For starters, ensure that the history between your home country and the prospective host country is one that will not get in the way of your future peace. Find out if there has ever been political trouble between the two countries. Find out if you can speak their language and, very importantly, check the GDP comparison between the home country and the host.

This will determine if your hosts see you as a refugee, a foreigner, an expatriate, or an immigrant. Sometimes, though, you may be viewed as and called all of them, sometimes on the same day. Sometimes, though, context comes into play, especially if you are chasing permits. Other times, context does not matter. People on the street will often use these words interchangeably, either because they are ignorant of the intricate definitions, or even because they cannot be bothered. Their mood may even play a role.

It is all about hierarchy. Economic hierarchy. Social hierarchy. Colonization left an unfortunate legacy of class and superiority across Africa. The culture of competition is rife. Those on top want to constantly remind you who the boss is. Subjects from countries poorer than host countries will automatically be refugees—nobody cares if they are on holiday. Nobody cares that, even in poor and war-torn countries, there are wealthy people who might want to take a break from the constant sounds of guns and bombs and fear.

Those from countries with the same economic power as the host country will be referred to as foreigners, but they might also be immigrants, especially if they, as individuals are on the lower economic scale than the man on the street.

Expatriates are the absolute top layer. They will likely be owning businesses or hold big corporate jobs, earning in dollars and living in affluent neighborhoods. This is a charmed group, often more educated than the locals. Their presence is a reminder to the locals who cannot get that job that a foreigner is living better than they are in their own country. The locals might hate you and punish you in subtle ways, like charging you way more for services and goods when they can get away with it.

A good number of years ago, I lived and worked in Tanzania. The fact that Kenya’s GDP was, and still is, higher than Tanzania’s and my big job elevated me to expatriate status.

I did not admit it to anyone, but I considered myself a bit of an economic refugee. I took that job because I was offered a position and a salary that would have taken me years to achieve in Kenya, where the job market is extremely competitive and people are highly educated. Working in Tanzania pushed me up several corporate staircases. It did not always go well with the Tanzanians, even though I had something the available candidates did not have. “Kenyans are taking our jobs,” I heard many times.

A work assignment took me to South Africa, where the inflated ego I had gained as an expatriate in Tanzania was deflated by a question from a random stranger: “Are you a refugee?” What made him think that? I was staying in a five-star hotel instead of a camp; there was neither war nor drought in Kenya that would have seen me seek refuge like that.

Such questions and statements do not stem from facts or knowledge but often from assumptions and the desire to feel more elevated. I was only in South Africa for a week, but, in the eyes of this individual, whose only fact about me was my nationality, being Kenyan meant I was “down there”, while South Africa was “up there”.

From experience, your social position in your host country will not only depend on your home country’s GDP, but also on your language and accent, which are used as identifiers even before you state your country. Also, from experience, language can help you make friends pretty fast, either because you speak the same language or because you do not speak the same language. There are no definite rules – it depends on, again, GDP, history, and the politics between the two countries.

Speaking a different language in Malawi made me friends. In my hotel in Lilongwe, as soon as the Malawians learned I was a foreigner, the interaction turned into a language exchange program, with me teaching them Swahili and they teaching me Chewa, and all of us getting excited when some of the words sounded similar. Of course, it helped that we all spoke English. I had a great, easy time in Malawi because bad political history between Kenya and Malawi does not exist and, in the end, that fact is much more important than the GDP.

Ironically, in Tanzania, speaking Swahili worked against me more often than I was comfortable with. Kenya and Tanzania are the two major Swahili-speaking countries, although the Swahili spoken in the two countries is a little (or a lot, if you consider the accent) different. Just like British and American English, the jury is still out.

“Your Swahili is funny,” was a statement I heard a lot. At first, it bothered me. Being looked down upon for how I spoke Swahili felt petty. The point of language is communication, not purity, not accent. Different accents add fun to a language. My worst moment was when someone in a government office claimed not to understand either my Swahili or my English, and I had to find someone to translate my Swahili into theirs. I knew they could understand both languages—they just decided that it was a good time to bully an expatriate. Tanzania and Kenya are immediate neighbors who should have unconditional love for one another. On an individual level, there is a lot of love. I should know; I worked there for years. Yet the physical borders are way more than physical. The animosity is not random. Kenya and Tanzania have a rough political history that has trickled down through generations.

The first presidents of the two countries were as different as night and day. Julius Nyerere was a socialist. Jomo Kenyatta was a capitalist. Nyerere did not trust Kenyatta’s ways and was quite vocal about it; his people listened. Kenyatta thought Nyerere was being backward. We have all inherited the distrust.

Ugandans are straightforward. You can be whatever you want to be. I picked “foreigner” or “tourist,” because I was there as one. Ugandans speak English to foreigners, and they will not even try to impress you with Swahili. Ugandans will straight-up deny any knowledge of the language. I do not believe them, though. They definitely know more Swahili than they are willing to admit, but the history of Uganda and Swahili speakers during Idi Amin’s military oppression still lives in their DNA.

Politically, Kenya and Uganda have remained cordial, but I suspect if Idi Amin Dada had fled to Kenya, it would be a different story and immigration between the two would be a dicey issue. For now, they welcome each other.

This is a little outside of African immigration, but when I lived in Britain, I was an immigrant. Sometimes a refugee. Never an expatriate, or a foreigner, unless I was being insulted, and, luckily, it only happened twice in four years.

Empress Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki is the author of the romance novels NaiRobbery Cocktail, Nairobi Cocktail, Immigrant Cocktail, Cocktail from the Savannah, and A Cocktail of Unlikely Tales. She is a long-term newspaper columnist, Gíkúyú language interpreter/transcriber, ghostwriter, editor, host of YouTube channel Author's Feet, village life enthusiast, and an avid mountaineer. Empress views self-happiness as the most important task that life has bestowed on humans, and that must be relentlessly pursued. She is married and a mother of two girls.