Credit: Lerato Mbangeni
Being a South African traveler in South Africa seemed to be the weirdest thing about me that week. Being young and Black was the next.
The Daily Maverick reported that a young person in South Africa hardly ever has money to spend on travel.
There is a certain privilege associated with being able to travel at my age, and especially while being Black. There’s also a certain privilege that comes with having a job and the ability to stash away enough cash to afford a getaway (even if in my case it means being broke for the rest of the month).
It’s not the norm for many Black people my age to be able to afford to travel. But in the same breath I’m worried about how Black people my age (and even older) think traveling is supposed to look when one can afford to can afford to.
My point is that, traveling is already near impossible because of our socio-economic backgrounds and responsibilities and now we make it even further out of reach by placing ridiculous expectations on how one must travel when they do finally afford to do it.
Traveling within our own country should not have to be limited to visiting relatives. We should be travelling within whatever budget we can scrape together and luckily our beautiful country does allow for those options.
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