In most of the countries we’ve been on the World Race we tend to be the only ‘white’ people, at least on my team. I’m on the team with some of the whitest white people you will ever meet. (Which is funny since my team likes to have dance parties but we all dance like the white guy on the movie ‘Hitch.’) Now that being said, we stand out. People always know where we are and what we’re doing. People know where we live and when we go to town. We stand out. I don’t mind it – usually.
Besides the lack of so called privacy we also end up being charged whatever the person my feel like charging us that day. For example: a local price and an American price. As you can imagine, the American price is considerably more than the local price and sometimes there are easy or creative ways around that but overall you just have to say, “Yes, I’m an American and I’m white and I will pay way over the normal price while in my mind I’ll consider it a blessing for you although I know you’re taking me to the cleaners.”
Again, this is all relative you see. We’re on a World Race budget – which means we live very frugally. We usually spend a couple of dollars on food a day per person, less than a McDonalds combo meal. So we have to remind ourselves that although on our budget, it can make a big difference, in our American lives it usually only adds up to dollar or so (usually less).
In the last two days we have been charged two different prices, each time the price gets higher, on Cokes from a local restaurant and both prices being higher than what a local told us he paid for the Cokes. We were charged by the same restaurant for using FREE wireless which we had used there before three or four times for free because their power went off and so they couldn’t have lunch customers, which by the way were white people. (We basically had to pay for the lunch that they couldn’t order due to there being no power.)
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter – it’s just money. For us we can go back to America and make up the amount in a few minutes (or a few hours if you’re really bad at bargaining) but for these people it could mean the difference between eating that day or not. Or for those who really just don’t like Americans it can at least bring a smile to their face.
