel alone, I still find myself creating strategies to keep myself more safe. Or, maybe I should say, to create the illusion of feeling safer. And all of these strategies rely on me, not on the group or the context, so I understand how contradictory the following text might feel. But that is also quite spot on for how I feel the arguments of female security are; contradictory. Damned if you don’t and damned if you do. So perhaps the following text is less on the security creating act as much as trying to describe the dilemmas women like me face when we navigate spaces on our own.

Travel Security Dilemma

There is a kind of skewed security that comes with “belonging” to a man. I say skewed security for many reasons, one of them being often-problematic dynamic that can be created between me and the man I am relying on. What happens if he confuses his “protective role” with actual flirting? What happens if he expects something in return for his “protection”?

Furthermore, every culture is different. A simple example is time. In Mozambique, I never know when something will actually happen because the said time is seldom the time that is applied. A less easy example to generalize is flirting, boundaries and communication. In some contexts, what I say will be taken at face value. In others, there are hidden expectations in just being you, that are easily missed when you are in a previously unknown context. Which can complicate things when you are out and about solo traveling, often experiencing things solely because you dared to say yes to be included into a new experience.

I don’t like the feeling of dependency, and yet, at the same time, I have not figured out how to be an independent, traveling woman. Meaning, in certain contexts, like at night, I would rather stay in at home, than explore a new city. I am grateful every time I meet a man that can provide me with the freedom that I am yet to understand how to create for myself. I guess, in a sense, I am my own prisoner and liberator. If I could change my perception of risk, or the perception that I have power over it, I would maybe walk the streets at night on my own. But that day has not arrived yet and therefore I have, more than once, found myself dancing after somebody elses tune instead of doing what I want.

Solo Travel Story Time

Naturally, sometimes, the strategy of ‘belonging’ to a man, backfires. Like the night I was at a concert with friends. The local guy friend, who had driven me and another friend around all night, asked to come inside to use the bathroom before he continued driving home after the event had ended. Nemas problemas. We had had a wonderful evening, danced together and met all of Maputo!

When he comes out of the bathroom, he announces that he is too intoxicated to drive home and asks if he can sleep over, saying that the hostel owner always lets him stay the night. Sure, I say, but think it’s rather odd how he suddenly is too intoxicated after not drinking one drop the whole evening. But I am not about to tell a friend to hit the road when they say they are intoxicated. Nor will I tell him to sleep in the car when I have plenty of room and he has driven us around all night. My dorm is empty except for me and since he does this ‘all the time’ I feel it’s rude to say no.

When I show him the extra beds in my dorm room, he protests and tells me that he has no intention of sleeping alone. I want to explain to him that I am not interested in him and here is where it gets tricky. Up until now, this is a person that I’ve been hanging out with almost every other day, it is a key person in the group of friends I have here in Maputo. The only group of friends I have here. If he takes my rejection the wrong way, I risk ending up completely isolated from the group.

There is a saying from Nicaragua that says it is better to be alone than in bad company. But we should not underestimate how hard that actually is to do. Humans are wired to equal social inclusion with survival, it is so human it is instinctual. The fear of exclusion is a powerful mechanism and I remember carefully weighing the consequences of my rejection in my head before speaking that night. My breath slows down and I try to take him in, evaluate how my words will be received.

When I finally do speak, his first response is to say sorry. But then looks up at me and starts saying all the reasons we should. We end up in an absurd back and forth and I feel the knot in my stomach tying itself tighter every time I have to reiterate my no. It makes me uncomfortable trying to balance being clear and at the same time not hurting his ego. I don’t know if he is embarrassed by my rejection or what, but after some back and forth, he lies down on one of the beds, turns his back towards me and stops responding.

Five minutes later I feel a flash of anger as I look at him sleeping peacefully. He doesn’t realise or care about the uncomfortable predicament he has put me in. He is no longer a friend crashing over at a friends place. I feel like he first ensured that he could sleep over and then ambushed me with his real intentions. Honestly, it feels manipulative and it pisses me off. I toss and turn, my anger going to worry and back again.

Listening to my own thoughts makes me angry too. Why should I be the one awake, worrying? This is my room. If I am not comfortable with him in it I should just throw him out, right?! But I won’t. I know I’d feel too guilty about throwing a supposed friend out on the street in the middle of the night. On the other hand, making me feel this uncomfortable is not giving me friendly vibes… why do I feel like I owe him to not be rude, to be nice, when he does not return the consideration?

I decide to go wake the night receptionist up and ask for another room to sleep in. I start feeling stupid over how naïve I had been. I should have seen the intentions of the guy and protected myself from it. As soon as I catch myself in that train of thought I stop myself. The habit of policing my own behavior in any kind of situation when blame is to be assigned is probably the patriarchy’s most successful control mechanisms. One of them at least. One that I am actively unlearning, a little bit every day.

It bothers me how dependent I am of men I meet. It bothers me that he just fell asleep, and I was left doing a risk analysis of the social consequences the situation may have for me. Que merda. What a shit show. He probably doesn’t even give the situation a second thought beyond the fact that I turned him down.

What happened here is not something that is unique for Mozambique in any way. The many safety contradictions that women have to navigate is, in my experience, something very global. Even at home in Sweden, when I am in my own known arena, I experience these types of dilemmas. The difference is, when I travel solo, I am completely without context and community of my own, leaving me more vulnerable to these situations.

When we see each other in the morning, it’s slightly awkward as we both pretend that everything is fine. I suppose that he is embarrassed over getting rejected. Personally, I am just relieved that he doesn’t seem angry or too butt hurt. From now on I’ll be taking the cab home, always. This is not independence.

Solo Travel Realities: Unwanted Advances and Uncomfortable Situations

julia.sarantes.andersson — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 20:51:18 +0000

The Global Entity

Solo Travel Realities: Unwanted Advances and Uncomfortable Situations

00:00 / 10:10

A sunny afternoon on a hot rooftop in Maputo

One afternoon I find myself on one of the rooftops at the hostel together with Brenda. The sun is intensely warm and everything feels sticky. It is the first time it is just us girls, up until this point we have mostly hung out in party settings in big groups. Our conversation starts a little tentatively but pretty soon I can feel how we connect.

With our words we travel through each others lives exchanging stories, questions and experiences of being a person but also a woman in this day and age. Mixed women, global, strong and often considered abnormal women. The siblingship I feel to this person is absolute. I decide to open up to her about what happened just before Igor and her included me into their sphere. Something that’s been weighing on my mind ever since.

