Beyond the Caribbean: Black folks and world travel
When it came time to spend the money we'd been setting aside for the past year, my husband and I had a bit of a disagreement. I wanted a kitchen remodel-- you know, new cabinets and granite countertops. Something I would use every day. He wanted to sail the Mediterranean-- the kind of thing you do once in a lifetime. We discussed it and I (reluctantly) conceded when it became apparent that if I won, I'd have a new kitchen populated by one very unhappy man.
But now that our 14-days in Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt are behind us, I'm going to say the words that every husband lives for, and every wife hates to admit:
He was right.
The trip was amazing: a truly once in a lifetime experience that I'm thrilled to have had the chance to enjoy. I loved every second of it: winding through the narrow streets of Positano, Italy admiring the handcrafted tile and the Sorrento lemons; visiting the incredible ruins of Pompeii and catching a glimpse of life 2000 years ago; walking the streets of Mykonos and eating seafood straight from the sea, seeing the Acropolis in Athens and the pyramids and the Sphynx in Egypt. In Turkey, we visisted Ephesus-- the ancient city of the biblical Ephesians. It was the sort of experience that gives you a new way of looking at the world and a new way of looking at one's self, knowing that your life is just a flash in the ages of human history.
Our fellow passengers on our cruise ship came from all over the world, too. We met Canadians, Britons and Germans, Italians and Greeks, South Americans and Dutch. And of course, we met other Americans. But only a handful were black Americans.
By contrast on a typical Caribbean vacation, however, you'll see many African Americans. Why were there so few on our Mediterranean cruise?
Some will immediately jump to economics for the answer-- the Caribbean is closer and cheaper and more easily accessible-- and while I certainly can see that argument, I don't think that's the only factor at work here. After all, middle class black folks who have the money for vacations can choose to spend it anywhere-- the decision is made to travel. There are deals daily to destinations world-wide. As one of my globetrotting friends likes to say, "A black woman can fly to Europe for about what some of us spend on single pair of shoes!"
And everywhere we went, English was spoken, so language really can't be said to be a barrier.
In doing the research for my upcoming book "Don't Bring Home A White Boy (and other notions that keep black women single)" I interviewed a young black woman who told me about her family's reactions when she was offered to study a semester abroad. Her parents weren't impressed and her grandfather even said: "What you want to do THAT for? Ain't no black people in Europe."
Fortunately, this young woman ignored her family's skepticism and headed off to study in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Every where she went, she met black people, people of color who were citizens of those nations and-- with their permission of course-- took pictures of them and sent the home. "Black people... in Europe," she wrote on each photograph until the message was clear to the folks back home: look beyond your limited black American experience. Look beyond North America and the Caribbean. Find out what it means to be a person of color in a wider experience.
You can't view slavery in the same way once you've thought about it in terms of the Roman empire or of the Jews held in Egypt or the centuries old struggles between the Greeks and Turks.And, however cynical you are about what it means to be a black American, I doubt you'll feel the same after you walk the slums of Cairo. There's a lot wrong in this country, but there's a lot right here, too. Touring the oldest Mosque in Egypt, I found myself thinking of Malcolm X-- who left the United States a black nationalist Muslim but returned from his haj to Mecca just a Muslim committed to justice for all mankind. I think I understand.
If you're broke, of course, now is not the time. But if you're not, I hope you'll consider broadening your vacation horizons. The Caribbean is lovely-- but there's whole world out there, a world that technology makes smaller. A world that, if we're to thrive in as a people, we must explore and understand. It's worth saving money for, and worth spending it on. Black Americans have to reach beyond North American and become a bigger part of that broader world. We have to be willing to reach for more than the limits we so often perceive in this country-- not only for our own sake, but for our children's. While it might have taken me 45 years to set foot on the continent of Africa, I'm glad my daughter did it for the first time at 13. I'm glad she's been bitten by the "travel bug" at a young age... and when she told me she wanted to visit Japan next I couldn't have been more pleased.
Money is certainly an issue, but I've noticed that most people manage to find money for the things they value most: cars and computers, cell phones and, as my friend Nikki put it, shoes. Travel is now something I'm willing to put at the top of my list-- even if it means living without granite counter tops for the rest of my life.
