After reading the Sunday paper yesterday, I started to see a trend. Talk of the need to get away. Two articles struck me: one in the business section about "adult gap years" and the other in the travel section about going to a Greek island "famous for being unfamous". Their shared theme was the need to break the mold of day-to-day life. The articles were geared to working people, working year after year without truly getting away. How many of us take "working holidays." In the internet age, it has become nearly impossible to leave work behind. Do you ever travel without a laptop or smartphone? Do you keep in touch with what's happening at work? Going abroad used to forceably separate us from our work and our home. You'd send a few postcards. No email, no CNN International, phone calls were too expensive.

 The "gap year" article speaks of the benefits of doing something completely unrelated to career - for example a medical doctor interning in construction. Of course, there are obstacles to getting away from work: loss of income, jobs that don't offer sabbaticals, family obligations. Still, over the years, we've seen many people at ELI who have found a way to do it. People who set out to see the world, sometimes for a full year! There have been some crazy itineraries - 3 months in Nepal, 1 in Cambodia and then over to Kenya for a few more. They'll supplement their ELI programs with travels in between. Why go from A to C without seeing B?

Some of these travelers are able to return to their jobs, others don't have that option and need to quit. One group the article discusses is people who choose a gap year as a way to enter retirement. After all, retirement doesn't necessarily mean inactivity. We know that retiring "boomers" are much more physically active and generally healthier than previous generations. I spoke with a woman last week who just retired as a judge. Now she was finishing a master's degree in public health. She's interested in working with "right to health" issues in Africa, and was checking into our programs. Retire? Not when there are so many interesting possibilities out there. Time to see the world, and put that life experience to work in new ways!

The other article by novelist/poet Alexander Chee also talked about changing gears and putting aside his work. He accepts a friend's invitation to visit her and other friends on a lesser-known Greek Island, Sifnos, for a month. Frankly, I knew nothing of Sifnos. Apparently it is a great culinary destination, but still is not among the must-see locations for most people. Being off the beaten track appealed to the author. He decided to make use of the trip to get away from writing (the article was written after the fact). Instead he spent his mornings visiting different beaches around the island, sketch pad in hand, reviving a past interest in drawing. In the afternoon he'd head back to town to enjoy the company of his friends. What can I say? It's one of those articles that sends you immediately to a map and to TripAdvisor.

Anyway, Mr. Chee points out something we all know. We simply don't know how to let go. Taking a true vacation requires more than making a reservation. Force a more complete break from day-to-day life. Make sure you are doing something different. I particularly like the way he sets out to thoroughly explore the island. I've always felt it is better to know a single place well than to have a cursory knowledge of many. He wasn't concerned with seeing other islands. Travel should be more than a "been there, done that" list.

His closing words sum up what he has learned by this break:

Vacation is so often cast as a luxury now in America, a bourgeois game of Instagram tagging and food photos. But for me, in Sifnos, I came to know it as the time in the year when you find not only rest, but also the strength you need to meet your work and your life when you return to them. In the years since, it’s been hard to be an American writer and take vacations like this. But I would never want to live the other way — without them — again.

Give it a read!

Homegoing , a Novel by Yaa Gyasi
Vintage; Reprint edition (May 2, 2017)

As we were making the arrangements here at ELI for a university group going to Ghana, the director of their program mentioned this book to me. It was required reading for the students. Given the very positive reviews that I found online, I decided to take the plunge. I was coming at it from the point of view of someone interested in Ghana, but it could equally be read for its depiction of the forced emigration of Africans from their homeland to the United States, and the resulting issues that continue to this day.

The novel starts in 18th century Ghana. It is a collection of stories covering the descendants of one women, Maame, giving the novel a matrilinear origin. Each story confines itself to a pivotal moment in the life of a character. We see the importance of those moments through each succeeding story, though in most cases many years have passed. All the early stories take place in Ghana, but then, when one character is sold into slavery and ends up in the States, the stories alternate between the two countries.

Here on our website, I try to stick to the elements that relate to travel. So just let me say that as a book, it weaves an intricate web that keeps the reader interested in spite of the 3 centuries on two continents that it covers in just 300 pages. Don't demand closure if you choose to read the book. There are many stories that you will be sad to leave as you move on to the next generation.

As for the novel's interest to us as travelers, almost everyone who has travelled to Ghana or has planned a trip there must surely have heard of Cape Coast, the British fort/prison where slaves were kept while awaiting boats for the journey to America. The image of it haunts the novel, even in the final, current day stories, but only a few stories actually take place there. It is a must if you travel to Ghana. You'll find a lot of photos of it if you do an image search.

The book makes a point of not only blaming the British slave traders or the Americans for the atrocities of slavery. The truth is not so simple. Slavery existed before the arrival of the British, and continued after their departure (Modern Day Slavery). Slaves were a spoil of war in tribal skirmishes. The novel shows this in several key scenes. The author also goes into some of the major tribes, their relationship to the British and the differing roles they played in the slave trade. We get a glimpse of the cultural complexity of Ghana and of Africa in general. Although this is a limited portrait of the rich history of Ghana, it serves as an introduction, and will give you a leg up when you land there. A little familiarity goes a long way!

The author, Yaa Gyasi, was born in Ghana and immigrated to Huntsville, Alabama with her parents when she was young, a story paralleled by Marjorie, a character in the final chapters of the book. It’s not surprising that this is also where the author seems most comfortable and the storytelling most natural.

Join us in Ghana!

Interested in development programs in the Third World? I've been meaning to write about a book that is a must read if you're wondering what can be done as a foreign volunteer. Call Me Unafraid came out last year. It's co-written by a former Wesleyan University student and a Kenyan community organizer that she met on a university program in Kenya.

They met in Kibera, Nairobi's infamous slum. It's a place that I've driven through on the recommendation of our Nairobi partner, the Kenya Voluntary Development Association. The extent of the slum is overwhelming. Most of it cannot be seen from a car. The density of construction leaves only narrow walkways. The authors of the book, Jessica Posner and Kennedy Odede take turns talking of how they met and what they were able to accomplish. Their work targets at-risk young girls in Kibera who have little or no educational opportunities and face the constant threat of abuse, unwanted pregnancy, HIV, malnutrition and crime.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the book, what works, what doesn't. The most important is one that we hear time and again: community involvement. Change cannot be imposed from the outside, it must come from within. The community must be invested in a projects success. Kennedy and Jessica start a school for girls with funds from outside, but they require parental or extended family involvment. 6 weeks per year volunteering at the school. 

Kennedy writes:

"My wariness about foreign NGOs came from seeing several organizations working in Kibera. Rather than building free clinics that were actually accessible to people, these outsiders built inefficient ones devoid of community leadership and dignity. The majority of "local" staff who were hired did not actually live in Kibera, and they looked down on and disparaged community members. I also saw how "free" schools built by Western organizations secretly charged fees, and local staff members secretly raised the prices and pocketed the money when donors got back on their planes." (p.162)

Kennedy provides the community connection, Jessica provides the Western connection, and they both provide endless commitment. These are the ingredients for success.

In addition to being a kind of instruction manual for development, the book also gives a vivid portrait of abject poverty, the failures of the West in solving the problem, and the crime and political instability that make progress so difficult in developing economies. One note: Their success would be hard to duplicate. Not every project will receive support from wealthy alumni, movie stars, large corporations. At ELI, we've seen many small-scale successes by participants, but as Kennedy and Jessica prove, it doesn't hurt to dream big.

Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner.  Find Me Unafraid. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015.

By Kevin O'Neill