A not-so-safe solo travel story

A week ago when I was out dancing I met a woman, she was super extroverted and we had loads to talk about. When the night was over she drove me and my friend home and we decided to meet up again soon. When the weekend arrived, she texted me asking if I wanted to come share a family day together with her kids and husband. Of course I accept! To be invited into a family setting did not only feel safe but like a privilege.

When the day arrives, the family come and pick me up at my hostel and we drive off to a neighbouring city of Maputo. The whole day is spent cooking dish after dish over the fire. Friends and family arrive throughout the day, I struggle with Portuguese the best way I can and manage to have a few conversations with the help of my Spanish. My host, however, seems to be busy and I don’t see much of her until the evening. She eventually approaches me and invites me up to the roof.

The house is still under construction and there is no light on the roof except for one dim streetlight in the far distance. As soon as we get there, she is all over me. Tongue down my throat, hands under my clothes type of thing. I am shook. Nowhere in our interactions had I understood that she was interested in me, or in women in general. I hear her husband laughing downstairs with their family and friends, just a few meters away from where we are. When my brain catches up with what is happening I take a step back.

She immediately starts talking about everything in her life. I look at her, not sure what to say except for sorry. When I don’t really respond to what she is actually saying, she changes her tone to a more seductive one, telling me how I am this and that. I feel fixated to the floor by her energy, a thousand thoughts running through my mind; where exactly am I? What is going on? Is she gay? What about her husband?? If I reject her now, will they still drive me home? Do the taxi apps I use in Maputo work here? Why do I feel so unsafe? Is it safe to be openly queer in Mozambique? How long would it take for the hostel to notice if I go missing? When she kisses me again I don’t resist, not sure how to best navigate the situation.

Luckily, her kids come rushing up to the roof and she pulls away. I take a few steps back and look at her, there is like a dark shadow right over her face making her look almost demonic. I look around, there is nothing around us that could possibly cast a shadow. I feel scared. What is going on? Under normal circumstances, husband and the awkward situation apart, I wouldn’t have denied a gorgeous woman a date but something feels really off.

I realise that the shadow over her face may be there just for me, to affirm the gut feeling I already have that something is wrong. I silently say a prayer, thanking my angels for warning me and asking them to get me out of this situation safely. The shadow disappears. I suggest we go downstairs to join the others again, reluctantly she says yes.

The evening continues and I try to play it light, socialising and talking to everyone except her. When we start packing up, she suggests where we should go next but I say that I have a date tonight and have to get home. Except for the music in the car, everyone is quiet. I sit in the back with the sleeping kids, constantly checking the map to make sure we are going in the right direction. When I get home I take a long shower trying to wrap my head around what I just lived through.

Scams, security and sisterhood

Talking about it now, in the warm sunlight, with Brenda by my side, I feel a little bit silly. Maybe I hadn’t been in any danger at all. Maybe I was just dealing with a deeply unhappy person who did not know how to read that I was uncomfortable… When I had told my mom about it the day after she immediately said she had a bad feeling from the start and that the thought of sex trafficking had come to mind. But she didn’t want to scare me. She reasoned that maybe it was just her own fear projecting.

Now, I come to find out that it is not all that uncommon that tourists get conned into having sex with someone they think want the same thing as them, only to find out in the morning that the person wants money because they are sex workers or have taken explicit pictures/videos for extortion. Yohh. I don’t really know what to make out of my encounter. I think that if she had been a man, I would have had an easier time reading it for what it was. I usually associate women with safety and sisterhood, and to think that she may have had ill intentions towards me is hard for me to accept.

It feels good to share this with someone who has been here longer, who speaks the language and knows the local context and norms. It feels really good to talk to Brenda specifically about it who has the sisterhood code down. She affirms what needs to be affirmed, questions my own internalised sexism and helps me put the blame where it should be.

I block the lady in question on all socials, just to be sure. I don’t want her seeing what I’m up to, where. Then I proceed to ask Brenda about what it’s been like living here as a foreign, young, beautiful woman. I don’t think we give these kind of conversations enough credit. A lot of the conversations women share between one another is judgingly called gossip. I don’t believe people understand that that’s how we women build security.

Safety Travel Tips for beginner Solo Travelers

Firstly, because of the theme of this weeks post, I want to restate how incredible solo traveling is! It is something that has grown me in more ways than one and as many sometimes unsafe situations I end up in cannot compare with all the life affirming encounters, divine, kind people and miracles that I have had the fortune to encounter on my solo journeys throughout the years.

Secondly, trust your gut AND trust that your gut feeling/intuition will grow and develop! But you need to give yourself time for that learning curve to exist. After I got home from this potentially dangerous situation, I could have been berating myself over ending up in it, guilting and shaming. Instead I held space for the fear to be felt and then I started going through the events of the day. I realised that my gut had been telling me to not go from early on, but I had not recognised it. At this realisation I tell my body thanks for warning me and I promise to listen better the next time it tries to tell me something.

Thirdly, be your own mom! What I mean by that is that my mom used to have a list of things that she needed to know when I was going somewhere without her, a very reasonable list I must add! It contained things like the address, how long we would be there, how we would get back and who the adults were. These are all things she needed to know to feel safe to let me go off on my own adventures, if I had kids I’m sure I will have a very similar list. So why would I not ensure that I the answers to those basic questions when I go off somewhere? The simple answer is I wanted to be a cool girl, the kind that just goes with the flow and isn’t such a control freak. But lesson learned (hopefully), ask the uncomfortable questions!!

Bed Bugs and Beyond: A Stumbling New Beginning in Mozambique

julia.sarantes.andersson — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 05:14:58 +0000

The Global Entity

Bed Bugs and Beyond: A Stumbling New Beginning in Mozambique

00:00 / 13:36

From Crisis to Comfort: a New Hostel in Maputo

Due to an unforeseen bed bug crisis at the hostel, I have now moved to another. The only other hostel/backpackers that exists in Maputo, to my knowledge. Do you remember the wrong hostel where the taxi dropped me off when I had just arrived in Maputo? When I was rude and projected all my stress on the staff? Yup! That’s the one! Apparently Fatima’s Backpackers is the only other hostel in all of Maputo so I had to go back, tail between my legs and ask for help.

Even though a part of me was relieved to be able to do so, go back and apologise, I was nervous. Almost like a child. When I arrived I did my best to apologise with the few Portuguese words I’ve picked up but mostly I spoke Spanish. The staff looked at me, first confused, then I could see how they placed who I was and started to laugh. Somebody grabbed my shoulder and said “Fica tranquila!” (Relax!) and waved it out of the world.

