Travel Close to Home and Still Travel a Great Distance

We can travel close to home, and still travel a great distance.

Does this sound like a contradiction? It's not a contradiction, not when travel "distance" is defined as entering an environment that has little in common with our own. Close to our homes, the places where we live, there are other places where our fellow Americans live, places that are close to our own homes but are vastly different, in terms of their social and/or economic status. These are places that we may never have explored. We can travel close to home and still travel a great distance, if we will make the first move to interact with neighbors who may not be as fortunate as ourselves. But before I can fully explain, some background info is in order.

This thought, regarding travel close to come, enters my mind in the midst of completing a bevy of international travel-related writing assignments for Associated Content. Each of these travel write-ups has been somewhat nontraditional, going beyond the usual travel-writing norm for how to have a good time on a vacation. Our international travel subject matter has focused on reaching out to people in poverty overseas, even if we are on a tourist trip, for the sake of human fulfillment rather than only for self-centered enjoyment. These topics include "ecotourism" (or green environmental travel), "voluntourism" in foreign lands, college studies overseas, and teaching English in foreign countries.

The first reports that Associated Content entrusted with me have explored ecotourism, combining ecology with vacation travel, also sometimes known as green travel or green tourism. The point is to preserve the environment, possibly even to improve the environment, during our course of international travel. This could involve something as simple as booking a Caribbean hotel that serves organic food and recycles trash and preserves the oceanfront, to something as intense as helping a village develop a clean water supply (while on vacation!) during an African safari.

My next Associated Content international travel reports have explained voluntourism, a term coined several years ago to reflect a combination of traveling on a vacation while performing volunteer work. A participant can invest two weeks, or two months, or more, helping with needs that may involve anything from building homes to planting farms. Thousands of folks, especially college kids, are really getting into voluntourism, sometimes here in poverty pockets within the United States but more often overseas, in the so-called Third World. It's sort of like being in the Peace Corps. Simply do a Google search for "Voluntourism Africa," or "Voluntourism Asia," or "Voluntourism South America." You'll have a full computer screen, and more.

The third and fourth Associated Content travel-writing assignments have been for college studies overseas and for teaching English in foreign countries, which are self-explanatory compared to the newer movements toward ecotourism and voluntourism.

In each of these four cases that involve international travel, people are striving to make an impact for the greater good. The Americans who participate definitely have my admiration, especially after all I learned in compiling my "nontraditional" Associated Content travel reports.

That's the background as I return to my theme: We can travel close to home - or maybe I should say, "we ALSO can travel close to home" - and still travel a great distance.

Consider that here in the United States, if we don't ourselves live in areas of great human hardship, we can travel to them within minutes. Nothing against going overseas, which certainly has its place, but we don't have to go overseas. Prosperous suburbs are within a few miles of urban ghettos, sometimes immediately adjacent. Rural well-to-do mansions are side-by-side with shanty properties and rundown mobile home facilities. Even our most popular mass vacation destinations, from amusement parks to golf resorts, are isolated from poverty areas only because we isolate them.

How many among us travel hundreds or thousands of miles on vacations, but have few encounters during our daily lives that would bring us shoulder-to-shoulder with poverty that exists within a few miles of our homes?

As a young adult 35 years ago, I had a sort of "voluntourism" experience of my own. The difference is that I didn't go to Europe or to Africa, to South America or to Southeast Asia. I didn't even leave the State of Michigan. In fact, I didn't even depart my hometown City of Saginaw.

I traveled close to home when I engaged in voluntourism, but the metaphorical distance truly was great. My voluntourism experience was to work in community outreach, door-to-door and neighbor-to-neighbor, in one of Saginaw's poorest neighborhoods, a neighborhood that borders our downtown. My task was to organize neighbors to represent themselves and to work together for community improvement. This was a neighborhood that I otherwise never would have visited, or in other words, a neighborhood that never would have been a travel destination, even though it was within 10 minutes of my childhood home's driveway.

The impacts of my local voluntourism venture, the results and/or lack thereof, are a whole 'nuther story. Suffice to say that this was so fulfilling, my plans for a summer of "travel close to home" in community service were extended for seven years. I encountered some strong and wise and good-hearted neighbors through this organizing work. During those seven years and beyond, meanwhile, I gained insights about the concerns of equality and justice, both economic and racial.

(There is a statement that I wish to insert at this point, but I must be careful, because this is not intended as a political opinion piece. I do wish to say that these integration insights from my local voluntourism experience have helped to provide me with an open mind regarding racial issues in America, and I believe it is a true shame that some people amid our currently hateful political climate won't even allow President Obama to speak to their children in school. Racism lingers with all of its ugly horror, even though too many people won't admit it, or insist on deluding themselves. I'll leave it at that.)

In summary, my travel close to home made an impact for me that has been just as intense as travel overseas might be for somebody else. My purpose, with these words, in no way is meant to diminish the value of ecotourism or voluntourism, or enlisting in college studies in foreign countries, or teaching English overseas. Each of us will find our own paths. Simply, my purpose is to present another travel option for making a difference, the option of travel close to home.

We can travel close to home, and still travel a great distance.

SOURCES

http://www.nature.org/aboutus/travel/ecotourism/about/art667.html

http://www.voluntourism.org/