Travel now not tomorrow

  Most of us don’t think of ourselves as foreigners, even when we’re overseas. We believe that we are one with the wider group. After all, foreigners are something else, they are the people who don’t belong. I remember the first time I realised I was be an outsider. My British Caledonian flight to Zambia had landed in Lusaka and, when I looked out onto the tarmac, none of the ground staff looked like me. It gave me a thrill but also a sense of vulnerability. These people were not my people and I wondered if I would be safe among them. That thought prompted another – this is how visitors to my own country must feel. They are outnumbered, and their dress, skin colour, hair, any number of things, mark them out and perhaps leave them open to hostility. I have to say that I met no hostility in Zambia. Instead, my social skills grew as I learned to reach out to the people I lived among. Perhaps I did it to fit in, to ensure that I was less of a foreigner. I didn’t anticipate feeling ...