Next came my other mission, getting them to give me a bed despite the risk of bed bugs I may or may not carry with me. Senhor Agostinho, the manager, looked at me and my many suitcases and bags a long time before he sternly said okay. But I would have to stay alone in a room for a few nights and he demanded to disinfect the room for at least three days… With what exactly I have no clue, I was just relieved. Here was a guy with a plan! And a poison! In this specific context, I could not ask for more.

I don’t blame the first hostel for getting the bed bugs, it is a part of hostel life and I know for a fact the cleaning ladies there work tirelessly to keep it spotless and fresh. However, when this happened the owner was away and the present staff had no clue how to handle it. I did not want my things mixed up with the things of the bed bug room so I left before they had the chance to put them together.

Local Insights: A Day with Lino in Maputo

The hostel is colorful and quiet, only a few other guests besides me are staying there currently. I mostly hang out with the hostel cat, Batique, who now follows me around even to the toilet. I’m not complaining though, he is super cute!

My strength has returned and one day I can feel it, I am ready to meet Maputo! Not having done any research about the city, I am clueless of where to start. Lino, the receptionist/bartender at the hostel, offers to take me on a tour of the city the next day. I feel relieved! I can’t imagine a better way to discover a new place than alongside a local.

We start bright and early but Maputo is already running hot! We walk from Avenida Mao Tse Tung to Casa de Ferro, a three-story house built entirely out of iron. I can’t even imagine how hot it becomes inside during summer! It must be like being in an oven… most certainly a foreign idea from somebody without enough local knowledge of the climate here.

Next we make a stop at the Tunduru Botanical Gardens, Mozambique’s biggest botanical garden. It is beautiful albeit a little rundown. We walk around talking about life in Mozambique and the tourism industry post pandemic. Suddenly we are surrounded by something that are either moths or butterflies… I’m not entirely sure what they are but I feel like I’m in the middle of a Disney production, they are everywhere! And so is a sound that I can’t really place, it’s not birds but something similar.

As we continue our walk in the garden the sound grows louder and louder until it’s almost hard to talk. I look up and there they are: hundreds and hundreds of bats! Most of them are hanging from the trees but some are flying around. The constant movement of the bats hanging in the trees makes the trees look like something from a fantasy movie. I am both fascinated and horrified! Never have I been able to see so many of them. In broad daylight too. To finish the tour, Lino takes me to Mercado do Povo, meaning the peoples market. I love markets like this! It is filled with vendors, people and smoke from the grills. In the middle, under a huge tree, are all the food vendors. We eat some of the best frango assado, roasted chicken, that I have ever tasted.

After the tour I feel confident enough to find my way back to the hostel on my own. I say goodbye to my guide Lino, who has to commute back home and return again before his next night shift starts at the hostel. I don’t understand how he finds the energy but it seems to be the way most working Mozambicans live, with several jobs under their belt. I can warmly recommend taking a city tour with Lino! Easiest way to contact him is through his instagram or send us an email and we will help connect you.

Awkward backpacker relations

When I get back to the hostel I am exhausted. I decide to do what I’ve been doing ever since I arrived at this hostel: lie down on one of the rooftops and tan while listening to a book on BookBeat. Every day between four and five in the afternoon I’ve been doing the same thing, the sun is still warm but won’t burn you silly. I know tanning is bad for the health, but right now it feels very good to my soul. This day in particular, I decided to let my boobs see some light too. There is not a soul besides me at the hostel and the staff rarely comes up here so I feel safe to do it without breaking any cultural norms. Not that I know what the norms on toplessness is here in Mozambique, but I assume it is less liberal than in Sweden where I grew up.

An hour goes by and I am deeply lost in the narrative of the book I’m listening to. Suddenly I feel there is movement, I open my eyes and see a young man pass me by. We lock eyes just as he comes up the stairs, both equally startled by the other’s presence. Or perhaps I’m the one who is startled by his presence, he is more likely startled by my nakedness that I quickly try to cover up. We mumble something to each other and he goes to the other side of the rooftop with his back towards me. Ugh, how awkward! He seemed so uncomfortable, poor guy. I spent the next two days trying to avoid eye contact with him and his travel companion. They are both my age and seem to feel right at home at this hostel.

Every evening the older generation at the hostel gather around a table, in the outside bar area, where they talk and laugh in Portuguese, chain smoking cigarettes. The two young newcomers are welcomed like family and fit right into this group, socialising and laughing. It looks nice. I decide then and there to get over my embarrassment and make an effort to introduce myself. I catch the girl first, it feels easier… Her name is Brenda and she tells me that she and her friend Igor, the one I startled, have spent a year in Mozambique working for some Brazilian NGO.

When Igor and I finally do talk we both laugh at the naked incident. He tells me that he had tried to avoid me after so that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable thinking he was creeping on me. Imagine that! A man understanding the many security dilemmas women go through and adapting to give space and freedom. Who would have known! This is where everything changes for me. My isolation and recovery time is over.

Maputo through the Brazilians eyes

What happens next can most accurately be described as Brenda and Igor taking me by the hand and opening up all of Maputo right in front of me. They introduce me to everyone and anyone that they’ve made friends with during their year here. It feels wonderful! Maputo is beautiful by day but absolutely vibrant by night. Everyone is gorgeous, kind and inclusive.

The first time we go out together, they take me to Prahna, a restaurant with walls completely in orange and yellow, next to Rua d’Arte. First there is just a few of us but eventually we are around twenty-five people. The Portuguese is flowing all around me and I sit back and enjoy the vibe. I have enough of a hard time understanding Portuguese when I’m sober. With one cup of wine in my body, in combination with the loud environment, it is absolutely impossible. It doesn’t matter though, I’m just happy to be here.

I notice how everyone who comes in to join the group says hi to everyone and make sure to introduce themselves to the newcomer, me. That never happens in Sweden when the group setting is so big. It takes me a while to realize that not everyone here knows each other very well, their way of interacting makes me think they are all best of friends. I try to remember their names as they introduce themselves but when the sixth person comes up with another, to me, never-heard-before, Portuguese name, I give up. I apologize when I realize I’ve asked the same person for their name three times, he just laughs and says “In time, you know us all!”, letting me know that I am welcome here, in this group.

The next few days I get to see what Maputo is really about. It is a whole lot bigger than the four walls of the hostels I’ve been hiding in! One day, Igor invites us to Mercado do Peixe, a huge fish and shellfish market with loads of restaurants. We take the xiapa there; equivalent to Durban’s taxi system, Maputo’s public transport is dependent on the hundreds and hundreds of worn down minibuses driving around like crazy.

