What It’s Like to Travel When You Have a “Bad” Passport

There are no spontaneous romantic trips abroad if you have a Kenyan passport. No whisking away to France for that perfect Parisian engagement, no crazy nights with friends where you wake up in Canada with no clue how you got there, no eat-pray-love self-discovery in India on a moment’s notice.

This is how the conversation actually goes.

“Hey, babe. We should go to Slovenia over Christmas. Why not?”

“Oh hun, I’d love to. Let’s see . . . Christmas is three months from now, so we don’t have much time.”

“Wh—”

“I just need a letter from my employer confirming I have a job; a reference letter from your family, of course, to be signed and stamped in Slovenia, then mailed here, confirming their address; three months’ worth of my bank statements; an employment letter from your father—”

“Bu—”

“Also, his bank statements or his salary slips—why don’t we just get all our bank statements, to be safe; flight bookings; travel insurance . . .”

So romantic.

The visa application process is simple. All you have to do is show that you are good enough. Have enough money before you even consider applying. Review and gather all the documents. Book an appointment. Be there an hour before your appointment. Stand outside the gate of the embassy or visa processing center, until they deign to let you in.

Wait. Sit. Wait. Stand. Wait. Meet the agent. Smile. If there is one thing wrong—even if it is wrong because of misinformation they gave you—leave, resolve it, be back before closing. Pay for the privilege to have your passport taken away with no guarantee that you will get the visa. Wait. Pray that it works.

See, simple.

Meanwhile, my partner just booked a flight then left.

I am a Kenyan, an African, someone from the ‘global south.’ It is my job to prove I deserve to travel. It doesn’t matter how talented or smart or wealthy I or others like me are; we need a good passport.

I say “good” deliberately because a good passport indicates that you are worthy. It is the world’s strongest currency. It indicates that you are deserving of travel. It indicates that you are not from one of those countries.

A good passport, citizenship itself, is not a given. A good passport implies you are a good person, deserving of free movement. A good passport says the world is indeed yours. A good passport carries ease. A good passport means you are always welcome.

This is why people from passport-privileged (read white, read economically powerful) countries are ‘expatriates,’ not ‘immigrants.’ This is why the word expatriate exists—a person who lives outside their native country—so that migrant/immigrant can be for the other.

This is why an English person can confidently say, “I wanted the border closed, but I didn’t think it applied to me.” This is why, when we hear of a border wall in the US, we know without asking that it applies to the southern border, not the northern. This is why the European Commission can confidently declare the migrant crisis over, despite the death of 208 refugees in the Mediterranean in 2019 thus far.

This is why, even Kenya, even our not-good passport, doing its best to not be a bad passport, treats its (our) refugees with the same disdain our ‘betters’ treat theirs. This is why sealing borders, shipping refugees back to places torn by war, planning how to prevent refugees fleeing to begin with, are solutions, not war crimes.

I am always an immigrant, never an expatriate. As an immigrant, to even visit a country, you must prove not just your legality, but your worth.

*

This is how you feel traveling while black, as a black woman, as a black woman with a not-good passport.

You land and walk to the other line. Often labeled “Others.” The good passports—EU, Canadian, Australia, the like—cross into their special line. You hand your passport over and your voice is small. You smile wider than you have in your life. You pull back the smile in case it is perceived as a snarl. Your hair is impeccable. You have no metallic items on your person, not even a chunky necklace. You are non-threatening.

Crossing into Slovenia was one of the less stressful border entries I have ever been through. I can hardly remember it; I say so because I remember the traumatic ones. The one in Canada, where I entered the back room and could not pull out my phone to call whoever was meant to pick me. The one in the US, where an American immigration officer asked if this was my address, gave me a fake one, and assumed I would just say yes to prove I was lying. The one in the UK, where a British immigration officer literally had to be told by his colleagues to relax, she is clearly a student. The one in Amsterdam, where the flight was delayed because they had to find the files to confirm my passport was real, to ensure my visa wasn’t fake, even though my destination was not Amsterdam.

And these, these are good experiences; I still went through the border and wasn’t told to go back where I came from.

You land and walk to the other line. Often labeled “Others.”

