Exciting. Refreshing. Expensive. Tiresome. Frustrating. All these are the words that I use to describe traveling on the African continent. I’ve been traveling on the continent for the last 8 months between central, eastern and Southern Africa. These trips have been both to visit family as well as for leisure. The common denominator is this: traveling in Africa is not for the faint of heart.
I’ve traveled to Zimbabwe (here), the Democratic Republic of Congo (here) and Namibia (here & here) alone this year and solo travel on the continent has taught me both resilience as well as exposed how poorly and overlooked women are when traveling – especially alone.
Expensive
I was born in Kenya and before I turned 30 I had visited 25% of the continent. In all honesty this is no easy feat. Travel on the continent is some of the most expensive in the world. For instance, I paid just under $400 dollars to travel from Boston to Barcelona (3649 miles or 5873km) compared to just under $640 to travel from Kinshasa to Harare (1410 miles or 2270 km)! Cost prevents so many people from being able to fully appreciate the beauty that is the African continent because it is so prohibitive. So many people will never see the wonder that is the Victoria Falls. Many will not be able to see the big 5 – all because traveling in Africa is in many cases absurdly expensive.
Additionally, if you are like me, the amount of money spent on paying for visas quickly becomes prohibitive when thinking of traveling on the continent. The cost of visas vary depending on your country of origin. As Im Congolese, I pay $100 for a visa to Uganda, which in my opinion is ridiculously high! I also recently paid $60 for my Namibian visa – to be clear, there are plenty of African countries Americans and Europeans can travel to without any visa requirements or where visa on arrival can be granted. I always have to get my visa pre-arrival, which means additional spending on trips to the embassies on top of the visa payments themselves – oh and all this is after purchasing the airline ticket!
FRUSTRATING
On more than one occasion I have been on the verge of tears because of various customer service related issues when traveling. Customer service in general is lacking on the continent but nowhere more evident than in the airline industry. In December I was heading back to Kinshasa from Harare and had a layover in Nairobi. Generally airlines will cover the cost of a layover that is greater than 8 hours by lodging the traveler in a hotel. However, this did not happen in December. The airline I flew simply told me that they wouldn’t adhere to this policy. It is their company policy to do so but they did not communicate that this practice was not adhered to during the COVID pandemic (even though all the other airlines I had flown lodged passengers during COVID). There was no communication on this change and the staff was unable to assist with providing optional shelter, which resulted in my spending the night at the airport!
TIRESOME
There so few direct flights on the continent that travel that would generally take a couple of hours is prolonged by transit stays and converted into two day travel! Going from Goma to Windhoek on a direct flight is approximately under 4 hours. However, there aren’t many direct flights and COVID further exacerbated this issue and so this 3 hour and some trip now takes 2 days as one has to take a layover in Ethiopia or Kenya … long story short – you will be exhausted both physically and mentally.
EXCITING
There’s literally nothing like traveling on the continent! I can say that after having visited 4 of the 7 continents. Africa travel requires both grit and a jovial spirit. The frustrations of travel are balanced out by the richness of the land and the colorful nature of the people. Africans are ready to strike up conversation and are generally helpful, which I appreciate especially as travel can get strenuous. While travel can take longer than necessary, the views, the people, the entire experience of going from dirt road to African in-flight service, which on its own is an incredible thing, there is nothing as exciting as traveling on the continent!
So there you have it – have you traveled on the African continent? What was your experience?