It is my first time taking one here and I am very glad I’m not alone. Before I know it, the bus is so full I can’t even see out of the window. The cobrador, the guy who charges the bus fare and sees to who needs to come on and off, keeps pushing people onto the bus even though I think it will burst at any second. It must look ridiculous from the outside, loads of butts hanging out the window. When Igor lets me know it’s our time to get off, almost the entire bus needs to get off in order to let us out. I stumble onto the street and before I have collected myself, everyone is inside the bus again driving off in a hurried speed.

My group of people look at my shocked expression, laugh and say “Mozambique!” while shrugging their shoulders. Before we even enter the market, Igor is bartering the price with a lady who wants us to eat at a specific vendor that she gets commission from. As soon as we enter the market every vendor turns their attention towards us, yelling out their prices and offers. We are the only guests there, the energy is intense and once again I am so grateful to be here with people who know how it’s done and how the system works.

When we sit down at a table everything calms down, but the procedure starts up again every time a new guest enters the market. There are so many vendors. I keep thinking if the market is always this empty or if it is a consequence of the pandemic. The prices at Mercado do Peixe are tourist prices and the international and national tourism has not picked up yet to the extent it was before the pandemic. There is an air of desperation every time a new possible client walks into the market.

The food arrives after a good whole hour but it was well worth the wait. It’s a feast! Plate after plate comes out overflowing with fish, shrimps, rice, fries and the best thing of all: salad! After three months in South Africa, where you don’t really have the custom of eating salad, arriving here in Mozambique where salad comes with every meal feels like a luxury. The rest of the afternoon we spend at the beach.

Lost and Found: Soul Searching on the go in Maputo

julia.sarantes.andersson — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 06:51:24 +0000

The Global Entity

Lost and Found: Soul Searching on the go in Maputo

00:00 / 12:00

First quick impression of Maputo

I’ve been taking it super easy since I got to Maputo. Doctors orders. I’m filling my time with slow mornings, slow movements and slow activities. I even went out to buy groceries to cook the other day, something I haven’t done properly since I started traveling. It feels grounding to cook my own food, another slow process if I do it my way.

I’m in a weird state of mind where I don’t know where I am or what I am doing. When I go on my morning walks through the streets of Maputo I have a hard time orienting myself. Not back to the hostel but rather I have a hard time feeling that I am in Mozambique . Everywhere people are speaking Portuguese, which I don’t understand at all, but my brain keeps thinking it’s Spanish. The city itself reminds me so much of Havana, Cuba, that I catch myself thinking that I am there. The rundown apartment buildings, the city greenery, traces of communism in infrastructure, Maputo even has a beach promenade that is so similar, albeit shorter, to Havana’s Malecón.

I guess that’s not so weird, after all, I have no references of what Mozambique is like. My brain is probably just trying to make the most sense of what it is seeing and hearing. It feels almost like having a bug in google maps, but in my brain: intellectually I know I’m in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, but the pin on the map keeps dragging me back to Havana saying I’m there. The heat is a lot more dry here than in Cuba, but at least it’s not freezing like in South Africa. I guess that my brain, just like my body right now, needs some time to adjust. And if there is something I have right now, it is time. I think it’s beautiful to have time for being lost, it’s the only way I know how to find.

Crash landing at a cute hostel in Maputo

I’m staying at a backpackers hostel called The Base, the only hostel I could find exist in Maputo according to google at the time. It’s a tiny hostel hosting a maximum of fourteen people in a total of three rooms. It has a beautiful veranda that overlooks Baixa, an area of central Maputo, and the ocean. It would be perfect had it not been for the mosquitos, they are vicious! I have to make an effort and buy some stronger repellent the next time I go out.

It’s a very tiny hostel for spending as much time in as I am. It is also currently packed, filled with happy, social tourists and travelers. They are super sweet and inclusive but I cannot deal. My social batteries are wiped out and their niceness makes me want to hide in the bathroom. Something I’ve actually done on a few occasions this week. I can feel the staff looking at me, I understand enough Portuguese to understand I am a topic of curiosity. They giggle as I stretch on the veranda, giggle as I sing in the kitchen or when I’m crying on the phone. There has been a lot of that since I got here. I think there is a combination of things: my health, leaving mom at the airport, leaving South Africa, all the impressions from the past months traveling.

I don’t think I realised it fully before, but following your heart does not equal it being easy. This is by far the most turbulent journey I’ve ever been on and I am just in the beginning. Yohh. The main feeling I am struggling with now is loneliness. I know it is ironic considering I have no energy to socialize but that doesn’t make me feel any less lonely.

Traveling and learning to live through my heart

I had a flight ticket back to Sweden that I could have been on had I not decided to go to Mozambique and continue this journey. Perhaps it was the realisation that I have made a definite choice to not go back home, that the flight had literally flown me by, that made me crumble. Or perhaps it was the warm hug from a stranger that made me realise just how lonely I actually felt. After a week and a half keeping to myself in Maputo, I allowed myself to talk to another traveler at the hostel. He had just been on a psychedelic spiritual journey in South America and was now going through Africa on a motorbike. He had daughters my age and I quickly found myself enjoying his company.

We were as different as two people can be. Me being in a super soft, vulnerable flow and him being much more assertive, almost aggressive in his need to search and find. Despite this, it was beautiful to connect. Perhaps because we were so different we allowed ourselves to have vulnerable conversations about spirituality, absent fathers and the search and need for purpose. It was refreshing, I felt seen. Before he left The Base to continue his journey he gave me a warm, heartfelt hug. The physical contact shocked my system. I realized I haven’t had any sort of physical contact in a long time. Yep, that was definitely what triggered what came next. Before I knew it, it felt like the walls of my lungs were closing in on me. I wanted to creep out of my own skin, that’s how uncomfortable it made me feel. But instead of running away from that feeling, instead of distracting myself with something-anything, I stayed present with myself and the emotions.

After a few hours of that, just sitting with my feelings, and with Wash over Me by TEEKS on repeat in my headphones, I reach the peak of it all. My heart feels like it’s cramping and just when I accept that this is escalating into a full on panic attack, I hear a little voice. It says to me that everything is okay now, I don’t need to hurt like this anymore, I have done the work, I’m allowed to let it go now. At first I feel skeptical, whose voice was that? Can it really be that easy? But then I think what if it is just that ‘easy’, show up for yourself so that you can let go. I take a few deep breaths and with every exhale I can feel the tightness over my chest releasing. The sadness and loneliness becomes less prominent. Within minutes I am sitting straight up again. I feel lighter than I have in weeks. Not even two seconds later I get a text inviting me to a dance social, talk about Divine timing!

