Staring at the lights of the tavern, I wondered who might choose to live in such a dinky, do-nothing town. From what I’d seen, it was nothing more than a collection of tract houses built around a convenience store. The landscape was pretty enough; you might pass through and admire the mountains, but wouldn’t a person then move on to someplace more important? Travel was supposed to broaden your mind, but… it had a way of depressing me. The more places I went, the more I realized I didn’t matter to anyone except the family I’d left behind—and who knew them besides their friends and neighbors in a town just as pointless as this one? Raleigh would be granted a larger dot on the map, but when seen as a whole, the multitude of strange towns and cities conspired to nullify my shaky myth of self-importance. -David Sedaris
Interesting thought, Mr. Sedaris. I will admit I’ve had this feeling myself—what does all this travel mean? Who really cares that I’ve been to this random village in Sierra Leone and that random town in Thailand? Will these experiences really change my life, or are they some part of a selfish quest of self-discovery, on which path I will actually discover nothing?
I’ve never traveled alone, per se. Every extra-US experience I’ve had has included at least two other travelers besides myself. That doesn’t, however, necessarily mean I haven’t felt alone at times. Everyone experiences traveling differently. To one person, one place could be life-changing, compelling one to follow a path that had otherwise been undiscovered. This same place could be a mere comma in someone else’s story. Fortunately, most of my journeys have meant something to me, have changed me or clarified certain thoughts in some shape or form. But, like the sea receding with the tide, these seemingly permanent changes also ebb and flow.
Take my time in Africa, for example. Immediately following my two week conference, I vowed to return to the continent as soon as possible, to relinquish my possessions and live an impoverished life in a small village with no other care in the world than to help the community in any way I could. For the next month, my conviction was strong; after that, however, this idea slowly retreated to some deeper recess of my mind. It only resurfaces when I read an article on the BBC concerning a specific instance of government corruption or human rights abuses—but nothing is as strong as that one month. Sure, I still see myself back on the Dark Continent, but there’s no hurry. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the conveniences of modern society, electricity and all.
I can already feel some of my expectations of my life-changing Thailand experience depleting. For starters, I now know that I will never become a teacher. Not that I was truly expecting to have a burning desire to teach forever, but I figured it would at least give me an idea of how I wanted to help people, not simply that I want to. I’m also realizing that assimilating into a culture fully, true participant observation, is proving much more difficult than I’ve been led to believe in my anthropology courses. Sure, I work in Phanom, I live in Phanom, I eat the same foods and avoid the same cultural taboos as a native from Phanom. But the barrier still exists. Most conversations with the locals rarely extend beyond “Hello, how are you? I love it here, thanks for asking.” I feel as if I’m treated like a tourist, not a member—and I know that most of the blame lies with me. There’s an intimidation factor, there’s a language barrier, there’s a fear of not living up to local expectations of farang behavior—save linguistics, I’m sure the other two are irrational thoughts. But I still can’t seem to shake it.
I’ve got to get over my habit of comparing my experience to others’ as well. Like, for example, Steed and Michelle seem to have broken the tourist barrier quite well. They each have Filipino friends and have Thais to call to take them out at night, facts of which I’m both envious and curious as to how they matriculated. I’ve always been pretty good at knowing what I want, not so much at how to get it. I don’t want to make the effort of making new friends, for fear of overstepping my boundaries, or of making a bad impression. Somewhat irrational, yes. Easily avoidable—for me, no.
To make the most of my time here, I’ve got to stop looking for opportunity and start making opportunities. You’d think that in 23 years of living I would’ve figured that out by now. Otherwise, my travels abroad won’t even matter to “the family I’ve left behind”—they won’t matter to me, either.
