Woman in a scarf and green jumper standing on the desert sand in front of the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, Egypt, a highlight of Egypt, Morocco and Kenya travel.

A Question I Can Never Answer Simply

ByPenelope

“Out of all the countries you’ve visited, which is your favorite?” That’s the question I get asked all the time. Nineteen countries, maybe twenty, and people still expect me to hand them a single name. But when I think about travel in Egypt, Morocco, and Kenya, I already know my real answer isn’t a country at all.

I received something different from each place. A meal. A view. A smile. A stranger who helped me find my way. But there’s one continent that did something different to me. Africa.

I’ve never felt so free anywhere else, so at home in a place that wasn’t home. Words don’t really do it justice. It’s something you’d have to experience for yourself.

woman in front of the Sphinx and Giza pyramids

Egypt is the one I keep returning to. Like sand, it gets into everything and never really shakes loose. I can’t tell you exactly why. Some places just claim a piece of you the moment you land. There’s a difference between reading about the pyramids and standing at the base of one. Touching stone that pharaohs touched. Architecture no one can fully explain, still standing after all this time. Humbles you. Quieting you. Making you feel small in the best possible way.

Kenya Wildlife Service sign at the Manyani Gate of Tsavo East National Park, with a black rhino silhouette standing on red dirt below.

Kenya felt like home. Like Jamaica, somehow, thousands of miles from it.

It was the red dirt first. That deep orange-red that gets on your shoes and can’t totally clean off. I’ve seen and felt that dirt before. I grew up on it. Standing in Kenya and looking down at my feet, I could have been standing in Manchester. My senses remembered something my mind hadn’t caught up to yet.

Then there was the weather. Nairobi gets cold in a way people don’t expect from Africa, and that cold reminded me of Mandeville. I’m not even from Mandeville, but I’ve been enough times to know that particular chill. The kind that catches you off guard because the sun is out, but the air disagrees. Kenya had that exact same trick.

A guide walking through the Western Sahara desert in traditional blue dress

Morocco taught me something quieter still.

I walked in the Western Sahara for three days, mostly by myself, with just my guide and the young man who took care of the camels and cooked our meals. Three nights out there, under a sky I’d never seen so clearly.

Dromedaries loaded with supplies walking through the Sahara desert
Solo female traveler wrapped in a blue turban during a Sahara desert trek, Morocco
Two saddled camels walking across rippled sand dunes dotted with green shrubs, with a guide following behind in the morning light of the Western Sahara.
Fresh fruit and traditional Moroccan food served during a desert trek

As someone who likes to be alone. The desert gave me a different kind of alone. Wider, quieter. I walked for hours with nothing but sand and wind and the camels always just ahead of me, and I loved it. Simple as that. It gave my mind back to myself, even clearer than usual. Quiet. Clean. Mine.

That’s Africa for me, not one single feeling, but a collection of them. Familiar and foreign at once, like meeting a stranger who somehow already knows your name.

Now I’m back, in the West, back to the noise and the rush. And I notice things now that I didn’t notice before.

I’ve come to appreciate water in a way I never did, the presence of it, the sound of it. How precious it is. Something I used to take for granted, I no longer do. Now I think about the people who walk for it, who wait for it, who treat it like the gift it actually is.

I’ve learned to slow down too. Pole pole, they say in Kenya, slowly, slowly. It’s not just a phrase, it’s a way of living, a way of moving through the world without rushing every moment of it. The West teaches you to hurry. Africa taught me to breathe.

And children, children everywhere. Playing in the streets, playing in yards, running around loud and unsupervised in that way children used to be allowed to be. Families still choosing to have many children, and I loved seeing it. It felt like life being lived the way it used to be lived, before everyone got so afraid of everything.

I learned about honor too, about honoring my mother. My father passed years ago, but my mother is still here, so that lesson lives in the present tense now, not the past. I learned it from Muslim friends, in Morocco and in Egypt, watching the way they moved through their days. The respect woven into everything, the way elders are spoken to, the way family isn’t an obligation but a foundation. It made me think about my own mother differently. It made me want to honor her better, not out of guilt, but out of understanding.

And peace. All three countries taught me that too; Morocco, Egypt, Kenya, each one teaching it a little differently, but the lesson landing the same. Peace isn’t the absence of noise, though I used to think it was. Now I know better. Peace is something you carry, something you build inside yourself no matter what’s happening outside. I saw peaceful people living in loud, crowded, complicated places, and they were still peaceful.

A woman in white dress and shawl in the courtyard of the Mosque of Muhammad Ali at the Cairo Citadel, with palm trees and blue sky behind her.
View through a jagged rock opening onto the Mediterranean and the crenellated walls of the Citadel of Qaitbay in Alexandria.
A woman in white looks out over the sprawling Cairo skyline from a stone wall at the Citadel.
Street entrance sign in Arabic and Tamazight script for the Fez Medina district, framed by palm trees and a tiled archway.
A traveler sits on rocks above a winding riverbed in a dramatic red-brown mountain gorge in Morocco.
Colorful pyramids of spices piled high at a market stall in Morocco.
A woman reaches up to touch carved and painted hieroglyphic reliefs on the sandstone wall of an Egyptian tomb.
A shallow river flows over layered rock shelves, with drum palms and acacia trees on the far bank in East Tsavo Kenya.
A herder walks a large herd of cattle down a dirty dirt track across dry, open grassland on the savanna of Ole Pejeta, Kenya.
Smiling woman with curly hair and aviator sunglasses, wearing a blue top and beaded bracelets, standing in tall golden savanna grass in Kenya's Maasai Mara.

Why Egypt, Morocco, and Kenya Travel Changed Me

So when people ask me for my favorite country, I understand why they ask. They want a clean answer, a single name, something they can write down and remember.

But my answer isn’t a country. It’s a continent, and really, it isn’t about a place at all. It’s about the version of myself I got to meet there. The one who felt free, who felt at home in red dirt that looked just like home, who walked three days through the Western Sahara and felt her own mind, clear and quiet, right alongside her.

Egypt gave me wonder. Kenya gave me recognition. Morocco gave me stillness. All three gave me pieces of myself I didn’t know I was missing.

I don’t know if this is what people expect from a travel blog. Maybe they want restaurant recommendations, packing lists, flight tips and I can give them that too, another time.

But this is the truer story, the one underneath all the photos. Travel was never just about the places for me. It was about who I became in them. And Africa, out of everywhere I’ve been, changed me the most.

So no, I still can’t tell you my favorite country.

But I can tell you where I felt most like myself.

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