I’m sharing this experience for several reasons. Firstly, I want to live in a world where we can talk about mental health in a non-stigmatized way. Secondly, it is so easy to glorify and romanticise the traveling lifestyle, when in reality, it has its ups and downs just like any life. Thirdly, THIS is the most exciting part of this journey! Don’t get me wrong, being this sad sucked. Almost having a panic attack, definitely not something I recommend. However, I can feel myself growing. I’m getting to know myself more, the good as well as my not so charming sides, and I can see how I show up for myself differently now. That, the inner journey, that is what’s exciting! Furthermore, I don’t think I am the only one who feels this way sometimes. Maybe you are also in the trenches trying to follow your heart, whatever that may entail. Maybe sharing this will make you feel less alone in the process of it all. When I get the text message inviting me to salsa social dance, I smile. It feels like I am being guided: you’ve done what you needed to do solo, now you need to raise your vibrations, you need others. You need to dance!

Social dancing in Maputo

The guy who texted me was Fumo Frias, a Mozambican dance teacher that I met while he was teaching a tangokiz workshops at the Mother City dance festival. I had reached out a few weeks earlier to ask about the dance scene in Maputo. He chose the perfect day to get back to me! At the time I was so grateful for the opportunity to go out and dance that I didn’t even have time to get nervous as I usually do. When I get to the restaurant Bella Madalena two hours later I am dressed up and ready to dance. I’ve asked Amanda, another Swedish girl from the hostel, to join me. As we enter I see we are representing the Swedish flag, me in a blue dress and her in a yellow. I’m glad to have a kind person by my side as I get ready to break my social isolation.

There is a mix of tourists and Mozambican people present and people are already dancing when we get there. Before I know it, I am up on the dance floor as well. It is such a relief! When I get back to the table after my first salsa, Amanda exclaims “Woah! You look completely different!” and she was right. The joy of salsa, the joy of community and connecting with another human being can truly be transformative. This is good for me, this is what I need. I talk to Frias who invites me to their dance school DanceSpot the following week. Apparently they teach everything from salsa and kizomba, to tango and swing. How exciting! This makes me happy! It doesn’t take long for the salsa teacher Amino to catch on that I can lead. He invites himself to a dance and gosh how I sucked! I haven’t led anyone in months. Amino however, is kind and encouraging, we laugh loads together and once again I am reminded that dancing is the answer. To everything. Always. Maybe a tad dramatically expressed but nonetheless true for me.

When we are on our way home I look out the car window at a sleeping Maputo swishing by. I am filled with gratitude for being able to be here. Even though some parts of this journey are really triggering and difficult, I do believe I would be dealing with these doubts and fears even if I was still living at home in Sweden. Perhaps just at a slower pace. There is something about traveling that accelerates internal processes. And I know, loneliness and all, I would much rather be lost and found in beautiful Maputo, doing this inner/outer journey, than at home feeling equally lost. Thank you God for this life!

Border Crossing: a solo travelers list of blunders from Durban to Maputo

julia.sarantes.andersson — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 03:50:39 +0000

The Global Entity

Border Crossing: a solo travelers list of blunders from Durban to Maputo

00:00 / 16:58

Solo traveling to Maputo from Durban by bus, attempt one

After I had dropped my mom off at the airport it was time to get my shit in order. My South African 90-day visa was about to expire and I needed to get out of the country. I had decided to go to Mozambique and had two days left to prepare to cross the border. I’m going to take the bus to Maputo from Durban. Since I have never crossed an African border by land before I decided to book the trip to Mozambique a few days before my visa expired and thank God I did! The day of, I get up at four AM to get to the bus station. When I get there I can’t find the bus anywhere. There are no signs even indicating that the bus company I bought the ticket from exists. After stressing around with all of my luggage, a vague memory of a hotel resurfaces in my mind. I’ve heard people being picked up there by big busses before. Unable to order an Uber from the bus station due to the tensions between the online taxi drivers and the ‘normal’ taxi drivers, I had to pay the much higher standard fee to drive the five minutes to the hotel.

When I get there I rush into the lobby. The hotel staff confirm that I am at the right place but say there is no bus today, only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I show them my ticket and they shrug their shoulders. After waiting for the bus for two hours, I accept no bus is coming. After calling every bus office in all of South Africa without any response, I dial the number to the Maputo office and finally, a kind lady answers! She doesn’t speak English but I manage to understand enough of her Portuguese to understand that there is no bus today. But I bought my ticket for today, I say indignant. “Oh, that’s no problem. You can use the same ticket for the Saturday bus.” The lady responds and hangs up. I’m baffled by this reply. I definitely feel it’s a problem for me. However, there is nothing to do about it. I book myself two more nights at a hotel and spend my days in Durban botanic garden hugging trees.

Attempt 2 of entering Mozambique: a hail mary!

Saturday morning starts off better than the last attempt. I am at the right place, at the right time and the bus arrives! When the bus starts rolling down the streets of Durban I feel happy and excited and nervous, all at the same time. I am going to Mozambique! I am going to a completely new context and I have no idea what to expect. The excitement doesn’t last long though; thirty minutes outside of Durban the bus breaks down. Two hours later we are still waiting for a mechanic. Fantastic. I am starting to feel stressed about my whole situation. My South Africa visa expires today and the guy who is sitting next to me wont stop chewing gum as loudly as he can. If you want to ensure to not be my friend, this is a safe way to do it. Chew loudly. I cannot stand it.

Suddenly the guy turns to me, says there is another way to get to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. He asks if I want to join and my first instinct is to enthusiastically say yes! At this point I am eternally grateful that my angry glares earlier had not scared him off. He orders an Uber to come pick us up right there at the highway. While we wait I start doubting my decision. It is not wise to get into a car with a stranger, a strange man that is… but, with my visa predicament I didn’t feel I could give up this opportunity. As I stand there, trying to calculate the risk, a Mozambican family comes up to us and asks if they can join our Uber to get to the taxi rank. I thanked my angels for this, it felt a lot easier making the choice with another woman and her family there. When we get to Durban’s taxi rank the waiting begins. Taxis are mini buses that function as the unscheduled public transport of South Africa. They play an essential part of locals’ everyday infrastructure and you cannot avoid noticing them when you are here.

Traveling like a local: Durban's internationl taxi system

I have definitely been warned about the Durban taxi rank, or taxi ranks in general in South Africa. The risk of getting mugged as a tourist is said to be bigger here than other areas. I’ve always felt the place to be extremely chaotic when I’ve been here before but now that I am sitting here just waiting, I am amazed by the order of everything. Even though I don’t understand how, everyone, absolutely everyone knows where to go. Vendors, taxis and people all coexist together in a very limited space and yet no accidents happen, no foot is run over and nobody is squished between the moving and still vehicles. Absolutely amazing!