Slovenia was, is, delightful. The only country in the world whose national anthem includes the word ‘friendship,’ whose national hero is a poet, whose entire population of 2.08 million is, at best, half of my hometown’s, Nairobi.

My partner and his family picked me up at the airport, greeted me with a warm hug and a thick fleece coat. We drove out of the airport, past the capital, up the picturesquely green mountains for about an hour and a half into Loče. Located near Slovenske Konjice in North Eastern Slovenia, it’s all small-town charm. Large vineyards and sprawling farms, gorgeous vistas and cozy fireplaces.

His family is kind and loving, with enough good manners to treat guests like gods, much like we do at home. A fair amount of people don’t speak English; it’s their second or even third language. So I stared blankly at signs and listened to cheerful muttering around me. They cared enough to speak English, for me, if they could; to hand me mounds of food and wine, if they couldn’t. I was welcome.

I was in Slovenia in December 2016, when the so-called European ‘migrant crisis’ was peaking. Except, these so-called ‘migrants’ were—are—not migrants at all. They were not simply, “a person who moves from one place to another, especially in order to find work or better living conditions,” a statement that can be said of every person who moves to Kenya to launch their start-up that saves elephants, or everyone traveling abroad “for the culture.” They are also not merely ‘irregular migrants,’ which literally means anyone whose “movement that takes place outside the regulatory norms of the sending, transit, and receiving countries.”

These were, by and large, refugees: people who have been “forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.” They were people fleeing situations caused—at the very least, in part—by the countries denouncing and rejecting them. They are people, they are human. They are a not roving mass, not just a crisis that can be declared over, even as more are dying. Refugees are not migrants.

*

In Loče, there weren’t many people like me around. I heard that there were some black people in Slovenia, closer to the big cities. But in Loče, I was, at best, a rarity—which, in turn, made me a novelty. It was exhausting.

Dealing with the excitement of everyone meeting their First Black Woman. Keeping the smile up and brushing off the moments of discomfort because, hey, they didn’t know better. The hairdresser aunt who, well-meaning and entirely unaware of the context and implications, dug her hands into my hair and said, “Oooh, black, beautiful!” in broken English. The friends with the “I too have been to Africa” conversations. The stares. In the supermarket, the woman who stared at me as she pretended to pick groceries and rushed away when I stared back. In the parking lot, the man driving extra-slow past us as we walked. On the road. In the bar.

I joked, “I can’t get lost here. Everyone knows exactly who I am and who I am with.” What else can you do but joke?

I was taken to a kindergarten that some friends ran. They knew I enjoyed teaching and they wanted their students to meet someone from Africa. One child, upon seeing me, backed away slowly in abject terror. Literally took slow steps backward, hid behind the desk, open mouth in a silent scream. I made a joke. I laughed to hide embarrassment. They laughed too to hide theirs.

They whisked me away, apologizing, unsure what to say. It turned out there was a black doll in the kindergarten. I saw it a few days later and I understood. It looked like a cross between Chucky and Red as played by Lupita Nyong’o in Us, stitched by a particularly incompetent seamstress. I was terrified of it; of course the child was terrified of me. Here I was, the evil black doll, alive. And I was the only black doll they had.

I wish I had the confidence of white people with good passports moving in African spaces. As James Baldwin wrote, “The white man takes the astonishment as tribute.” We can see it in that walk of theirs, like they already belong; in that confidence, like even your novelty is a gift to them. The confidence of the people who have black children as accessories on their Tinder profiles. The confidence to assume they know how to change entire lives in a gap year or fix an entire people with a start-up. The confidence of someone who knows they can leave as they choose and come back as they choose.

As a black woman in a white space, I move in fear of the glances. I can never be sure if any of those stares are people trying to decipher if I am worthy too. You, of color, with a not-good passport in white country, have no idea what fear you inspire in the people you meet. Are you the immigrant stealing their jobs? Are you the tax-evading, social security-thieving rat destroying their economy? Are you the black doll, alive?

You have no idea what they will do. Will they try and stare, surreptitious? Will they ask to take photos with you, holding you as the accessory you are, a thing to show off to their friends? Will they back away in terror? Will they yell insults at you, like that one time in the UK when a man leaned out of a moving car just to scream ‘monkey’ at the top of his lungs, then sped away laughing? Will they turn you away at the border? Will they label you a thief, a liar, a bad influence? Will they hurt you? Will they rape you? Will they kill you?

