Reflections from an Overdue Vacation

May 31, 2019

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime...Mark Twain

Five months late, I finally took a vacation. It wasn’t just a vacation, but a desperately needed and long-overdue break from the exhaustive heat and Togo sun, from the challenges of constantly speaking a foreign language, and from my all-carb Togo diet. This was the vacation my family and I had planned originally for the holidays in December last year. In October when the Togolese government announced it would hold elections in late December, the Peace Corps restricted its volunteers from leaving the country let alone leaving the village they live in for the week prior to the elections and the week following. To say I was disappointed understates how I felt.

In May, my parents, my brother, my aunt and I met Cape Town, South Africa, traveled on to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe as well as Chobe National Park in Botswana and finally to Pilanesberg National Park back in South Africa. I had not seen my family for the 11 months and one week prior to the vacation. Five months before meeting in South Africa, I seriously questioned whether or not I had the strength and resilience to wait any more time to see my family. Three weeks before our meeting in South Africa, I questioned whether fate was playing some cruel joke on me because South Africa was to hold elections in May, and the Peace Corps once again wanted to restrict travel.

Ultimately, the 11 months were well worth the wait. We were exploring a coastal city heavy with history, pretending to be wine connoisseurs in a beautiful wine land, hiking and helicoptering the wonder of Victoria Falls, and experiencing the roller coaster of emotions ranging from excitement to fear seeing elephants, buffalo, lions, rhinos and leopards on safari and all the while in the company of family. We were also off-season, which would not have been the case in December, summer in South Africa. Instead, we enjoyed the temperate climes of South Africa's fall.

South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe are all essentially the same as Togo—developing African nations with diverse linguistic and ethnic landscapes that are filled with a history and present that is heavily affected by colonialism. South Africa and Botswana also host Peace Corps volunteers, and Zimbabwe has hosted Peace Corps in the past. These three countries which seem so similar to Togo on paper, felt like a new world to me. What these nations have that Togo does not is a large tourism industry as well as numerous natural resources. The cities we visited, especially Cape Town, were relatively developed. In Cape Town, you find a large bubble of European wealth where in Togo you only find wealth in the ambassadors’ quarters. Surrounding these cities, and off the tourists’ paths are townships where poverty is clustered together, although crowded and crammed together might be a more apt description. These townships are comparable to slums in the large cities of India. In Togo, there are no hidden clusters of poverty—poverty is all around you, and because of that, because of the spaciousness and openness and visibility of poverty, the poverty you’ll find in cities in Togo is not as cramped or run-down as we saw in the South African townships.

I had time to reflect and be grateful for the opportunities that I have had to travel the world and experience new cultures. Travel is a powerful experience which allows individuals not only the opportunity to vacation and relax but to learn and develop a wider lens to view the world. Mark Twain says it best: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” While travel has this amazing power, sometimes it too can be narrow. This vacation, we passed most of our time in locations that are popular for tourists doing things that are common for visitors. We were shown parts of the country that the country wanted us to see, and we were discouraged from the parts that the country wanted to hide and keep away.

As a traveler, take the time to learn about the history of the places you are going to and put it all into context—the cities and experiences within the context of the nation and the nation within the context of the larger world.

Traveling is exhilarating, relaxing, and eye-opening, and for all that, coming back home is comforting, too. Now, I am back in my Togo home after two weeks away, and I am just as excited to continue my work here surrounded by my Togolese family and friends. I missed them, and not a day went by when I didn't think about my Togo home and family just as I am always thinking of my family in the US. It is a privilege to travel and a privilege to return home to my own little corner of the earth where there is still so much work to do.