We have to wait until every seat in the taxi is full before we can leave, that’s how this unscheduled system works. When we finally start rolling out of Durban, I’m exhausted. I don’t think we even have time to leave the city before I’m snoring. I am woken up a few hours later by the guy who helped me onto the bus. We have stopped for a bathroom break at a gas station and the guy explains that he is getting into another car. When I ask why he looks at me like I’m an idiot and says that the border closes at five. What the actual f*ck? He wishes me luck, promptly turns his gum chewing head around and walks away.

Once everyone, except for him, is back in the taxi and we start driving again, I start feeling real nervous. This was not a good idea. What if we don’t make it cross the border, what happens then? And even if we do manage to cross the border I have no local money, no local sim card, no way to contact with anyone. I don’t even know where this bus will be dropping us off. I just have the address of my hostel on a note in my phone. It’s at this point that I’m starting to feel dumb. Real dumb. This was a dumb, dumb choice. As the clock ticks closer to five, I am sweating. Nobody else seems to be bothered though. I try to ask the lady besides me but she doesn’t speak English.

Crossing then South African border into Mozambique

We are about forty minutes late when we finally arrive at the border. The migration staff wave the driver through, it’s almost like they were expecting him. I go through the South African border with a sense of relief, I made it! I should not have been so quick to celebrate though. The border is a very serious business and the lack of smiles makes me nervous. When I get to the Mozambican border, there are even less smiles. The migration officer in front of me does not speak a word to me, only grunts. He doesn’t look at me but rather down at me. He grunts for me to follow him into his office and I oblige. Here follows a ninety minute long procedure of checking my papers, not just my passport but my booking confirmation and any and every other detail of my journey.

It’s a huge problem that I don’t have my booking confirmation printed. An even bigger problem is that I don’t have the hostel’s phone number. I desperately try to google it but I am in Mozambique now and no longer have cell service. I look up at the officer who is sitting in front of a computer. He could definitely google that for me, but he just stares at something slightly above me. It feels like I’m suspected of a crime and have to justify my journey. I pretend to find the number to the hostel and just write some random numbers down. After an hour of back and forth, the taxi driver comes looking for me. The officer looks irritated to be cut off but I am grateful for the break in the interrogation. They exchange words in a language I don’t understand and I quickly turn around to the taxi driver and beg him not to leave me. It just hit me that that is a possibility but he ensures me that they will wait.

Thirty minutes later, the sour migration officer finally asks me for my border visa payment. I sigh in relief, payment equals visa. I am getting my visa. I count the money in front of the officer, scoop it up and hand it to him. He picks it up and starts counting it in front of me, two and two. The last three notes he also counts as two. He looks at me with his tiny eyes and says to me with perfect English “You are missing fifty rand.” I’m shook. Both by the fact that this man, who has refused to explain anything to me in English for the past ninety minutes, speaks perfect English. But also by the fact that both him and I can clearly see the money he is holding. I am about to say something, protest, ask to recount the money myself, just anything before I remember: he has all the power. I can’t go back to South Africa, I don’t have a visa there anymore. I have to get to Maputo. I swallow my pride and realise that fifty rand is a cheap price for me to just get through the situation. I could also be wrong about what I saw.

Arriving in Maputo, Mozambique

I am the only one in the bus who had trouble at the border and my fellow passengers are less than happy with me when I return. However, the mood in the bus changes as we pass herds of zebras, antelopes and even a few giraffes! It’s absolutely amazing! The border at Punta d’Ouro has a lot of game reserves nearby and apparently they all come out at dusk.

The feeling of awe quickly changes into tense, silent panic as we run into a flock of elephants. The whole bus gets real quiet and stops. I can almost feel the tension in the air as one of the younger male elephants start walking towards us with his ears up. I am both amazed and painfully aware of the fragile material the bus is made of. To be so close. This elephant would only have to lift its left front leg and it would crush us like a bug. Something happens within the herd and the elephants start moving to the left, off the road. The young male looks at us a little while longer before he sort of shrugs and joins the rest of them. We start creeping by, slowly, slowly.

As we get past the elephants people start talking again and laughing, exhilarated by the experience. Never before have I experienced something like this. This can’t be normal? The rest of the drive goes without any further hiccups. When we finally start rolling into Maputo, it’s already after ten at night. Maputo’s equivalent to a taxi rank is called Junta, looks like football field and lies outside of the city core. Even though it’s night Junta is filled with people. As I wait for my bag to be handed to me I try to look for the mother who I shared an Uber with earlier in Durban but she is nowhere to be found. I wanted to ask them to share a taxi with me as I had no idea where I was. Instead I get overwhelmed with taxi offers and people who want to carry my bags.

Not knowing the customs here, I hold tightly onto all my things and decide to go with one of them. I know he is ripping me off even though I manage to get the price down. But, I’m in a taxi rank at night in a country I don’t know. I have to just do the best out of a shitty situation and get to my hostel. Even though the taxi driver doesn’t understand a word of English and I can’t speak a word of Portuguese, he talks the whole ride through. He stops to ask the way and finally parks in front of a blue garage door. Fatimas Backpackers it says in big letters on the house. The driver steps out and asks the guards if this is The Base Hostel. The oldest of the guards stands up and confirms. I ask one more time just to be sure and they all nod. I pay the driver the last of my rands (South African currency), get my bags and start walking inside.

When I get inside, there is a huge, artsy bar and in the middle of it, a super cute receptionist. “Is this The Base Hostel?” I ask directly without even saying hello. The cute guy look at me “No, this is not the base…”

F*cking f*ck.

I instantly drop all my bags and run outside to catch the cab before he drives off with the last of my cash. He is on his way out, already rolling, when I burst out of the garage doors roaring from the bottom of my lungs. The guy looks terrified and in hindsight, I can absolutely understand that. I was a bit unhinged. But the stress of the past 18 hours and not having more cash on me made me desperate.

As he parks, I go back inside to get my bags. The old guard asks if he can help me carry my bags. “You have helped enough” I say unnecessarily and stomped off with all my luggage. The moment I sit down in the car the anger and fear evaporates and I realise I’ve been an ass. A real, royal, tourist jackass. I sink into my seat in shame. To my horror I see how the whole staff has gathered outside the garage door and look at me. With pity. Or is it worry? I wanted to sink through the ground.

I wish that was the end of it but no. After driving for ten minutes, I realise we are lost. The driver is irritated with me because I don’t have any internet. I’m just irritated. After getting directions from some homeless man we stop in an alley. The driver turns around in his seat, looks at me and says, “I want more payment.” I answer with an “excuse me”. “This is a longer trip, I want more payment.” This is such a stupidly dangerous situation to be in that I don’t argue with him. I’m not sure if he is intending to be threatening or not, but the very precarious situation I am in where I am 100% dependent on him to get to my destination makes me scared.

