While working at American Express I met a man whose goal was to visit all seven continents. I thought it was a great idea and began to wonder how I could make it to Antartica. Well, life got in the way and I had to put my goal on hold. Imagine my surprise to find out that a black woman had never made it to the North Pole until 2007. Barbara Hillary, a 75 year old cancer survivor skied to the North Pole. Almost one hundred years earlier, Matthew Henson and Robert Peary made it to the North Pole. Oddly enough, my second cousin married Matthew Henson's great-grandson. I met him while visiting family and friends in Baltimore. He looks just like Matthew Henson.
Learn more about Barbara Hillary here:
July 25, 2010 - Melissa is a Travel Maven!
I love to travel. Any amount of time at home and I get itchy feet. I dream about far off places and meeting new people. Perhaps it is the many years of living in the suburbs and watching TV, or reading National Geographic. The world always seemed like a wonderful place and I couldn’t wait to get out and meet new people with different ideas. I wanted to be that crazy aunt who would come to visit the children and give them trinkets from strange worlds and crazy stories that would entertain for hours. I also want to encourage other people to get out and see the world. I found out many others had similar dreams, but did not know how to get started.
So in my ongoing effort to demystify travel for the masses, I would like to make sure that I find as many different travel experiences as possible. Just as there is more than one way to watch the latest movies, (and there is, by the way, but you have to figure it out. I’m not tellin’.), there is more than one way to create an opportunity to travel and live abroad.
So let me introduce you to Melissa. She has been everywhere. From Mexico to Africa to South America, she has more stamps in her passport than a Suicide Girl has tattoos on her bottom. (Yeah, I know, it’s a lot.) She has stories.
Melissa credits her penchant for faraway lands to her family. “My family is a traveling family, so international travel isn’t necessarily a big deal as some make it to be.” Many of her influences came from her cousin, who was 12 or 13 years older than her. “She speaks a lot of languages and does a lot of traveling,” said Melissa. “She told me that she had a great experience in Spain and I should do it.”
The first time Melissa went to Europe was through Camp Adventure, a program that provided college students majoring in education the opportunity to work with children at military bases around the world.
“I went to Germany, a city called Stuttgart, and stayed there for the entire summer. They kind of explain to you that you work Monday to Friday, and you travel on the weekends, she said. “You also have the opportunity to spend the last week there traveling.” She did a lot of traveling on the weekend sometimes with people through the school. The last week of traveling, Melissa used a Eurorail pass and traveled for 10 days. She visited Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany and Brussels.
Just like Toshin, Melissa is not magical. She just kept her eyes open to opportunities and used her wit and creativity to make a travel program that worked for her. Melissa was not an education major, actually, she majored in business while in school. “Don’t let that deter you, she said. “Take responsibility for your own opportunities. You should get out.” You see while education wasn’t her major, but she was passionate about it. The work abroad program was a way to get some experience in that field. It didn’t necessarily provide a direct return on her school credit or graduating, but it was about realizing what her interests were and valuing them enough to pursue them. To the average person, an obstacle like the wrong major would turn them away. But to really find opportunities to travel, one must not be average. You have to make a way, just like making a dollar out of fifteen cents.
July 25, 2010 - Melissa is a Travel Maven! - Part 2
Melissa turned out to be a treasure trove of experience. So much so, that I’ve decided to dedicate another post to her travel stories and wisdom.
This time I asked her about her experience while working at an internship in Spain. I wanted to hear about her experience running with the bulls, but it turns out that she had a story that went much deeper than that.
The business school that Melissa attended, Florida A&M University, was known for producing lots of high quality MBAs. “Everybody went on paid internships, she said. “We got paid the same salary as real people. We were expected to produce real results as well.” She worked with her career placement office in school to land a wonderful internship in Spain with a well known international pharmaceutical firm.
You might expect that Melissa was in for a life of hard work with her internship, and a wonderful experience learning about the Spaniards and adventure around the city. Well, you are only partially correct. Many Spaniards have limited experience with people of African descent. A lot of the Africans who were living in Madrid at the time were from Senegal, Cameroon, Kenya and many where working in nightclub settings or as DJs. The females were doing a lot of prostitution and child care.
For the most part, Melissa was in Madrid during the day, where she lived was a very central location in the city with well established people. Sometimes when she worked with Pfizer, her job took her out of Madrid. “From that experience, I had more racist encounters,” said Melissa. “They [have] skinheads there.” She went on to muse, “Germans think you guys are just as impure as Spaniards think blacks are!”
