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Edition 43: Summer 2008 The fact that trip insurance is now tied to government travel advisories has left many people high and dry when blanket bans have been cast over their impending destinations. Is our government playing fair, or are they truly dropping the ball? Paul Goldstein, who has witnessed the fallout of such bans on Kenya, weighs in…
Whilst I probably wouldn’t travel to Gaza right now, or Somalia, what I would do before setting off to any destination is ignore the pages of rabid prose on the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) website. The three words ‘non-essential travel’ are infinitely more damaging to any struggling economy than political quarrels. The US State Department, which leads where other supine nations like the UK, Australia and New Zealand follow, unsurprisingly, is even worse, writing nations off with impunity if there is the slightest suspicion of someone with a vaguely Arab name living where a tourist might visit. This Republican bile reached its nadir several years ago when passengers thinking of relaxing in Zanzibar were advised to avoid public areas and shopping malls! As anyone who has travelled there will know, malls and hypermarkets are the main reason people visit. This was a typical irresponsible cut-and-paste job by a blinkered government that should know better. There is a very serious side to this and it has nothing to do with the bleating of British tour operators. By denying local people the right to earn tourist dollars you frequently achieve exactly the opposite of your goals: it breeds resentment and anger, essential ingredients for radical acts.
The British government is happy to send our troops into an illegal war in Iraq yet will blanch at the slightest incident in former colonies or tourist destinations. After the tragic Bali bombing, the whole of Indonesia became a no-go zone. Looking at that more closely it means that if you were to sail from Sri Lanka to one of the Indonesian archipelago’s 17,000 islands (even uninhabited ones) you would lose your travel insurance the moment you set foot ashore. The FCO is also always delighted to remind anyone foolish enough to log on, of past incidents from many years ago, just in case you had forgotten. This year Kenya had some serious electoral issues and a few highly localised incidents. This was not the picture given by the press – the behaviour of whom was sometimes reprehensible. Local sources in Nairobi cite frequent instances of the fabricated terror footage broadcast by major news channels.
The FCO’s reaction to a struggle that affected not one tourist, was even worse. Issuing advisories, whether it is for a day or a month, effectively makes a million Kenyans destitute. Nairobi’s corrupt politicians deserve censure, but what amounted to a ban on tourism caused the Kenyan working class immense hardship as their primary source of income was snatched away. The moment the insurance companies tied up their conditions with the FCO advice, the fate of tourism was sealed, and as people felt forced to retreat behind their policies, abandoning the country, the howls from the lodges, camps and local operators became a lament. You would be OK if you broke your leg or had your wallet stolen but not during an act of war or terror. Err, just how likely?
I live in South London, but I was safer with my wife and young child in the Mara at New Year. I was back there again in March, guiding on plains emptier than a Heathrow Terminal Five baggage carousel. Kenya, like other countries affected by this broad brush, needs long-sighted tourists to realise this is the time to visit, not myopic ones. But it also needs a level playing field. If the FCO was open enough to say it was using the advisory as a tool to tell Kibaki’s government to get their house in order, it would be preferable, but this absurd over-reaction benefits nobody.
A few years ago, when Indonesia and Kenya were again beneath the blanket FCO travel ban, you could still fly to Israel, a country as small as Vancouver Island that was being bombarded with Katyusha rockets and homemade projectiles and where every bus queue in every town and tourist trap was a potential target for indiscriminate suicide bombers. After 9/11 or 7/7 – tragedies that would cause FCO meltdown had they been in the developing world – does anyone remember travel bans to the US or UK?
Nobody is asking for a gung-ho attitude towards our nationals abroad, but the FCO insists its damaging decisions are not politically motivated. Make up your own mind.
Paul Goldstein is part owner of Kicheche Mara Camps. |