I answer that I will pay him on arrival. I don’t have any more cash but that’s irrelevant right now. The driver seems satisfied with my answer and starts driving again. Ten minutes later we arrive at The Base. Finally. Thank goodness. Thank God. Thank everything and everyone. I roam through my pockets and find ten rand and stuff it in his hand and pray he wont argue. What a day! What a crazy, fricking day. So many mistakes were made, so many risks. But I handled it. After checking in, I sit down on the veranda, too wired to be able to sleep straight away. The wind is chilly but the Maputo air is humid and warm. I have arrived.

Border Crossing: 2 Tips for Solo Travelers

Well, frankly I feel this text is pretty straight forward in what not to do when you are about to cross a border for the first time. However, we learnt a lot!

This post was a long one so I will jump straight to the two main lessons:

Print everything.
Don’t be a prick. Just because you are overwhelmed,
you chose to be here.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Empowerment in Vulnerability: Finding Sisterhood on the Road

julia.sarantes.andersson — Fri, 26 May 2023 08:41:09 +0000

The Global Entity

Empowerment In Vulnerability: Finding Sisterhood On The Road

00:00 / 8:10

The most common side effect of traveling solo

The most common side effect of traveling is definitely the constant deep thoughts and never ending reflections. Goodness. Travelling solo can be a daunting task, especially when shit hits the fan. For me, nothing dramatic is up, I’ve just been in my feelings lately. Not necessarily the good ones. I wake up crying, the tiniest thing sets me off and I am exhausted all the time.

Parallel to that, I currently have zero bullshit tolerance. Or rather, I have this unyielding need to set boundaries in a way I’ve never felt before. I can’t let even the smallest thing slide. This side of my personality completely surprised me. I am used to letting my people pleasing needs get the better of my boundary setting abilities… but for the past two weeks I am setting boundaries left and right without any hesitation or censorship. It feels both incredibly thrilling, even empowering, can it really be this easy?? But it also feels super uncomfortable as I am sure not everybody likes this side of me. And who am I if I am not liked..? Free?

Free and human perhaps. In many ways I recognise this grumpier, more firm and secure self from my childhood. A core self that I somewhere along the way in life got used to hiding, feeling shame over, minimising. As empowering as it is to (re)discover aspects of yourself, I can’t get over how uncomfortable I feel. All of my feelings are right at the surface for everyone to see and endure. I feel powerless and naked, like my whole inner being is on display for everyone. Staying in a dorm with 10 other women, at a hostel which is constantly buzzing with people and energies from all over the world, is overwhelming right now. And yet, in a space where there is nowhere to hide, I can only surrender to reality. For the past two weeks, I am learning to navigate this new hyper emotional state I am in.

Sisterhood and hostel life

To my surprise, I have during these weeks been blessed by the uncompromising, unwavering sisterhood of women. Despite being my least charming self, women here at the hostel have gathered in something best described as a protective circle around me. It is the small things, the hand on my back, the looking into my eyes, the inclusion in the everyday routine that has started to take shape here at the backpackers. I started crying when Hadiyah one morning told me she was cooking breakfast for me. For her it was such a simple thing, for me, who’s been struggling with appetite for too long, for me – it was everything.

We are a handful of women who are staying at Curiocity for a month or more. Everyone from different parts of the world, with different journeys, reasons and ways of being. I don’t know if they sense my vulnerability or if they actively see the wreck I am and can’t help but reach out a hand… It doesn’t matter. I am absolutely amazed by the sisterhood and care I feel right now.

Last weekend was also spent in the company of strong women. I went to Pretoria yet again to reunite with my old Pietermaritzburg gang: Lerato and Sine. I feel such an overwhelming sense of joy and gratitude every time we meet or talk. That we are able to meet like this, years, lives and continents apart, and yet despite this – truly meet. Not just see each other but appreciate, celebrate and lift each other up, wherever we are in our lives. As I sit back and watch these women shining in their light, I conclude that it is a luxury and privilege to be a part of womens’ lives. There is nothing more enriching! The weekend in Pretoria was naturally filled with laughter, a lot of catching up, drinks and adventures. I am truly blessed! It would have been so easy to feel lonely on a journey like this, especially considering how everything started… but no, instead these women, known and strangers, show up and give me from their abundance. Yes, I am blessed. I feel held, by the universe and the very women present in my life.

Future: dreams, doubts and purpose

Once I got back from Pretoria to Johannesburg, it hit me. This could be my life. I mean, this is obviously my life right now but this, having access to these amazing people on a regular basis, that could actually be my reality. If I make it. Make what, I am not sure of at all. When I was in Pretoria, I took the opportunity to do a visit at the Swedish Embassy. A family friend is currently stationed there and she was happy to show me around. It felt surreal walking those corridors, saying hello to titles I once dreamed of becoming. Now, I am not so sure anymore. Ever since I saw the finish line of my university studies I have been feeling claustrophobic at the thought of a nine-to-five job. I wonder if that truly is the only way to achieve economic stability. Or are we entering a new era where we are allowed to exist outside of those hamster wheel norms?

Thousand upon thousand of thoughts are going through my head. A lot of doubt as well about the journey I’ve decided to embark on. But I’m also realising that my hyper sensitivity right now is affecting everything. In a weird way I feel like I am two people, one is the emotional mess and the other one is observing the emotional state I am in. The observer feels calm, I know at my core that everything is the way it is supposed to be.

Travel tip of the week

Let things take their time! Don’t stress if things don’t work out as you thought. It was hardly in my plans to go through this in a hostel environment. And yet, by allowing it to take space, facing it and giving myself time to care for it, I have been given just the right support i need. Yes, it is not what I imagined to be doing in this vibrant city, but I trust it is just what I need.

Soulful Sundays: Kizomba Adventures in Jozi

julia.sarantes.andersson — Thu, 18 May 2023 09:16:01 +0000

The Global Entity

Soulful Sundays: Kizomba Adventures In Jozi

00:00 / 7:29

Homeopathy and exploring Melville

My health is continuing to deteriorate without any signs of improving. After a month of coughing my lungs out, I felt it was time to seek some help. I decided to book an appointment at a local homeopath after listening to moms advice. It was homeopathy that helped me as a kid when I got tonsillitis six times in just a few months. Experiencing something similar but different now, going to a Homeopath felt like the right choice. Going to a conventional doctor would only get me penicillin at this point, something that would wipe out the little immune system I still have left. Dr. Jana Mostert greets me in the waiting room and as I sit in her office the smells bring me back to my childhood. Having been brought up with alternative medicine, the smells of herbs and incense gives me a sense of security.

