The degree of awareness to the world’s issues varies among participants, but the most important thing is going in with an open mind. Be willing to interact with the people of the country you are visiting.
Participants on Road Scholar programs, which cater to people over the age of 40, are usually well-educated and have an idea about what’s going on in the world, Karaca said.
Holbrook also organizes student programs where students learn about social and environmental issues. For some of them, a trip to a developing country will be their first exposure to extreme poverty. Seeing African children their own age herding cattle and walking miles to go to school puts things in perspective for many.
“You hope they become more open-minded,” Karaca said. Regardless of age, she believes learning is still life-long and curiosity is part of being human.
Another mind-opening experience for Blacklin was observing the majesty of the Maasai people. From her perspective, they were tall, lean and dignified, the red fabric wrapped around them bright and bold in the surrounding land. Blacklin’s tour went to a village where the tribe’s women, adorned with beaded neck embellishments, danced around while the men jumped straight up in the air keeping with the rhythm of the music.
“We did our best bobbing around,” Blacklin said with a chuckle.
Small but significant details gave Blacklin an appreciation for her own culture and foreign cultures alike. She recalls images of a school where the children sang to them, children guiding cows and goats back in for the day and a woman milking a cow's udder while a calf drank from the other side. Blacklin reminisced on all of these unique mental snapshots of the village.
“It involves your whole view of life,” she said. “It’s feeling like one is a citizen of the world.”
A retired accountant since 2006, Blacklin’s love of traveling ignited when she was 22 and living in Philadelphia. She had a map of Africa on her wall but never imagined she would see the continent.
But since then, she has lived in Libya, Holland and England, visiting over 60 countries.
“It’s an obsession,” she said about traveling. Blacklin has been on 25 programs through Road Scholar because she said she loves the opportunities it gives her to learn and truly get to know a place.
“There is a whole world out there,” she said. “If you just go to a fancy hotel or resort, you don’t see anything.”
(This story will be posted in a series. This is the second of three posts. If you missed it, you can read part one here.)
