Among my friends and family, I am known as a “seasoned traveller”—a label that suggests competence, calm, and perhaps the ability to glide through a foreign country without batting an eyelid, murmuring phrases like, “Oh, I’ve done this many times before.”
This reputation is wildly inaccurate.
Despite decades of travel, I still feel quietly apprehensive before a big trip. The fear of the unknown creeps in—especially when heading somewhere deemed “non-Western,” where the rules are unfamiliar and my confidence evaporates. My brain immediately begins running disaster scenarios. Today was no different.
As expected, I slept badly. The kind of sleep where you close your eyes for eight hours but wake up feeling as though you’ve been negotiating with travel demons all night.
Still, I had a plan:
• 05:00 – Wake up
• 05:30 – The all-important (freshly brewed) coffee
• 06:00 – Breakfast
• 06:30 – Order Uber and glide serenely to the airport
Let me tell you now: I did not glide.
At 06:30 I ordered an Uber. Then I ordered it again. And again. On the first attempt, the driver rang me. Once. Twice. Three times. I didn’t answer. Then he arrived.
Instead of greeting me, he immediately demanded payment in cash. I politely explained that Uber does not operate like that.
He responded by shouting. At me. And then, for variety, at the hotel security guard standing right beside me. This driver’s response was not listed in the Uber app under “Driver Preferences.” Having delivered his performance, he left in a very expressive huff—presumably to shout at someone else.
I tried again to book another Uber.
The same driver accepted the request. I assume just to be awkward.
I cancelled.
Plan B: a boda boda (motorbike taxi). Unfortunately, it was fifteen minutes away, which at this point felt like an eternity. Time was marching on.
I tried Uber again.
Unbelievably, the same driver accepted the request. He was really starting to wind me up.
I cancelled again.
By now, my seasoned-traveller façade had fully dissolved. Enter the security guard—calm, efficient, and clearly well-practised at rescuing frazzled foreigners from early-morning transport standoffs. He arranged a car for me for 1,000 Kenyan shillings (about £6). No shouting. No drama. No existential crisis.
Just before departure, however, the angry Uber driver reappeared and resumed his rant exactly where he’d left off. This was getting tiresome.
The arranged driver arrived on cue and the Uber finally disappeared. We reached the airport well ahead of time. As it turned out, this was an internal flight to Nairobi—not international—so all that stress was entirely unnecessary, which is, of course, the essence of travel anxiety.
I boarded the first flight on schedule. Transferred to Terminal 1A in Nairobi. Everything ran smoothly. Almost suspiciously so. The next flight was the international leg to Entebbe, Uganda.
Seasoned traveller? Maybe.
Seasoned by experience, definitely.
