Fierce Detachments #1
This column by Meghan Aftosmis was originally published in Rated Rookie, February 2004, and is subject to copyright. ©
I wept with fear my first night in Romania. That long gray day closed around my new Communist-bloc apartment building and the feral dogs started barking, I couldn't stop the tears—the new world surrounded me and there wasn't a breadcrumb leading back to my own. Abandoned.
Logically I knew this feeling would lessen. Adjust, Meghan, let yourself adjust. For my first international excursion, I studied in Spain for three months. I had other Americans with me then to ease the shock, but it was there, and had passed. This would too.
Slowly it did when I made a friend at work that week; and the next when I made three friends, relatives of someone from home; and the next when I met a Romanian-American girl my age. I forced myself from my shell. I shed my preconceived beliefs. I introduced myself to strangers. By the end of three months, I had a life, in Romania, if only as a temporary magazine intern, and I liked it.
I loved the people: the middle-aged men in the office trying their rough English with me; the young couple who made me part of their family; the twenty-something women forever up for hitting the town and who always, always know the cool, new places; the mother and daughter at work who took me as daughter and sister respectively; my two editors who made work fun with their easy-going nature; even the young man who forced the music of Johnny Cash and other American country "greats" on my ears and always started discussions about what the U.S. should be doing to help Romania. I owe these people my passion for their country.
While I submerged myself in their culture and discovered for the second time in my life the "non-Americacentric" view of the world, I found reason for my travel-writing profession. If I could make one person pack their bags and trek to another country—even if only for the beloved American-long weekend—it would be worth it. If anything will rock a McDonald's eating, "Bush rules" mindset, it's travel. And meeting just one person in that other country can change your life.
I scan the atlas and dream of traveling to far-flung locales, fantasizing about the people that live there. Who are they? What stories do they have to tell? Recently I was two steps from quitting my job and packing my bags to hear their stories. But before testing unemployment, I reconsidered the logistics of that kind of travel. In the end, I decided to start listening for those stories in my own backyard. The world was here, if only I opened my eyes.
I did. Just in time for dinner with a friend and her Australian mate, Richard Jones, or "Stretch" to friends because of his 6 foot six inch stature. Besides being a foot and a half taller than me, Stretch and I quickly cemented our common passion for travel. He could think of nothing better in life than meeting a family member or friend overseas, spending time with them to catch up and see what they do on a regular day. He nailed it. Could anything be better?
How about the insane amount of traveling Australians expect is the norm. While most of my friends who've graduated in the past ten years have maybe road-tripped across America or taken two weeks to travel some foreign land, Stretch has taken three to six weeks off to travel four times in the past five years. He's hit the U.S., Singapore, England, Switzerland, Greece, Trinidad and Tobago, and Thailand just to name a few. And for a 29-year-old Aussie from Calliope, he tells me this is below average.
"After college, probably the most popular thing to do is to travel to the UK, Canada, or Ireland and to use these countries as a base to gather some funds to explore nearby countries," he says. "My sister and a few other friends have done that. They're generally looking to see the sights, whilst not always working in their chosen careers."
While my old and new friend reminisced over college memories and friends from Central Queensland University in Rockhampton, I wondered, if we all, meaning every American, Afghani, Brazilian, Chinese, and on and on, everyone, traveled more, would there be so much conflict in the world?
All my idealism won't allow me to pretend that travel will stop wars, but if it puts a face on the "foreign" and lessens fears, could it break down the barriers that allow us to hate?
My ideas are not unique. The International Institute For Peace Through Tourism, a non-profit based on a vision that the world's largest industry, travel and tourism, can become the world's first global peace industry, was founded in 1986. But maybe I'll take it one more step, which even I barely like to admit. Maybe to start, you don't have to pack your bags and leave for another country.
The other day on the subway, I overheard two teens. One Caucasian boy was telling a Hispanic boy how much of that morning's Spanish-language church service he had understood. He added that he had understood more when the other boy's mom had yelled at them in Spanish. I smiled. Yes, maybe the shock value of abandonment within another culture is not so valuable; it's just the introduction that's important.