In the March 7 issue of The Auburn Plainsman, I wrote a column about eating dog at a village outside of Chiang Rai, Thailand. That experience, along with subsequent columns in this series, will discuss things that students encountered during travels around the world. This column will serve as an introduction of sorts for forthcoming articles.
In September 2012, I returned from an 11-month humanitarian journey to 11 countries called the World Race. I spent nearly a year away from my friends and family, while being forced to cohabitate with approximately 50 people ages 21-35. Our squad was divided into teams of seven and eight that we spent at least three months with.
We traveled to Central America, Asia and Africa, spending a month in each country we went to. On this particular trip, we went to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi.
We lived as the locals did, most of the time in their homes, or in their place of operation, doing whatever tasks they needed us to. Because the World Race is primarily a Christian mission trip, our tasks included community outreach, orphanage visitation, construction, evangelism and, in some cases, counseling.
We met incredible people who did things that I would never consider. Their dedication to their causes was unfathomable to me. We met people who had seen things that I would need years of therapy to overcome. The places we went were some of the most beautiful I have ever seen.
To be candid, the Race came at a time in my life when I needed to take a break. My grades were deteriorating, my personal life was collapsing around me and I was burning bridges with a fervor an arsonist would be envious of. My life had become dominated by a prevailing sense of apathy.
I needed to wake up and grow up.
I was weighing my options of what to do with my time: either a stereotypical backpacking trip around Europe, working as a method of refocusing and even a serious trek down the path toward joining the Coast Guard. Backpacking around Europe was thrown out; I didn't want to be stereotypical. Working wasn't going to have the life-shaping impact I wanted and the time commitment required by the Coast Guard scared me to death.
I agreed to the Race impulsively. I knew almost nothing about it, and while being raised in a Christian household, I could not be readily described as an active Christian.
It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Not because of the people I met, or the intense situations that I have been in that engendered these retellings, but because of the people I was surrounded by. Forty-five Americans and three Canadians all equipped with REI backpacks that could not begin to store the emotional baggage they were bringing with them.
Some of us lost baggage along the way, and some of us did not. Sometimes life's experiences can be too permanent to learn from.
While the majority of my stories will come from my experiences during the World Race, I have also been to countries in the Caribbean, Central America and Europe. The final tally is approximately 40 countries.
This is my second victory lap at Auburn. Hopefully, you will have the opportunity to gain some insight about cultures around the world through my experiences without forking out the money for a plane ticket and delaying your own graduation timeline.
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