September 16th, 2014: Munich, Germany
“How long will you be staying in Germany?”
“One night, just in transit.”
The customs officers hammered my passport with a loud bang of authority reminiscent of my elementary school teachers in China. Welcome to Germany. I was staying for one night, but that little blue book granted me 90 days. God bless the American Empire.
Also in my little blue book: the Exchange Permit, good for one year of employment in South Africa.
People say travel puts us in contact with different people, lifestyles, and ways of thinking, and that it teaches us to have an open mind. Even so, even with its real and perceived cosmopolitan glamour, one of travel’s most unavoidable aspects is how stereotypes and snap judgments unyieldingly grip our thoughts.
Immediately outside of Munich International Airport’s arrivals area stood lines of Mercedes Benz taxis. Although bumper to bumper, you hardly noticed the congestion. Customers stepped up, drivers briskly loaded their luggage. No pleasantries, just an address given and a nod or verbal confirmation. The taxis pulled up, stopped, loaded and departed in an almost musical rhythm. The whole thing looked like it was playing out in Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. Just replace Oompa Loompas with taxi drivers and magical ingredients with the power of German engineering.
In contrast, what I witnessed 24 hours later outside Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport was a Willie Wonka assembly line gone wrong. Minibus taxis packed against each other. Some simply sat in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. Drivers honked incessantly. Their partners shouted routes over the noise. Passengers carrying anything from small cases to multiple large duffel bags stuffed themselves in the taxis.
My first thought was, it’s the Global South, what did I expect?
I first learned the concepts of Global North and Global South in college. The same narrative always played out. The North had it all: life was orderly, governments were credible, and things worked. The South was the polar opposite: life was chaotic, governments were corrupt, and things failed. Africa? Disease and civil war. Middle East? Ethnic and religious conflict. Latin America? Corruption and economic failure. Asia? Pollution and overpopulation. But in the West…in the West we’re alright.
Universities always marketed study-abroad of international research programs to students in an air of superiority—never overtly stated, but the power dynamic simmered beneath the surface. It was all about you. You were going to be the intellectual powerhouse dropped in a clueless third-world country. You were the locals’ saving grace. You were the one to come up with solutions to their most pressing problems. Yes, you had to listen to the locals and learn, but at the end of the day, you were going to make a remarkable impact wherever you were going because of your superb skills and education.
In journalism school, reporting abroad always meant traveling somewhere with a headline-grabbing issue: refugees, corruption, poverty, the list goes on. We always had to find “issues” worth covering. These countries all had “issues.” When someone says “Man, you've got issues,” it’s not exactly considerate or understanding. Yet here we were, branding and labeling, playing God to shape the images and worthiness of places we couldn't even fathom to understand. I hated this institutionalised thinking, and hated even more so how I once embraced it with open arms.
Looking back at the taxi ranks at those two airports, I find life in the West has gifted me an insidious, condescending, and sometimes dehumanising way of looking at the rest of the world. Is Germany “better?" Is South Africa “worse?” Who makes the call? Must everything be compared to the standards of the so-called developed world?
Loading dozens of passengers into rows of minibus taxis traveling different routes was worlds apart from one, two, or at most three passengers using private taxis. It's not chaos or disorder. It’s spontaneity and flexibility.
It’s energy, vibrance, and freedom.