You are a visitor, and you don’t have a good passport, so you know to take it in silence. You take the apology and laugh in embarrassment. You smile, but not too wide so it’s not a snarl. You promise to bring black dolls and black storybooks and black everything when you come back the next time. You take heart in the child who turned off all the water in the house, terrified that your color could wash away. You don’t ask yourself how you feel because you know the answer already.

I wish I had the confidence of white people with good passports moving in African spaces. The confidence of someone who knows they can leave as they choose and come back as they choose.

Halfway through my visit, we had to cross over into Austria and I was all, “Sure, why not?” The Schengen visa gives you access to not just one but twenty-six different countries; you have to take that baby out for a spin.

I sat in the backseat with my partner, in a small red car. His grandfather was driving. His grandmother, in the passenger seat, had a doctor’s appointment across the border, so we rode with them. I enjoyed the stunning views, trees, snow yet to fall, winding curvy roads. As we neared the border crossing, my heart began racing in that familiar way.

The car was stopped and his grandmother rolled down the window. A quick hello from the officer and we were waved off. No one was paying much attention to the officer, but I was in awe. I assumed we were going to be stopped, at the very least because I was there. I had carried my passport and some supporting documents—health insurance and travel ticket, specifically—and made sure I had copies backed up on my phone.

I don’t think he spotted me, surrounded by whiteness in a small car. Is this how it feels to be white, I wondered? Weren’t we going to present our passports to confirm we were EU citizens, or at least have passes? Was there going to be no search? No questioning why we went? We were just waved off.

Just like that.

As the car moved forward through the checkpoint, maybe two minutes later, I kept my eye on him. The officer might ask us (me) to slow down. He might ask us (me) to stop still. We weren’t in Austria just yet. He stood straight to let us pass and we drove off.

In that drive off, I caught his eye. His mouth dropped open. He really hadn’t seen me before.

Even writing this, my heart is racing again.

•

A few weeks before the UK was set to leave the EU, The Guardian published a piece titled, “The Brexodus is under way: Meet the Brits leaving the UK,” featuring a host of British citizens emigrating because of the economic and political consequences of Brexit. People literally moving to find better work or living conditions, i.e. migrants.

Yet, it’s a Brexodus, not a migrant crisis.

This tweet by Kenyan writer and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola said it best: “When white British people do it, it gets a cute lil’ name. But when young men and women from the global south get frustrated by the political and economic situation in their country and decide to move, folks start devising arguments for letting them die.”

If the border officer stopped me, I would have been entirely under their power. Seeing that officer made my heart race because my existence in the space depends on their judgment. If they had a bad day or didn’t like my haircut or had never seen a Kenyan passport before, then they could just kick me out.

I knew that I had all my papers and then some. I knew I had every right to be there. But he still could pull us aside. He could still deport me. There would be nothing I could do except smile politely and beg for mercy. As a person of color, as an always-immigrant with a not-good passport, your mobility is a gift, not a right. Your movement is based on permissions. It is always refutable.

I had the privilege to choose to go to Slovenia. I had a home to go back to. Refugees, misnamed ‘migrants,’ making the way across deadly waters and cold lands, did not have a choice. Do not have a choice.

Conversations around the global south, migration, refugees, including the European ‘migrant crisis’—they do not ask how to save lives. They ask, “Are these lives even worth saving?” A good passport grants you more than access. It grants you life.

*

The immigration officer at the Austrian/Slovenian border watched us drive off. He was too stunned to stop us. We stared at each other through the car’s windows until he faded into the distance.

I looked at my partner and his family. They were busy talking. They all have Slovenian passports, (ranked sixth in the Global Passport Power Rank, at the time of this writing). They can travel to three times as many countries as I, a Kenyan woman, can. They can do this visa-free. They left home like they almost always did—by just leaving.

I asked my partner, “Did you see that?”

“What?” he responded.

“The officer.”

“No, I wasn’t paying attention. Why?”

“I think maybe he wanted to stop us once he saw me, but we had started moving already.”

“What, really? I didn’t see anything.”

I kept quiet because of course he didn’t see it. He couldn’t see it.

How could he?

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