Dr. Mostert is a soft spoken, present lady. Her questions traverse every aspect of my life, trying to get to the bottom of my imbalance. This is what I love about alternative medicine, knowing that they look at my entire being and life instead of just the symptoms of the disease. I leave with a bag full of homeopathic remedies, firm instructions and a sense of being seen. Everything will be alright. On my way out, I text a tourist that I met at the hostel to see if she is around to grab lunch. Melville, the area where the homeopaths office is, is a very cozy and bohemian area with lots of bars, restaurants and some random stores and thrift shops. It’s known for being flooded by students on any given party night. We end up going to Hell’s Kitchen for a glass of wine and some light lunch. At this point, I’m sure it can only help my recovery.

Kizomba Socials in Johannesburg

Sundays in Johannesburg should just be called Danceday instead, simple as that. Not having been in Jozi for several years, I was a bit unsure of where to go to get my dance fix. I reached out to my old kizomba teacher, Paciano, who hosts Kizomba Sundays every week at the Ethos Restaurant in Rosebank. Ethos is an elegant place, everyone is dressed up and I felt happy I put my only fancy dress on. The ladies look like something out of a fairytale as they gracefully dance through the magical room in their flowy, colourful fabrics.

I get to dance with Paciano and it feels so surreal to be here again. Paciano was one of my first kizomba teachers, he taught me when I was still stepping on people toes every other minute… it feels like a full circle moment as we now, years later, get to flow together. As the afternoon becomes early evening the dancers spill out onto the courtyard. It is a beautiful view and I would have loved to stay, but as I said earlier: Sunday is Kizomba day in Jozi. I have another spot to try out before this evening comes to an end. I catch a ride with a fellow salsero who is also on his way to the next place, thank goodness I did! I always forget how huge Johannesburg is until I get the taxi bill.

When we arrive at the new venue the party is already blowing up, people are dancing everywhere and the salsa songs that are being played are fire! Baila Afrika, a dance school in Johannesburg, host their monthly Sunday party at Pedro Portia and I felt lucky I was here for it! For some reason however, I am not feeling it, not yet anyways. If the previous event was best described as elegant, this one would best be described as alive! There is lots of people everywhere. I barely have time to take two steps into the restaurant before I get stepped on. Twice.

Feeling overwhelmed by the many impressions, people and noises, I get myself to the bar to order some food. The way I catch myself glaring at the happy, dancing people, was a clear indicator that I needed to refuel my system. The bartender recommended one of their wraps, but at that point, I would have eaten anything. The prawn wrap was amazing and works its magic on me instantly. As I sit and eat the last pieces of my meal I notice that I actually recognise some faces that are here. I danced with them at the Afro Latin dance festival in Cape Town just last month! It was the last thing I needed in order to shake off the sour mood and get up on the dance floor.

In the taxi home I feel the euphoria of having danced and shared energy with so many amazing beings. I feel warm in my feelings from the Baila Afrika event. Now, I have Johannesburgs dance calendar written down and I feel confident I’m going to utilize it to the fullest. The taxi ride goes quickly, partly because there is little to no traffic at this time, but mostly because we brush past every red light as if they were green. This is why I could never drive here. It is not about the left side traffic, although that for me is terrifying as well. It’s the fact that I would have zero to no clue about where it is safe to drive, at what times and where it is safer to drive through the red light. I would probably end up driving on the wrong side despite my best effort.

The city of gold sleeps but Curiocity is still awake. I am greeted by the normal Sunday buzz, a group is singing somewhere in the backyard and peoples faces look distorted as they laugh in the candle light. Load shedding. My favourite bartender sees me come in and invites me to join their conversation but I feel that the load shedding is all the signs I need. I’m off straight to bed!

Safety vs. Convenience: A Traveler’s Dilemma in Cape Town’s Taxi Landscape

julia.sarantes.andersson — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 17:41:37 +0000

The Global Entity

Safety Vs. Convenience: A Traveler’s Dilemma In Cape Town’s Taxi Landscape

00:00 / 5:18

Uber Trouble in Cape Town

The bus ride from Durban to Cape Town took 26 hours instead of the promised 23,5 hours. The last two hours were excruciating! My mind was so set on arriving at a specific time so when I realised we were delayed, every minute felt like an hour. When I finally arrived at the bus station in Cape Town no Uber nor Bolt (online taxi apps) would to take my request. It surprised me at first since Cape Town is a huge city with many, many people working for these companies. Then I recalled how it was the last time I was in South Africa back in 2017-2018. There were huge tensions between the online taxi app drivers and the metered taxi drivers. The metered taxistas felt overrun by the online apps and their low prices, a common feeling in many countries where online taxi services completely changed the market by being more accessible as well as cheaper. Back then it led to such violent encounters resulting in beatings, torching and even murder. The violence was closely intertwined and fueled by Xenophobia, the fear, hatred and prejudice against foreigners, a huge problem in South Africa.

Today, the tension between the two parties has calmed down but it has left its traces. After a few attempts of trying to hail an online taxi, I surrender and grab a metered taxi. We argue about the price and eventually, being exhausted after such a long journey, I accept the standard price even though my destination was less than five minutes away. Personally, I feel safer using the online taxi apps since I can share my location with my friends, but also because I know there is an online record of my journey. If I, God forbid, was to get kidnaped, robbed or otherwise damaged, I know that my ride, the car and driver are registered. It might not help me in that specific moment but at least it creates a feeling of security.

This is not a security strategy I developed while traveling, rather it is something I felt normal to do as a precaution in Sweden, my home country. I tried asking my grumpy but kind taxi driver about the current situation between metered and online taxistas. He says that it is better now as everyone has agreed upon their ‘territory’. The bus and train stations, for example, belong to the metered taxis while home pickups are better suited for online taxis. He makes it seem like it’s all harmonious now, I wonder if it’s true.

My new home in Cape Town

When I arrive I am greeted by a super happy Victoria, my Airbnb host in Woodstock. Apparently I am their first guest! I usually don’t book an airbnb without reviews, as a safety precaution. However, the location was perfect in relation to the festival and I would get my own apartment with a terrace. Additionally, I was to arrive during the day so if there were any shenanigans it would at least not be at night. I didn’t have much choice anyhow since it was a last minute booking.

I didn’t want to stay in a hostel this time since I will be out dancing at night and coming and going at all hours. I did not have to worry, Victoria and I hit it off right away and I felt safe. The rest of the day I spent on self care, trying to erase the traces of the long bus ride off my face. I meant to take a nap in the afternoon but instead I got stuck admiring the stunning view from my terrace. Cape Town really is something else!