I am an airbnb host in South Africa. When covid hit, I was the co-host to 30 properties. I had built up a little business that helped people manage their apartments, houses, guesthouses, and guest farms. I started this business because I’m good at it. Good at organizing, helping, administrating. Good at smelling unhappiness, good at pleasing, bad at not being perfect. I got to know the platform well, often better than the people on the other side of the airbnb hotline. And I got to know people.
There are always patterns. Sometimes there are expectations, rarely surprises. Most of our guests were appreciative. Some of them mildly maladjusted, a few pathologically impertinent.
When covid hit and we were all cut down on our habits, opportunities and entitlements, we thought this is good, this will be good. It will make us more humble. More humble for being able to host, to travel, to experience with an open heart, the traumatic experience of losing our freedom always in mind.
The opposite happened. Entitlement, taking advantage, blackmailing is what we are dealing with. But mainly, what we are dealing with is the disappointment, speechlessness, exhaustion, and ease to give in and give up.
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For us, it was a hit to our lives, our existence, our ideals. Dreams that we had built up for years. Our goal? To surprise you. With beauty, with smalls, with a smile. With a warm-hearted welcome and a heartfelt will to make you feel at home. With an experience. To help you create memories, to make you love this place as much as we do.
For us, the break, the heartbreak, is not the pandemic. The heartbreak is that we don’t even want you here anymore. We want you to leave this place that we love, if it’s only a commodity of inflation to you. We want you to leave our home, if you are only abusing it because you are seeing your chance, leaving us behind with only bad feelings attached to the places that are, actually, our own.
At the best of times, our ideal, our unspoken collaboration with you, was built on blood, sweat, and tears. In the most literal sense of the word. Although you won’t agree, because you are so easy as a person, so settled in your role, so perfect in your pictures, so confident in your demands.
At the best of times, it has been difficult to be around most of you and your entitlements and requests. So many of you we joked about, rolled our eyes about. A lot of you would be horrified to know what we noticed and got to know about you; even more of you would be devastated to know what we share about you with our loved ones, over wine, and in the best case, in laughter. Most of you wouldn’t even bother. We never had an illusion about that and it doesn’t matter, either.
We’ve grown into a world of entitlement, in which our freedom to travel has only been spoilt by the choice of destination. Before this pandemic, we dealt with travellers that had too much, had seen too much, had already booked too much into the future. It felt like a mechanical process. We knew we are just a station on your journey, bearly reflected after a few weeks, yet, ticked on your bucket list. Grace was not a notion we expected or saw a lot; it didn’t matter much anyway, as we eased into your rhythm with you.
Then, it all collapsed and we realized how much we want to protect what we had, what we had built. How much we want to share it, how much it depends on all of those who appreciate it. And we opened up; to survive, for sure. Yet under restrictions, under personal risk, under illegal action. We opened up for the ones that needed this heartbeat just as much as we did, for the ones who would have done anything to breathe the air with us that kept us alive. It was almost a fresh start, there was almost hope.
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The pandemic has brought us Individuals. More aware of themselves than ever before, more demanding of the space of the Self than ever before, more unaware than ever before.
In the end, we opened up for the ones who saw us grasping for air and who were willing to cut it off from us; to blackmail us into their ego, to force us into their wanting.
The disappointment in the lack of compassion is what keeps us speechless. The disappointment in this new grown egotism, after all of this.
Or, maybe, because all of this.
Maybe because all of this we’ve broken the last barriers of empathy and community to become these individuals, that are finally free from the weight of their kind. Finally trying to make it through all of it only by themselves, holding the gold treasure close to their chest whilst ramping through all of our homes and houses. No fear of confrontation, no fear of demise.
So many times we wonder if you see that there is a human on the other side of the line.
That we are the creators of the homes that you rape, literally and figuratively.
That for you, it`s a holiday. For us, it`s the survival of a whole team and their families. The survival of our belief in people.
Just for the fun of it, when in a situation, a confrontation that entails more than your Self, every now and then, ask yourself if you are happy to be discussed at a stranger`s dinner table.
If you happen to reflect for a second, just think about how you speak to people, how you address the people that opened their homes to you. No one wants to deal with your unhappiness and rage. Believe us, every tiny fault you detect is twice as hard on us and we work hard not ever to cause a confrontation with you.
Just for a moment, try not to be the person taking advantage of someone else`s struggle.
Just for once, think about how you speak to the ones who clean up your mess.
Think about privilege.
Think about gratefulness.
If you can`t, because you are so much more important. Because you paid for it. Because you expect more. Because you deserve more. Then you`re the offspring of this pandemic to us. You are not welcome.