Melissa also lived by the soccer stadium, which created its own challenges. “European soccer fans are very radical. When the game days came there were a lot more insults.” It increased the intensity of racism that she felt. People were drinking and rowdy. Sometimes it wasn’t safe for her to walk. “Because, I tend to move around by myself a lot, I had to be mindful, she said.”
Melissa and her friends saw an opportunity to work to change this. “We would have these encounters and think about what we could do as individuals to remove those stereotypes. That people had there of blacks in general. And what we could do here to steer the culture in the direction that gave us more opportunities, she said. “We wanted to make sure that more blacks could travel abroad, so we started a study abroad program to give people the opportunity to travel and combats their stereotypes on their own. It’s a non-profit called Global Elevation. It’s directly tied to that experience and wanting to get other countries to understand that not all black people are like they are on videos. They have an education beyond the entertainment field.”
Global Elevation had a lot of support but every time the leadership of its partnered schools changed the team needed to build the relationship back up. The recession also hit hard, but there is good news! Melissa and her partners are thinking about revitalizing it. I’ll be one of the first in line, for sure!
July 25, 2010 - Melissa is a Travel Maven - Phew!
Now I couldn’t let Melissa go without hearing about her adventure Running with the Bulls!
Melissa advises, “Don’t be afraid to be the first person to do something. Not with just your race or community, even with your family and friends. It was just me. I think a lot of my friends would say how lucky I was and how they envy me. It’s not like I’ve done anything extraordinary. I did something that anyone else can do. Step outside your comfort zone and be a trailblazer.” Don’t be afraid to travel alone,” she said. “That’s really how you get to meet people who you would never meet. You’re not sitting there with the same group of friends.”
If you ask Melissa about Madrid, she won’t give too much advice. “I had to embrace the Spanish culture on my own, she explained. “ I really had to learn the culture and ask questions to understand who Spanish people are, why they are that way.” Melissa had to learn to figure them out on her own, and believes that it’s a better experience for other people as well. “Many of the study abroad programs create silos,” she said. “It’s a lot tougher to break out of that and really understand the culture.” She adds, “It can take away from the opportunity to really learn something about yourself.”
Okay Melissa, what about The Running of the Bulls?!?!
“We just took the train, found out the different types of events that went on surrounding the running of the bulls. We dressed in the typical gear - all white and a red belt. So that was our attire. It ended up being the entire weekend”
Oh please tell me more!
“When there is a holiday the city shuts down. The running of the bulls is for the patron saint of that city. Every city has its patron saint, so they celebrate St. Fermin.”
Uh huh, patron saint. Go on…
“The Running Of The Bulls takes course over seven days. It starts with all the restaurants open, everyone is in the town square. You’re supposed to climb up a statue and jump off so people can catch you.”
Oh now we’re getting somewhere!
“They have a huge celebration where people throw wine and saffron and food and drinks. Everybody is involved and you’re out in the streets for the most part. It’s very communal. Everybody is making sure you have a good time. If you’re hungry you eat, thirsty you drink. For the rest of the day until the following morning it’s like a party.”
*sigh* It sounds like heaven!
“We went to a restaurant for dinner and stayed out and dance and enjoyed the music, and met people from all over. There’s a square full of grass and people would sleep there if they didn’t have a hotel.”
“The following morning is where The Running Of The Bulls starts. They build a wooden fence along the path and people set up places where they will sit. At 7pm, they lift up the gate and release them. Whoever runs can run. If you run, you can’t jump out. If you start running you run all the way into the arena. It’s 400 meters, you’re twisting and turning through the streets. They do spray the street with water so it’s slippery for the bulls. Some people don’t think it’s fair for the bulls because they are also drugged so they can’t run as quickly.”
Did you run?
“Oh no! My mother would have killed me! My parents were like, whatever you’re going to do, don’t tell us.”
It still sounds like a great time. I definitely plan on going. We’ll see about running along Fernando the Bull.
A Travel Discussion.
This post is dedicated to that kid. You're sitting on your rooftop in the hood, in the courtyard of your projects, on the curb out side your house in some no name suburb, or even on your front stoop in the middle of...well, nowhere. You see planes flying above you and wonder, "Where is it going?" You watch TV and see far off places and wonder, "How do I get there?"
I'm here to tell you that it's possible. You have it in you to travel and make your world larger than you ever thought. I had the great opportunity to speak to someone who was just like you once. His name is Toshin and he is from Mississippi. Take some time and listen to our conversation. When it's done, go to the library and start planning. You won't ever be the same.
Part 1: It's possible
Part 2: What's it like?
Part 3: Get busy!
