Kayiwa · · 8 min read
For a long time the number was the point. Forty-one countries, then forty-four, then forty-eight. I could tell you the figure without thinking, and I noticed that I mentioned it in conversations where nobody had asked. That should have been the warning.
The count was the problem
Counting countries changes what you do in them. A new country is worth one, and a return visit is worth nothing, so the incentive is always to move. Three days somewhere, the famous market, the dish everyone films, a border crossing, repeat. I did that for two years and the videos from that period are the ones I like least.
They are not bad. They are just thin. You can see me finding out what a place is on camera, which is fine once and dull as a format, because the discoveries are all the same discoveries: the food is cheaper than at home, the people are kinder than expected, the traffic is worse. Those are observations about arriving, not about anywhere.
Three days somewhere teaches you what it is like to arrive. It teaches you almost nothing about the place.
What a second visit gives you
I have been to the same night market in Bangkok, on and off, for six years. The first visit produced a video about a night market. The fifth produced a conversation with a woman who has sold grilled pork there since 1998, about how the price of charcoal has moved, and why she will not switch to gas even though it would be cheaper.
That second thing is only available on a return. Nobody tells a stranger about their supply costs. The information is not hidden, it is just downstream of being recognised, and being recognised takes going back.
- You learn the calendar. Which weeks are dead, when the good fish arrives, which stalls close in the rainy season.
- You learn the prices. Not the price today — the price trend, which is the only version that means anything.
- You get corrected. People who know you will tell you when you got something wrong last time. Strangers are too polite.
- You see change. A street that has gentrified in four years is a story. A street on one visit is a description.
It also made the work better
There was a practical worry when I stopped travelling to new places: that the channel would stagnate. The opposite happened, though not for noble reasons.
Knowing a city means you stop wasting days. On a first visit, two of every three days go on logistics and dead ends — the place that closed, the market that is Tuesdays only, the two hours crossing town for something not worth it. On a fifth visit I know where to be at six in the morning, so the filming days are all filming.
The second effect is that returning lets you follow up. My most-watched video is a conversation with a cook I had already filmed twice, about a decision she made between the second visit and the third. That video does not exist without the first two, and no amount of new countries would have produced it.
How I plan now
Three home bases, and everything else is occasional. Bangkok, because I live there half the year. Istanbul, because the food culture has more depth than I will exhaust. Kampala, because it is home and because I understand it well enough to be useful about it.
New places still happen, maybe two a year, and I go for longer — three weeks minimum, which is roughly the point where the second week stops being about orientation. Anything shorter I now turn down, including some trips that were paid, because a week produces a video I would not want to have made.
The count, for the record, has not moved in about eighteen months. I had to look it up to write this sentence, which is the whole improvement.
